Trust Password

aka: Shibboleth

Ted: Okay, wait. If you guys are really us... (briefly looks at Bill) ...what number are we thinking of?
Future Bill and Ted: 69, dudes!
Bill and Ted: Whoa.

— Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

A character needs to prove their own identity or situation to another character who's not likely to believe them. Maybe they're from the future, some other character reincarnated, or disguising as someone else. Maybe they have to pass a God Test. That's when they say the Trust Password — something that will prove their identity beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Trust Passwords come in several forms. A common sub-trope is Something Only They Would Say, for an utterance that shows the speaker can be trusted, but wasn't established as a password beforehand. It can be set up in advance as a Covert Distress Code or a form of Spy Speak (often in sign/countersign form). It could be specialized knowledge of certain facts or events. Or it could be an object that has a special significance (such as an object that's been separated in half, so if you have one half only someone you trust has the other).

The trope can be Played for Laughs quite easily — the skeptical character might not believe an otherwise airtight password, or the password might be common knowledge such that anyone can easily impersonate the character.

Sometimes an illustration of The Power of Language.

Not to be confused with Secret Word. Especially not to be confused with Safe Word. (Usually.)

---

Examples:

Advertising

• A Tim Horton's commercial had two people crossing the border into Canada proving that they're true Canadians by showing that they know how to correctly pronounce the chain's big yearly promotion: "R-R-Roll up the R-R-Rim to Win!" The next two in line can't do it.

Anime & Manga

• This occurs frequently in the Haruhi Suzumiya series:
  • In Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody, Kyon gives Yuki the piece of paper that she gives him in three years' time as he travels through time himself. This convinces her to synchronize her memories with her future self, effectively merging her current and future selves into the same person. And then she returns the favor immediately afterward, taking off her glasses the same way she does three years later.
  • In the fourth light novel, Kyon finds himself in an Alternate Universe where the SOS members are ordinary humans. Haruhi won't even give him the time of day, until in desperation, he introduces himself as John Smith, the alias he used as a time traveler helping him out three years ago. After he does that and the world is returned to "normal", he keeps this as an emergency trump card and finds himself using it to blackmail Yuki's boss.
  • Adult Mikuru convinces Kyon of her identity by showing him a distinctive mole on her breast — except Kyon didn't know about that yet, even though Mikuru claims he pointed it out to her. Kyon uses this information to point this fact out to the younger Mikuru, turning the whole thing into a Stable Time Loop. It pops up later, too — he recognizes a fake Mikuru because she doesn't have the mole, and he tries it again in Disappearance on an alternate universe Mikuru, who calls him a pervert and punches him out.
• In YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke possesses Kuwabara to try and tell Keiko that he's trying to come back to life and needs his body. She doesn't believe him, and he tries to come up with a Trust Password. So he gropes her breasts (or in the TV version, peeks up her skirt), causing her to reflexively slap him and yell "Yusuke, you jerk!" And in the end, she tells him that was unnecessary after all — she recognized his body language.
• Naruto plays with the trope during the Chunin Exam. Sasuke Uchiha, having just defeated an impostor by recognizing him through sheer luck, decides it's necessary to give Trust Passwords to Sakura and Naruto in case they get separated again. However, he deliberately makes the password so complicated that he knows Naruto will never remember it — so when an impostor impersonating Naruto shows up and perfectly recites the password, Sasuke knows it's a fake who was eavesdropping earlier.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:
  • A terrorist known as "Angel's Wing" (or "Angel Feathers" in the English dub) gives a Trust Password to his blind, wheelchair-bound daughter so that she'll know it's him even if she doesn't recognize it. At the end of the episode, he finds himself captured in a chapel, when his daughter happens to enter. She gives her half of the password ("What is the angel planning to do today?") Batou knows both halves of the password, and he could give the right response (if only to make her happy), but he doesn't — he tells her, "The angel... isn't planning to go anywhere."
  • One of the final episodes in 2nd Gig has the Big Bad trying to send Rangers after Section 9. They immediately stand down after running into Batou, a former Ranger; they can tell this immediately because all Rangers have the exact same Electronic Eyes.
• One Piece:
  • Right at the start of the Alabasta arc, Bon Clay (a member of Baroque Works who can duplicate appearances) infiltrates the Straw Hats, learns how to copy the appearances of all the members as well as Vivi, and then leaves. To make sure he can't sneak back in among them again, Zoro comes up with a solution: each Straw Hat and Vivi should wear a white bandage over their arm to hide the real trust sign, a large X tattooed on their forearm.
  • In the Dressrosa arc, Luffy is reunited with someone he had thought long dead. Said individual starts asking about the time they stole Dadan's liquor to confirm his identity, but Luffy is glomping him in joy before he can finish the sentence.
  • In the Wano arc, Kyojuro reveals his true identity as Denjiro of the Red Scabbards, who'd pretended to be one of Orochi's allies in order to protect Princess Hiyori to Kin'emon by bringing up Kin'emon's responsibility for the "Mountain God Incident" decades ago. Since Oden had ended up Taking the Heat for Kin'emon, only Kin'emon, Denjiro and Oden(the latter of whom is long dead) knew who was actually to blame.
• In Steins;Gate, Makise Kurisu provides Okabe a trust password ("My Fork") to convince her past self that he came from the future using technology she finished building a few minutes ago. Humorously, the password she uses is a very old 2ch meme roughly meaning "lover", so past-Kurisu is horrified when Okabe uses it (fortunately for her, Okabe doesn't seem to recognize the meme).
  Okabe: What you want most right now is "My Fork"!
  Kurisu: WHAT!?
  Okabe: You already have "My Spoon", apparently.
  Kurisu: I am going to kill my future self five hours from now...
• In Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, future Rudeus convinces Rudeus of his identity, and thus to trust his warnings, by saying something only he could know: their Japanese name.
• In The Seven Deadly Sins, Gilthunder's supposed Badass Boast turns out to be a trust password. It's a phrase learned from Meliodas, to be used if they're ever in deep trouble.
  Gilthunder: I am now stronger than any of the Seven Deadly Sins!
• Summer Time Rendering: When the heroes first realize there are Shadow doppelgangers replacing people, they come up with a password to tell them apart. One will say "Mountain" and the other will answer "Mesopotamian Civilization". This proves ineffective when Shinpei completely forgets about the password. Sou greets him with "Mountain", and when Shinpei just stands there confused, instead of suspecting he is a shadow, Sou yells at him for forgetting.

Comic Books

• The Spanish comic-book Anacleto, Agente Secreto, story El Malvado Vázquez, starts with the titular character, a spy, going to meet an agent who'll identify with the password "It's 10 PM in Istanbul." A stranger approaches him with that same sentence but Anacleto disregards him, answering instead that it's only 8 here, don't you worry about it. The contact (who knows Anacleto's face) insists, and Anacleto digresses about time zones to the poor man's bewilderment. Walking away, Anacleto notices it was the code, returns to the stranger with the reply "Potato omelettes are always round" - but by then the contact has been murdered. A bystander witnessing this last part then bores Anacleto with his long-winded opinion on potato omelettes.
• From Superman comics:
  • In The Death of Superman, the real Superman proves his identity to Lois by naming Clark Kent's favorite movie, To Kill a Mockingbird.
  • In later comics, Superman sets up a code phrase with Lois: "Beef bourguignon with ketchup" (a farming tradition). He uses it to let Lois know that he's safe even when he can't contact her directly. Unfortunately, Parasite is also able to use the password when posing as Lois.
• Justice League of America: During the Obsidian Age arc, in which the entire League is killed and their souls trapped by an ancient Atlantean sorceress, it's revealed that Batman's passcode for Nightwing is "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze"; not only are they song lyrics, but they also refer to Dick Grayson's boyhood career.
• Mortadelo y Filemón have an arbitrarily catalogued number of trust passwords. A Running Gag is for the password to be very offensive to some group or collective that happens to be within earshot. A beating ensues.
  • One particularly extreme password was reciting Don Quixote in its entirety. Filemón tries unsuccessfully to convince the guard on the other side of the door to let him skip the password for once. He has a Photographic Memory and knows it by heart, but by the time he's finished reciting it, he's grown a Time-Passage Beard. And then the door collapses, and the guard turns out to have died of old age.
• In Paper Girls, Present-Day Erin asks several very personal questions in a row to verify that her younger self is who she claims to be. Subverted in that young Erin doesn't know the answer to the first one (her social security number), and the last one isn't a Trust Password at all, it's a genuine question that older Erin has always wondered about: a scar that she doesn't remember how she got, since it occurred due to time-travel shenanigans.
• In an early Iron Man comic Rhodey Rhodes does this by accident when he steals a VC helicopter and tries to fly it back to an American base, only to be challenged for the password which he does not have. He spends some time in explanation but is not believed by the skeptical tower personnel. After he mutters under his breath "The Mets will win the pennant before these bozos believe me" the two tower personnel look at each other, exclaim "Mets!" and "Pennant!" and then allow him to land.
• Defied in an old X-Men story. When Emma Frost tries to convince Kitty Pryde that she is in fact Storm and that the actual Frost had forcibly body-jacked her to infiltrate the X-Men, Pryde understandably points out that "Something only I would know," is a means of identification trivially bypassed by a low-ethics telepath that has had a couple of hours to dig through the requester's brain.

Comic Strips

• Beetle Bailey subverts this with its usual irreverence: Beetle, on guard duty, detects someone coming and demands that they identify themselves through various means, such as the usual "Who won the World Series" and similar stereotypical means to ferret out foreign spies. He is rebuffed with responses like "Dunno!" and "Who cares!" after which he promptly allows the philosophical and profoundly sports-disinterested Plato back onto base. Equal parts Armed Farces and Something Only They Would Say.
• Knights of the Dinner Table:
  • Used by Genre Savvy players in the comics. Often, players will set up a "Doppelganger Password"; should a character become separated from the group and later rejoin, they can be asked to provide the password in order to prove that they're not an infiltrator in disguise.
  • It's used to great effect by the Black Hands group. During an annual Hackmaster tournament, Newt asks Stevil for the password and, not getting it, peppers his body with crossbow bolts and dumps his body down a well. All to the good, except that Newt accidentally (or "accidentally") forgot to set up the password with Stevil ahead of time, giving him an excuse to take him out of the game. Nitro doesn't buy the excuse and, when the Black Hands are eliminated, orders Newt to his house for "remedial training". And to bring a sack lunch.
• Safe Havens: When Maria brings Samantha the coding she'd need for the Mars Mission from her future self, Samantha noted that her future self would have left some clue proving her identity. She got it in the form of the flash drive identifying her as 'Broople-head', which was a word Samantha had secretly made up for nasal discharge when she was in preschool.

Fan Works

Arrowverse

• In the Arrow fic "Happy Accidents", after Laurel Lance is reborn in the body of her Earth-2 counterpart, Cisco and Thea each test her with their own trust passwords; Cisco asks what he asked for in exchange for helping her create her Canary Cry (Laurel countering by asking what she said she'd do if he showed it to anyone), and Thea asks what she told Laurel regarding her ex-boyfriends Alex and Roy (Laurel replying Thea said she'd be surprised at which of the two used more tongue).

Battlestar Galactica

• Did I Make the Most of Loving You?;
  • The time-displaced Cottle checks if Adama and Roslin have also travelled in time, after seeing them together years in advance once his own memories are restored, by telling Roslin that she reminds him of a woman he treated for breast cancer.
  • When Roslin meets a young Kara, after Kara calls her ‘Madame Prez’, Roslin tests Kara for future knowledge in turn with the ‘What do you hear?’ line.

Bleach

• Hogyoku ex Machina:
  • Yamamoto gives Ichigo one of these to prepare for when Rukia will turn Ret-Gone in the future (i.e. the third film). It also ends up being useful for identification against Aizen's illusions, though Ichigo still has to scramble as he struggles to remember it.
  • Ichigo convinces Gin that he's from the future by explaining the true power of Gin's bankai, which Gin never revealed to anyone.
• Winter War: How do you convince someone who's been Aizen's prisoner for months that you really are you? You hand him his zanpakutou, which will do the convincing for you.

Crossover

• Avenging Harry Potter (Marvel Cinematic Universe & Harry Potter): Harry phones a worried Hermione shortly after being rescued from captivity.
  Hermione: If I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good how do we end?
  Harry: We've managed the mischief.
• The Bridge: Gigan is unsure if the being he's talking to is Monster X or Kaizer Ghidorah and asks him to tell him two things only his best friend would know. X proves himself by talking about how the two of them stopped the radio incident with the Kilaaks and what Gigan did the moment they first met. And X calls Gigan his best friend, while Kaizer would never do that because he Hates Everyone Equally.
• The Demon Who Lived (Code Geass & Harry Potter): Lelouch, Kallen, and C.C. are the only ones in the new world who know Brittannian English, something Kallen's parents say is a combination of German, Latin, and Welsh, allowing them to easily confirm each other's identities. Likewise, Lelouch starts his first letter to Kallen, who wrote a book series based off Lelouch's revolution to find him and C.C. in the new world, by thanking her for not revealing that she had to nurse him through a Refrain overdose.
• The Dresden Fillies (The Dresden Files & My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic): As in the Dresden Files half of it's source material, Harry giving his full name to Twilight Sparkle is a sign of immense trust in her and is used in the second story to confirm her identity to him.
• In First Knight, when traveling through the screwed up space-time continuum in the Overlook Hotel, guardians/caretakers like Xander formally greet alternates of people they've met to check if they're real and if they're hostile. When an alternate Warren comes across Xander's group in the stairwell, he refers to Xander as a guardian and only relaxes after Xander explains he's just the caretaker.
• Kyon: Big Damn Hero (Haruhi Suzumiya & TV Tropes; author Died During Production): It starts with Kyon using this so Haruhi will believe him and help Yuki.
• The Scarab (Buffyverse & Stargate SG-1): features an interesting case where the key is the character's inability to understand the 'password'; Willow Rosenberg has just created a spell that gives the illusion that she is a Goa'uld host, so Teal'c tests her by giving a long insulting speech in Goa'uld, with Willow's genuine lack of reaction confirming that she's still herself rather than an egotistical Goa'uld who would never countenance such insults.

The DCU

• The Changeling Sequence: When a panicked kid begs him to help his brother, Dick Grayson starts believing this is another mundane crime... until the kid tells him "Little Wing asked for you", since Little Wing was Dick's nickname for his deceased sibling Jason.
• In the superhero game, the sequel to one day at a time (Nyame), Jason manages to convince Kon that he's traveled back in time, and that Jason has too, by mentioning the name of Hiyori Tanaka, Kon's wife in the previous timeline.

Doctor Who

• In Mending Fences, the Twelfth Doctor has returned to Pete's World to rescue John Noble (the metacrisis 'clone' of the Tenth Doctor) after John has been kidnapped and held prisoner for almost a year. When the Doctor finds John, the other man initially believes him to be another of his captors, but the Doctor proves his identity by speaking a specific name (all-but-explicitly stated to be the Doctor's true name) in a low voice, knowing that the other man is basically the only other person who can hear the name.

Godzilla

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Once a way for humans to communicate with Monster X in its second form is found, Madison Russell asks the female head a series of questions to confirm that Monster X's female half really is Vivienne Graham.

Hannah Montana

• Amiss: When Lilly makes a wish to join Miley in the new reality where she was 'always' Hannah Montana, Miley initially assumes Lilly is just her counterpart before Lilly calls her Miley (something alt-Lilly never did), but still asks her a couple of test questions such as who Fern was.

Harry Potter

• In the Peggy Sue fic Backwards with Purpose, Harry convinces Dumbledore of the time travel by stating what Dumbledore saw in the Mirror of Erised.
• In A Different Halloween, if Lily Potter uses the word "darling" at the start of a phone conversation with James, it means she's safe and coercion-free.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality uses this a few times, most notably in the first few chapters. McGonagall is flabbergasted when Harry first mentions that he actually has one, just in case of an unforeseeable eventuality when he'd need to use it.
• In Harry Potter and Voldemort's Champion the warden of Azkaban ends a Patronus message with "have a nice day" to prove to Madam Bones that it's from him.
• The second volume of The Arithmancer is one of many Harry Potter fanfics where it becomes standard practice to ask security questions to check that people aren't polyjuiced imposters. But instead of being asked about a shared memory Hermione proves her identity by starting an explanation of some advanced maths that nobody else fighting against Voldemort has ever come across.

The Hunger Games

• In the The End of the World story The Golden Mean, the rebel victors mentoring for the 3rd Quarter Quell and game makers identify themselves by wearing accessories that evoke fire imagery (although it later turns out there were at least a couple of victors present who were Locked Out of the Loop and didn't know to wear any of that).
  Haymitch's narration: When she turns, I see her earrings. They are solid gold, out of place with her austere appearance. They are shaped like flames. I look up and down the table. Harris Greaves from Four has flames on his cufflinks (Annie is not present and that worries me). Jack Anderson from Seven, always a little flamboyant (so to speak), has dyed his hair red and orange and yellow. Toffilis Taggart from Ten has been called to mentor for Eleven, and has a giant gold belt buckle that depicts a campfire. I glance at the career mentors assigned to District Three and District Eight but they have nothing identifiable happening. The other victor from Ten, assigned to her own district, is also clear of rebel signs. It's definitely planned. I push up my cuff, and show my bracelet, then hide it again. Plutarch is wearing a vest with a subtle red and orange embroidery on it. He calls the meeting to order.
• Fall Into the River, a spinoff to The Victors Project, has La Résistance in District 8 paying special attention to any out-of-district packages that come in where the date of shipment is replaced with the number of children their District has lost to the Hunger Games (109 in that case).

Kim Possible

• In the Unacceptable Sitch Series (specifically "Under the Milky Way Tonight"), Señor Senior, Sr. gave his attorneys a list of passwords to prove he was of sound mind and free of coercion. Specifically, any future changes to his will would include all but one of them.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• In Multiverse of Madness: The Clea Cut, when 616-Wanda has been manipulated into dreamwalking into her Earth-717 counterpart, 616-Peter Parker (who had accidentally travelled to that Earth with Strange and America Chavez) confirms that this is "his" version of Wanda in control by quoting from Wicked, which he and Wanda saw shortly before Strange came to them about America's presence and which Peter has already confirmed doesn't exist on Earth-717.
• In If I Could Start Again, in order to gain Hawkeye and Black Widow's trust after they learn that he's from the future, Thor tells them about when they went to Clint's house during the Ultron incident and about his family when they first met them. Since the only way Thor would know about Clint's family in the first place would be if he had his absolute trust, he accepts Thor's claims.
• In The Tie that Binds, a Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover centering on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Coulson is held prisoner by Thanos, whose agents showed him faked footage of his team being tortured, and Melinda May being killed. Meanwhile Gamora makes contact with May on Earth and asks for a message to pass along to Coulson when they plan to rescue him from prison. May's message, which convinces Coulson that she's alive and the rest of his team are safe, is "Tell Phil I'm going to kick his ass for opening the Haig without me."
• Welcome to the New Age: When Amanda manages to borrow a cell phone and get a text out to the Avengers so they can find the Hydra base she's being held at, she includes the phrase "pain in the ass", which her husband Bucky uses as an affectionate pet name for her. Bucky even points out to Maria Hill that if the text was a trap, Amanda would have been smart enough to tell Hydra to use "pain in the neck" or some other similar, but not quite right, phrase.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Reboot (Miraculous Ladybug): Master Fu gave Marinette a series of words to tell his younger self to let him know that he sent her back in time.
  Master Fu: If you are from the future, what's the password?
  Marinette: Veni. Vidi. Amavi.^note (I came. I saw. I loved.)
• In Unexpected Surprise, when Adrien needs to convince Marinette he is the former Chat Noir (and the father of her child), he starts to tell the detail of their night together. Since there were obviously no witnesses to that, a make-up follows within seconds.

My Little Pony

• Diaries of a Madman: Navarone, when dealing with shapeshifters alongside his adopted daughter Taya, gives her a few of these for verification. He also has his true name, which ostensibly isn't accurately recorded in his journals, replaced instead with "Anonymous".

One Piece

• Played for Laughs in With a Side of Oden when Nami demands Yamato prove that the latter is from the future. Yamato does so by detailing various sex acts Nami enjoys, none of which Nami's actually done yet at this point in her life.
• In the One Piece Self-Insert Fic This Bites!, after the initial encounter with Mr. 2, Cross forms one of these with the rest of the crew, and makes it twofold for extra security. It's utilized in Chapter 21:
  Nami: Who is the second greatest traveler in the world?
  Cross: That would be Pandaman, ranking right below Gol D. Roger!
  Nami: Wrong answer! Pandaman doesn't exist.
  Cross: That's a lie! Pandaman is real, just like the great Goda!

Phineas and Ferb

• In PnF: Stolen Identity, Phineas does an impromptu one on Ferb's replacement, asking him about the day they first met. It's different from the typical example in that the first time he asks this question, he doesn't realize he's talking to an impostor (rather he thinks Ferb's gone mad) and wants reassurance that Ferb is still the person he loves. Later the real Ferb answers the question correctly (Phineas insisted on saving Ferb some cake), much to Phineas' obvious relief.

Pokémon

• In Give Not In To Sorrow, when Emmet is searching for his identical twin brother Ingo, he is mistaken for a dangerous Zoruark taking Ingo's form to infiltrate the Pearl Clan settlement. When Ingo returns to the settlement, the first thing Lian asks is to tell him something that only Ingo would know, so Ingo tells him Lady Sneasler's favorite petting spots. The second thing Lian asks is to tell him something only he and Ingo would know ^note Lian sleeps with a stuffed teddiursa.

Power Rangers

• "Multiverse of Madness" features a variation of this when JJ Oliver and Minh Kwan (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always) find themselves in an alternate reality with alternate versions of the original Power Rangers (Power Rangers (2017)). After JJ and Minh follow this world's Rangers to the ship that serves as their version of the Command Centre, Minh reveals her morpher to the local team while assuring them that it isn't a weapon as they "only use [their] weapons for defence", quoting the original theme song and a core rule of being a Ranger.

Pretty Cure

• Twisted in Futari Wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon. Facing down an illusory copy of Yoko controlled by Millusion, Cure Sunday asks her to answer a question about herself. The twist is that giving the right answer proves her as the fake, because Yoko didn't know it.

RWBY

• Event Horizon (RWBY): Ciel tells Ozpin about her Semblance early on, and is surprised when he believes her. He tells her about a man named Listing with a similar Semblance, and to use the phrase "I have Listing's Semblance" to explain things as quickly as possible. The author notes in the afterword that it's no coincidence that the only one who could get Ozpin to trust Ciel was Ozpin himself.
• In Saving the World for Fun and Profit, Neo and Emerald have one to confirm if the other is a time traveller.
  Neo: Never be cruel, never be cowardly.
  Emerald: And never, ever,
  Both: Eat pears.
• The RWBY fanfic Four Deadly Secrets has Neo and Ruby exchange one, in the form of sign/counter-sign when they first meet.
  Neo: So breathe easy, sister.
  Ruby: Free air is easy to breathe, sister.

Thunder Cats

• After Lion-O finds out his true identity as the long lost prince in ThunderCats: Sword of Kings, he asks Cheetara to find his friends WilyKit and WilyKat and bring them to the palace. Since the two children will have no reason to trust her (especially since she took part in the raid on Lion-O's old home), Lion-O tells Cheetara to tell the ThunderKittens about their search for El-Dara, since only a close friend of their's would know about that.

Dormant/Dead/Unsorted

• In scifigrl47's Toasterverse, Tony has one of the escaped scientists sing the Teapot Song to verify his hand in their escape.
• In the Hard Reset sequel Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder, when Celestia hears that Twilight is a fellow time looper, she tells Twilight a password to unlock secret knowledge in Celestia's brain. When Twilight repeats the password to Celestia later on, she's paralyzed by a powerful spell, and Celestia immediately kills her after revealing that the "secret knowledge" is the rest of the password. It's repeating the entire combination that convinces Celestia of Twilight's story.
• Played for laughs in The Wrong Reflection: Tess randomly demands of Eleya at gunpoint why Tess joined Starfleet, to make sure Dal Kanril hasn't tried to replace her. After going "WTF?" Eleya answers, and then asks Tess if she really thought Eleya wasn't herself.
  Tess: Terrans managed it with Kirk.
  Eleya: Kirk didn’t have a ten-year-old scar on his belly, Tess. Next time you’re not sure, just ask me to pull up my shirt.
• Stars From Home:
  • When Hank's cure first works, Scott assumes the not-blue-and-furry Hank is a imposter. Hank tries twice before managing to convince Scott of who he is — because he knows why Scott doesn't like The Andy Griffith Show.
  • A few chapters later, Charles has to prove his identity to Ruth when he uses Hank's serum to walk. His initial attempt at using personal details does not go well.
  Charles: You have a birthmark on the underside of your left breast and freckles on your back. And scars from two bullets, and an otherwise… flawlessly beautiful body.
  Ruth: Charles Xavier is not the only man I have screwed. This is not private information.
• A Chance Meeting of Two Moons: How Artemis and Luna confirm their identities as the others' counterpart from a parallel universe - they simultaneously reveal the time they each caught their older sibling having drunken sex with their world's draconequus.
• In Amicus Protectio Fortis the Defense Association members rescuing Millicent's family prove they came at her request by giving her father the code word "argumentum."
• Burning Bridges, Building Confidence: When Master Fu selects a new holder for the Fox Miraculous, he has Trixx go and retrieve Tikki from Marinette in order to get her approval first. Later, when Ladybug meets Vexxin for the first time, she asks her what the names of both of their kwamis are in order to affirm that it's the same person.

Films — Animation

• Arlo the Alligator Boy: Arlo Beauregard is celebrating his fifteenth birthday at the beginning of the movie, and Edmée's sole gift for him is a box containing the ID bracelet from when he was a baby, which sets the movie's plot in motion. However, Arlo refuses to accept the gift unless his birthday is today, and to prove it, Edmée is forced to launch into her birthday ritual where she gives Arlo his cake and party hat, sings a birthday song with her banjo, smashes it, sets off fireworks, and finally giving Arlo a kiss, allowing him full permission to open the gift.
• Back to the Outback: The Ugly Secret Society has the secret password "I’m Ugly. You’re ugly. We should all be this ugly. Ugly is the new beautiful." that when spoken, alerts any nearby U.S.S agents close enough to hear it that a fellow member, ally, or person/people under their protection needs help and/or is in danger.
• At the end of Ghost in the Shell (1995), just before Major Kusanagi leaves Batou, she tells him that 2501 (the code number of the Puppetmaster project) will be their password so that he can identify her when they meet again.

Films — Live-Action

• Bill & Ted:
  • Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure has the protagonists' future selves prove their identities thusly:
    Ted: If you guys are really us, what number are we thinking of?
    Future Bill and Ted: 69, dudes!
    Bill and Ted: Whoa...
    [quadruple air guitar]
  • In Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey, Ted tries this on the boys' "evil robot usses" by giving them a How Many Fingers? test. They pass, although since Ted was hoping for them to pass, he may just have flashed whatever number of fingers they said he was holding.
• Back to the Future:
  • In the first film, Marty tries to convince 1955 Doc that he's from the future and he needs Doc's help. He first shows him his driver's license and a picture of his family where his sister is wearing a sweatshirt that says "Class of '84" (Doc assumes he doctored them^note They soon realize the "doctoring" was actually the first signs that history was changing). He then tries to reveal "future" history, which Doc laughs off because he refuses to believe that Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan is really President. Marty successfully gets Doc to believe him by telling him something only Doc would know — the vision that led to his invention of the time machine.
  • In Back to the Future Part II, 2015 Biff doesn't actually want his 1955 self to recognize him, but he does get his past self to trust him and take the Sports Almanac by demonstrating knowledge only young Biff would have, such as how to start his car.
• Children of Men. "You're a fascist pig" is the password Theo is told to give to Syd, the policeman smuggling him into the Bexhill refugee camp. Given that Britain is falling into a fascist dystopia, it's not something you'd say to a policeman face-to-face, and Syd trolls him by feigning outrage.
• Edge of Tomorrow. On being told Cage is in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, Dr Carter hides a hand behind his back and asks how many fingers he's holding up (two). A puzzled Cage has no idea, which tells Carter that this is the first time they've met. On later loops, Cage just cuts to the chase and tells Carter he's holding up two fingers to verify that he's looping in time.
• In Frequency, the protagonist convinces his father in the past that he's really from the future by detailing a baseball game that hasn't happen yet. When the father sees the game the next day happen exactly as described, he believes.
• Subverted in Ghost Town. Ricky Gervais' character has started telling the wife of a dead husband (whose ghost he can see) facts that he shouldn't know. So she makes him prove that Ricky's really talking to the husband with a recurring nightmare the husband had that he only told her about. He says drowning, but it turns out that's way off, and the husband was purposely lying to Ricky so that he would stay away from the wife.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X-Men: After being fooled by Mystique one too many times, Cyclops demands that Wolverine prove he is who he says he is, under threat of being eye-beamed. Wolverine's response: "You're a dick." It works.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: Logan convinces 1973 Charles to hear him out by telling him some details about his childhood that he learned from future Charles and that the younger Xavier hadn't told anyone up until this point in time:
    Logan: I know your powers came when you were nine. I know you thought you were going crazy when it started, all the voices in your head, and it wasn't until you were twelve that you realized all the voices were in everyone else's head.
• Bizalom: Kata, on the run in Nazi-occupied Hungary with false papers, is sent to a house where a contact will meet her. She is instructed to verify her identity when she reaches the house by reciting the phrase "Thank God, the child's all right", word for word.
• Star Trek (2009) gives an example where this doesn't work. Spock Prime greets Kirk with the line, "I have been and always shall be your friend". Except that event happens so far into the future that Kirk and Spock aren't even friends yet in this timeline, so Kirk doesn't get it. Spock resorts to using a mindmeld instead.
• Tenet—the Title Drop is a Trust Password for members of the eponymous organisation when combined with interlacing the hands. Also "We live in a twilight world" and its response phrase "And there are no friends at dusk", used by the Protagonist and his CIA team in the Action Prologue. The Big Bad uses the phrase when meeting the Protagonist, implying he works for the CIA as well (though the Protagonist pretends not to recognise it).
• In 12 Monkeys, Cole can't figure out if he's actually from the future or if he's just crazy. He figures it out when he tells Kathryn to make a phone call for him to a phone he knows will be monitored in the future. Kathryn leaves the message Cole had been told about in the future, which confirms he's from the future.
• In You Only Live Twice, Miss Moneypenny abuses her role as creator of Bond's trust password to get him to tell her something she really wanted to hear from him. It doesn't work and just makes everything kind of awkward:
  M: (buzzing intercom) Miss Moneypenny, give 007 the password we've agreed with Japanese S.I.S.
  Moneypenny: Yes sir. (to Bond) We tried to think of something that you wouldn't forget.
  Bond: Yes?
  Moneypenny: "I, love, you." Repeat it please, to make sure you get it.
  James Bond: Don't worry, I get it.
  [Later...]
  Tiger Tanaka: Permit me to introduce myself. I am Tanaka. Please call me Tiger.
  Bond: If you're Tanaka, then how do you feel about me?
  Tanaka: I... love you.
  Bond: Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way.
• Big:
  • The most prominent trust password is extremely complicated, with a fast song and dance routine.
  • When Josh calls his mother, pretending he's a kidnapper, his mother asks him to name the song she used to sing to him when he was younger. Josh tries to dodge the question, but when she insists, he sheepishly sings the song, the title theme of The Way We Were.
• Rob Schneider's character in The Hot Chick (really Rachel McAdams' character's brain in his body thanks to a "Freaky Friday" Flip) recites a handclapping game about how All Men Are Perverts (with Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion) to prove who he really is to his best friend.
• Subverted in 17 Again (2009). Mike tells his best friend Ned several incriminating details that only he could know while being attacked, but Ned justifies how the weird, soaking wet man in his house could get access to all the information he gives.
  Mike: It's me, Mike O'Donnell, your best friend! You have an undescended testicle.
  Ned: Googleable!
  Mike: You helped me cheat on a math test, but I got caught.
  Ned: Public records!
  Mike: You asked Princess Leia to Junior Prom!
  Ned: Covered by the local news!
• In The Bourne Ultimatum films, it's shown that all Treadstone agents have "Safe" and "Under Duress" passwords. Nicky Parsons is expected to give her "Under Duress" password when Bourne tracks her down; she doesn't, signaling her defection to Bourne's side.
• Groundhog Day takes it to extremes. To prove that he really is repeating the day over and over again, Phil walks Rita through a diner, giving the trust passwords for everyone in the diner, none of whom remember telling him those things. She still doesn't quite believe him, until he shows he can also predict what people are about to say.
• Parodied in several The Pink Panther movies. Clouseau will ask Dreyfus what his code name is, or what the password is. Dreyfus has to think, then replies in a fury that he doesn't have a codename or that there is no password. Clouseau confirms that only the real Dreyfus would know that, but this just angers Dreyfus further.
• In Airheads, to determine whether a record executive actually is an exec and not an undercover cop, Chazz asks him, "Whose side did you take in the Van Halen/Roth split: Van Halen or Roth?". He incorrectly answers "Van Halen", outing him as a cop. Chazz still gives him one more chance, asking "Who would win a wrestling match: Lemmy or God?". He first answers "Lemmy", then hastily switches to "God", before Rex tells him, "Wrong, dickhead! Trick question! Lemmy is God!", and he's finally driven away.
• Terminator:
  • In The Terminator, Kyle tells Sarah, "Come with me if you want to live.", after he stops the T-800 from assassinating her at the Tech Noir nightclub. In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, an identical-looking T-800 is sent back in time to protect the young John Connor, and when she's understandably terrified seeing him, the T-800 says "Come with me if you want to live", allaying her worries and establishing that this also serves as a trust password among the human resistance.
  • In Terminator Genisys, when Sarah encounters Future John Connor, she suspects him to be a shapeshifted terminator. Connor gains her trust by citing details of the past that only John Connor would know. Subverted, it turns out he's a Terminator-human hybrid made from Connor's body.
• In Ghost (1990), Sam is trying to convince his girlfriend that a medium can speak for him. He tries to tell her that he loves her, but this backfires, since he was reluctant to say those words in life. He quickly corrects himself and tells the medium to say "ditto", which is how he would usually respond to his girlfriend telling him that she loves him.
• In The Sixth Sense, Lynn Sear accepts that Cole is telling her the truth — he really can see and talk to dead people — after this exchange:
  Cole: [My grandmother] wanted me to tell you...
  Lynn: Cole, please stop...
  Cole: She wanted me to tell you she saw you dance. She said, when you were little, you and her had a fight, right before your dance recital. You thought she didn't come see you dance. She did. She hid in the back so you wouldn't see. She said you were like an angel. She said you came to the place where they buried her. Asked her a question. She said the answer is: "Every day." What did you ask?
  Lynn: Do... do I make her proud?
• Ministry of Fear offers a Spy Speak example. The whole story unfolds after Stephen accidentally utters the code phrase, telling the palm reader to ignore the past and tell him the future. She then tells him the weight of the cake which is a prize in a weight-guessing game. Cue a long chase as Nazi spies try to get the MacGuffin hidden inside the cake that Stephen won.
• At the start of The A-Team, Hannibal has just carjacked B.A.'s van, notices B.A.'s Ranger tattoo, and recites the Ranger Creed to get him to help.
• The Assignment (1997) is about a US naval officer Annibal Ramirez who has an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Carlos the Jackal, so he's recruited for a joint CIA/Mossad operation. A terrorist who knows the real Carlos accidentally runs into this Doppelgänger at Heathrow Airport. Ramirez tries to bluff his way out by pretending to be Carlos, but when the terrorist asks where he can buy a newspaper, Ramirez realizes too late that it's a password to which he doesn't know the countersign — his life is only saved by the intervention of a Mossad agent who sees him being led off a gunpoint. Afterwards his CIA handler mentions a similar incident where he was forced to kill a man who didn't respond with the correct countersign, and later uses this story to tell the difference between Ramirez and the real Carlos.
• In Book of Monsters, Sophie's best friend Mona is briefly impersonated by a demoninc shapeshifter. When Sophie finds the real Mona, she asks Mona to prove her identity; Mona passes the test by revealing that when Sophie was twelve she had a "major crush" on Katy Perry.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service: After Eggsy's father's Heroic Sacrifice, Harry Hart pays a visit to the deceased's family and gives Eggsy a medallion with a number they can call to request a "favor", along with a choice of words they have to say to the speaker.
  "Oxfords not brogues."
• T2 Trainspotting: Played straight with Renton and Sick Boy's improvised sectarian song; subverted with "1690" as the widely-used and easily-guessable bank card PIN.
• In the final scene of Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, Fin Shepard runs into a grown man who claims to be the Future Badass version of his son Little Gil. Fin is understandably skeptical, until the man says, "Semper Paratus. A Shepard is always prepared."
• In Tumbleweed, Jim is able to prove to Aguila that he really was Tigre's friend by showing him the necklace Tigre gave him just before he died.
• Santa Claus in The Christmas Chronicles has a really hard time proving who he is to a suspicious policeman in spite of using a long series of Trust Passwords. He does things like produce every toy the man most wished for as a child out of Hammerspace and predicting the exact moment when his ex will call him.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: Civil War: Bucky proves that he's back to his old self after being re-brainwashed and causing an international incident by remembering that pre-serum Steve used to stuff newspapers in his shoes; he's the only living person other than Steve who would know that, and he wouldn't remember it if he were still under the effects of the kind of brainwashing HYDRA uses.
  • Black Panther (2018): Wakandan War Dogs, deep cover agents around the world, have a nonverbal password. When asked for their identity, they pull down their lower lip to expose a glowing blue vibranium tattoo.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, a time traveling Captain America has returned to the time of The Avengers (2012) and he needs to get the scepter for the modern day Avengers' plan. Surrounded by Agent Sitwell and S.T.R.I.K.E. team members, he knows he can't fight them or blow their cover as HYDRA moles at this point, so Cap utters the "Hail HYDRA" salute to them, befuddling the entire group and letting Cap walk out with the scepter.
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home: After being thoroughly fooled by Mysterio pretending to be Nick Fury, Peter makes sure to check that Happy Hogan is real by asking him to tell him something only the real Happy would know. Happy responds by talking about the time they were in Germany together and Peter ordered an adult movie via the pay-per-view. The story's enough to convince Peter that it's the real Happy.
• Zeppelin (1971). The protagonist is a British officer of German descent who pretends to defect to the other side. Once in Germany, he goes into a tailor shop and asks for "blue bunting". The tailor doesn't know what he's talking about. In some confusion he leaves, then abruptly re-enters the shop and says, "Bunting blue!" The tailor snaps back in English, "It's about time; I've been waiting for you for weeks!"
• In Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, when the rebels try to land on Endor, the Forest Moon where the Death Star is being built, they are challenged for a clearance code. The code they use is old, but still valid. They are allowed to pass because Darth Vader can sense Luke's presence on the shuttle and wants to get them down to the planet.
• Stargate: Continuum:
  • Subverted twice:
    • O'Neill refuses to buy it, partly because what Daniel tries to use as proof — O'Neill's son, Charlie, shooting himself — didn't happen in the alternate timeline.
    • Landry believes Mitchell even without the recitation. He has, however, presumably been shown several days worth of interviews of each of them where they've been trying to slam the trust password into the face of everyone they come into contact with.
  • Downplayed Trope in alternate Teal'c case. While a group of Tau'ri sharing personal information about him is not enough to convince him on its own, he agrees to help them when they tell him that the Jaffa are free in the original timeline. At the very least, it made their story more credible, and temporal travel isn't as outlandish to an alien culture as it would be to a human from planet Earth.
• In Godzilla vs. Kong, Conspiracy Theorist Bernie Hayes seeks like-minded individuals with the question "Tap or no tap?" based on his belief that the reason the government puts fluoride in tap water is to make people docile. The proper response is "No tap." Of course, one could point out that it's really a 50/50 chance, but unless people know his theories and understand the question in the first place, their response anyway would most likely be "Huh?"

Literature

• The Alice Network: Lili greets Eve with the words “Cherie, look at you! How is dear Oncle Édouard?”, which identifies her to Eve as the head of the Alice Network.
• Ed and Sam of qntm's Ed Stories both have time travel passwords, for use when they need to prove their identities to themselves. They make use of these passwords in Be Here Now: 4 of 5.
• In The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry ultimately convinces many people of his ability to spontaneously time travel by disappearing in front of their eyes. On one occasion he tells a doctor all the biological information on the doctor's then-unborn child in the hopes of getting some treatment, but it's the disappearing that clinches the deal.
• Jorge Luis Borges' short story The Other has a clever version of this trope. An older Borges meets his younger self on a bench by a river. The older tells the younger details about their life that no one else could know. Young Borges dismisses this as a dream, but Old Borges proves That Was Not a Dream by reciting a line of French poetry he is sure his younger self has never heard nor could have dreamed up, and showing him a piece of money with a recent date on it. He later realizes that the note he showed his younger self doesn't actually have a date on it — meaning that the younger Borges did in fact dream it, but the older one did not.
• In Artemis Fowl, Artemis sets up trust passwords for himself and Butler in case the Fairies wipe their memories. Artemis' own password is a video of himself saying what happened, as Artemis would only believe something he said himself. Butler's is Artemis telling him his first name: Domovoi.
• In the last two Harry Potter books, the Ministry of Magic suggests people set up a password with their loved ones so as to identify someone disguised with Polyjuice Potion. It's generally treated as a joke in Half-Blood Prince (such as Arthur accidentally outing his secret Affectionate Nickname for Molly), but becomes deadly serious in Deathly Hallows, as the circumstances are much more dire, and people will turn on their loved ones if they don't answer correctly immediately. In detail: In Half Blood Prince, the accepted wisdom is to pre-arrange these passwords with family members - an approach with obvious vulnerabilities - and the questions are asked in a way that doesn't afford much security should the impostor fail the test. In Deathly Hallows, the questions are random, and posed to the suspected impostor at wandpoint.
• In Firewing, when Griffin finally meets his father Shade, he doesn't believe it's him (due to the many illusions of the underworld). He first asks him about Shade's past adventures, but Shade gets the answers wrong because the stories Griffin believes are exaggerations of the true events. Griffin then asks him what his name would have been, had he been female.
  "Well, I'd wanted to call you Aurora..."
  Griffin's heart sank.
  "But your mother had her heart set on Celeste. So it was going to be Celeste."
• In Marge Piercy's He She And It, the heroine suspects the VR representation of her husband in traction after a probably fatal incident is not real. She asks him a personal question, and his answer is the lie that she and her real husband put in a government file for just such a test.
• In Oona Out of Order, the titular protagonist is Unstuck in Time. Oona's first leap in time takes her to 2015. She wakes up not knowing where she is or what has happened to her. When she encounters Kenzie, she doesn't recognize him and doesn't believe him when he claims to be her 51-year-old self's personal assistant. In her mind, she is just 19 and it is 1983. Fortunately, he is prepared with anecdotes from the 1982 New Year's Eve party, like how she caught the band drummer doing cocaine.
• In Mara, Daughter of the Nile, Sheftu gives Nekonkh a Trust Password for Mara: "Tell her I have not forgotten what I said last night when I took her in my arms." Nekonkh is repulsed by Sheftu's cold-bloodedness, as he is to use the password as part of Mara's loyalty test.
• Played with in The Hourglass Door trilogy: In the second book, Leo tells V to go back in time and tell his past self that "the lady of light" sent him, and that it is time "to honor his vow" so that Past Leo won't kill Future V. In the third book, main character Abby goes back in time and saves Leo, who calls her his "lady of light", and she asks him to promise to do something for the one who asks him to honor the vow. It gets more confusing from there.
• In The Science of Discworld II, after traveling back in time, most of the wizards make a point of saying something to their past selves to prove that they are time travelers rather than doubles created by the elves. The exception is Rincewind, who is so jaded by everything that's happened to him in his very eventful life that he just walks up to his past self and says "hi".
• In Patricia C. Wrede's The Raven Ring, Karvonen is captured by the shapeshifting bad guy, and manages to convince him that (a) the other characters have a password (they don't) and (b) it's in heroine Eleret's native language, which the shapeshifter doesn't speak. This results in "Karvonen" walking up to the others and carefully reciting the phrase "Karvonen says to tell you I'm the shapeshifter."
• In Alistair Maclean's spy novel The Dark Crusader (published in the USA as The Black Shrike), the hero includes the nonsense word "Bilex" in all communications with headquarters to show that the message is genuine and not written under duress. After he is captured, the enemy claim to have sent a fake message that all is well, which presumably would not include the codeword. The twist is that the hero's boss is actually in league with the enemy, something he realises when his boss takes no action in response to an obviously fake message... which was probably never actually sent anyway.
• The Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell. The CIA are following Saul until he makes contact with his surrogate brother Chris and they can both be killed. When Saul sets up the meeting, an underling urges spymaster Elliot to let them grab Saul and sweat the meeting place out of him. Elliot turns this idea down, pointing out that Chris and Saul have known each other since they were children and have codes and passwords dating back to then, so they've no way of being sure that Saul couldn't pass on a hidden warning.
• In the non-fiction Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Oil Rigs, She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse, the Australian author Paul Carter is sent to work in Nigeria. He's given a code sentence — "It's hot here, just like Australia" with the reply to be: "Just as hot, but no kangaroos" (needless to say it wasn't an Australian who thought up this) — which the driver picking him up at the airport must give to avoid a Not My Driver trope ending in robbery and murder. The driver's reply is somewhat garbled in translation ("Yes, but no hot kangaroos") but Carter decides it's close enough.
• In Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville series, a medium successfully contacts Harry Houdini, famous in Real Life (as noted in its section below) for leaving codes he would use to try and contact people from beyond the grave, believing that it was all bunk and trying to discredit it. He tells the medium, "Everyone who knew my codes is dead. No one will believe you. But thanks for trying."
• Subverted in the Liavek story, "A Well-Made Plan" into Something Only They Would Say. A Body Swapped character shows up at his own front door and tries to convince his butler that it's really him. The butler asks for this trope, in the form of what the item that is the source of his magical power is (information that every magician keeps a closely held-secret, due to the way magic works in this universe). Instead of naming an item, the character explodes in fury, refuses to reveal it, then comments that since he'd never told the butler in the first place, there was no reason for the butler to expect him to answer. This is the response that the butler was looking for, and he gladly lets him in.
• In an Alex Rider book, the titular character agrees that, when reporting to his handlers, if everything is okay, he'll preface his message by saying things are terrible. The wisdom for this being that if his cover was blown, his captors might make him report back saying "Everything is okay" - this was the signal that he needed rescuing.
  • Same Tactic used by one of the protagonists in Red Storm Rising when radioing back to friendly forces.
• A variant appears the Horus Heresy novel "Know No Fear", Captain Ventanus is thrust into a situation where he has no idea who is an ally and who isn't. The enemy attempts to portray themselves as a specific company of allies several times. Ventanus asks a question to identify them over the vox; "What is the number of the painted Eldar?". Whilst obviously a shibboleth, the trick here is that there are two different answers to the question (12 and 13) depending on the one asking or answering the question.
• The Night Land: The Master-Word. Only humans can say it, either aloud or in their minds. Nothing which cannot speak the Master-Word can pass the Air-Clog that protects The Last Redoubt though it is not necessary to say or think it to do so. Any entity which tries to communicate with a human, psychically or otherwise, claiming to be one itself can easily be identified as a Night creature if it will not say or think it.
  • It is not clear whether the Master-Word was something coded into humans genetically at some point, or if its properties are one of the few things the Good Powers have managed to keep the Eldritch Abominations from screwing with. It appears to be related to the "brain-elements," but they have the same ambiguity.
• Limbo by Bernard Wolfe. The protagonist who has spent years in isolation on an island after his supposed heroic death in World War Three, returns to civilisation to find he's a martyr and a whole new ideology has grown up over a notebook he left behind. As his former college friend is now the leader of this movement, he proves his identity to writing to him about a Dark Secret in their past. His friend raped a woman who then killed herself, and the protagonist provided a fake alibi.
• John Buchan's Richard Hannay novels:
  • In The Thirty-Nine Steps, when Hannay is at last able to meet with the Foreign Office official who can act on Scudder's information, part of his instructions for the meeting is that they will make themselves known to each other by whistling "Annie Laurie".
  • In Mr. Standfast, the German spy ring uses the closing lines of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Wanderer's Nightsong" ("The little birds in the forest are silent." / "Wait, soon you will rest too.") as their sign and countersign. The first time Hannay hears it, he narrates that it is
    Clearly some kind of password, for sane men don't talk about little birds in that kind of situation.
  • Played with in The Three Hostages. When Sandy needs to communicate with Hannay secretly, he says that he'll sign his messages with a letter of the Greek alphabet, then changes his mind, saying that he doesn't expect Hannay to know those, so he'll use champion racehorses instead. And so Hannay receives a series of messages signed with names of racehorses — none of which, he notes, are champions, because Sandy's knowledge of horse racing is even worse than Hannay's knowledge of Greek.
• Jasmine receives helpful text messages from an anonymous source in The Well of Moments, beginning with references to two different inside jokes she shares with different people. She mostly dismisses the weirdness of that because she's worked with supernatural objects, and weird comes with the territory. Although the secrecy annoys her she grudgingly extends limited trust to the texter, who seems to at least know her circle of friends.
• In Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series, the line of Abhorsens has the Arc Words "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?" When apparent heir Sameth doesn't recognize the phrase, he makes it clear he's completely unprepared to take up the mantle.
• In the second book of The Wolf Chronicles, Demmen claims to have a message from Kaala's mother Neesa, but, not wanting to be manipulated, Kaala wants proof. Demmen then tells her things that her mother told him to say, including the names of her siblings that were killed as pups, and what Neesa had privately told her before going into exile.
• In the Warrior Cats book The Silent Thaw, in order to prove to Squirrelflight that he's met Bramblestar's true ghost and that the living Bramblestar is an impostor possessing his body, Rootpaw listens to ghost-Bramblestar and describes to Squirrelflight a private conversation that she and Bramblestar had had after Leafpool's death.
• The Dresden Files:
  • White Night: When Harry is mentally communicating with Elaine Mallory, his use of both their true names serves as this.
  • Small Favor: When Queen Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness shows herself before Harry, she is speaking via a servant malk talking for her. Harry has encountered Mab several times before and asks for confirmation she is the true Mab as Mab has never needed such aid before. Mab recites the terms of the debt contract Harry owes her and her last encounter with him.
  • Ghost Story: When Harry reappears after his vanishing six months prior with his friends not knowing what happened to him, he is bombarded with questions from allies to all matters of Call Backs in the previous twelve books to confirm his identity and not some imposter or doppelganger. This is all the more important because at this moment, Harry is a spirit and talking through an ectomancer. It finally takes Harry's cat who can see him rubbing against his intangible leg and Molly, Harry's apprentice who has gone a dark path since his death, to confirm it is him.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Occurs when Frodo and the hobbits meet Aragorn for the first time. They are uncertain whether Aragorn is really who he says he is; although Gandalf left them a letter stating that Aragorn was a friend, Sam points out he could be an impostor who killed the real Aragorn and disguised himself to trick them. Then Aragorn happened to quote a line from a poem that was written in Gandalf's letter, a letter that Aragorn did not know about and the hobbits just opened.
  • The Moria Gate password is actually one of these, although this is not explained in the actual narrative. The image printed in the book shows that the tengwar lettering reads "pedo mellon ar neledh". This however is a grammatically incorrect sentence. Other examples of elvish sentences provided by Tolkien conclusively demonstrate that the direct object of a verb should have the initial consonant changed in a particular way: here, "m>v". The proper Sindarin translation of the English sentence "speak friend and enter" would be "pedo vellon ar neledh". Of course, the message is actually saying that one should speak the word "mellon" in order to enter. Any person with a basic knowledge of Sindarin (so an elf, or elf-friend), would figure this out pretty much immediately. However, it would be pretty much unguessable to anyone who didn't know the language: even if they forced an elf to translate the message (because grammar inherently doesn't survive translation). While this did keep out Sauron's servants, even if they were humans or disguised as elves, it unfortunately did absolutely nothing to stop Sauron himself: since he knew the elvish languages quite well. Gandalf himself admits he's been trying too hard to find the password, when it was written on the door all the while and laments the "untrusting times" they live in.
• All You Need Is Kill has a variant. Rita is part of a controlled time loop; after every battle, she is sent back in time one day to improve the outcome the next time around. Every battle, she asks everyone she can the same weird question (a different one every battle), like "Is it true that in Japan green tea is complimentary after a meal?" That way, if another looper ever shows up, they can prove their identity simply by answering the question before the battle even starts.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: After Rimuru announced his decision to evolve into a Demon Lord, Benimaru suggest a password phrase in case to assure Rimuru won't be negatively affected, with the phrase being "Shion's cooking tastes like shit". It's not until later Rimuru realize Benimaru set him up, only getting out of it by the long haul after pointing out Benimaru came up with the password.
• In Married Thrice To Salted Fish, Lu Wancheng tells Lin Qingyu that he'll use the phrase "if odd, change; if even, remain the same" to prove his identity to him if he gets reincarnated again in his world. Said phrase is a trigonometry-related mnemonic that only people from the modern day world would be familiar with so Lin Qingyu can be certain that no one other than Lu Wancheng, a transmigrator from the modern day, would come up with an odd-sounding phrase like this in the ancient China setting he lives in.

Live-Action TV

• On 30 Rock, Nathan Lane shows up claiming to be Jack's brother, and Liz is suspicious because Jack has never mentioned a brother and this man pronounces their last name "Dona-hee" as opposed to "Dona-gee." Then he comments that she would be prettier if she didn't scowl, and she knows he's related to Jack.
• In the first-season finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Skye convinces Mike she has his son by having Ace repeat what they said to each other in the pilot.
  • Used again in Season 6, when the villainous Izel is capable of possessing people's bodies and imitating their mannerisms, but can't access their memories beyond what she already knows of them. This results in a very tense scene where the agents all share half of a secret they know about somebody else in the room, which the other person then has to complete, thus proving that both individuals are really who they say they are. (Example: Mack, as the new director, is the only person who knows that Daisy donates part of her paycheck every month, and asks her to confirm where it goes. She reveals that she gives it to Lincoln's sister.) Naturally, the first person to flat-out refuse to comply can't give a good reason for doing so, and is quickly identified as being the one who's possessed.
• In Battlestar Galactica (1978), when Starbuck escapes from the Cylons by stealing one of their ships, he proves it is him to the Galactica by "waggling" the ship back and forth (since the ID transmitter he was given was damaged).
• Batwoman. In "An Un-Birthday Present", Mouse and the Wonderland gang are holding hostages and demanding the release of Alice (formerly Beth Kane). A Beth from an alternate universe where she was never driven insane has just arrived on the scene, and tries to imitate her evil psychotic self to get Mouse to release the hostages. Unfortunately Beth has never met Alice and Mouse quickly becomes suspicious, asking, "Are there any lions or tigers about here?", the Trust Password they used as children when hiding from Mr. Cartwright (the correct answer is: "It's only the Red King snoring.").
• In episode The Woman In The Car of Bones, a boy is kidnapped. Booth asks the dad what password he can use so the boy will trust him during the rescue. (It turns out to be "Paladin" — i.e. "defender of the faith", which as his boss notes is an oddly appropriate one for a Catholic FBI agent.)
• Breaking Bad: Saul Goodman knows an associate whom he calls "The Disappearer" who will give anyone an immediate new identity, but first they need to use a specific code phrase. The recipient has to request "a dust filter for a Hoover Max Extract® Pressure Pro™, Model 60"^note Which is a real model, but doesn't have a dust filter for the humble vacuum repair shop owner to even acknowledge them as a client for his less legitimate services.
• In an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Buck hijacks a Draconian fighter and must prove to another pilot that he's from Earth. The pilot is someone Buck had previously been stranded in the desert with and had shared stories of the past. In this case, Buck proved who he was by giving a description of OJ Simpson.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer was never known to use this trope straight, which makes sense, as it was written by Joss Whedon (who also gave us Wolverine's "You're a dick" line):
  • Giles tries to prove his identity:
    Giles: Cordelia, it's me! It's me!
    Cordelia: How do we know it's really you and not zombie Giles?
    Giles: Cordelia, do stop being tiresome.
    Cordelia: It's him.
  • Xander tells a story about one of his early birthdays to prove his identity. He wanted a fire truck but didn't get one, which made him sad, but then the neighbor's house caught fire for real, and he got to see real fire trucks. He adds that he always thought Willow might have set the fire ("if you did you can tell me"). He also does the Snoopy Dance for her. The problem with this is (a) he's trying to prove he's not his Evil Twin, who would know all this anyway, and (b) Willow wasn't aware that there was a twin and thus had no reason to doubt he was Xander.
• Charité at War: Margot Sauerbruch smuggles documents for a befriended American spy out of Nazi Germany. In Switzerland, she recognizes the Allied spy by the brand of cigarettes he carries.
• Charmed (1998):
  • In "That 70's Episode", Prue and Piper convince their past selves to trust them by opening a trick drawer in a cabinet. Piper attempts to convince their mother they can be trusted because they know she's pregnant with Phoebe. It backfires because not only does she not know, she believes she's infertile.
  • In another episode Piper goes shortly back in time and has to quickly convince her past self that she's her and not some demon in disguise. With no time for passwords, she pinches Past!Piper hard and then shows her a bruise that instantly appears on her own arm.
• On Cursed, if trying to figure out if someone is a Fey, a member of the Fey will greet them with the phrase "Born in the dawn..." to which they are supposed to reply with "...to pass in the twilight." The full phrase, as spoken by Gawain and Squirrel, is apparently "A knight of the Fey is one with the land, as enduring as the Great River and as true as Arawn's bow. We are born in the dawn, to pass in the twilight."
• In the Cold War mini-series Codename: Kyril, "For the love of the Motherland" is a code-phrase given to Soviet sleeper agents. MI6 spymaster Royston tells Sculby to use the phrase when he meets the eponymous KGB agent Kyril, to convince him he's on Kyril's side, but Kyril doesn't believe it for a second. Turns out Royston is framing Sculby as a Soviet agent (his conversation with Kyril is bugged) because Royston is actually The Mole, which the audience discovers when Royston shoots dead a KGB agent to preserve his cover, saying, "I do this for the love of the Motherland!"
• Cybervillage: Robogozin, once he makes contact with his secretary, tells her about his nickname for her and some other private matters.
• Doctor Who:
  • In general, the Doctor often recites enemies such as Daleks, Cybermen, and Silurians to prove his identity to people who know him but don't recognize his current appearance.
  • "BAD WOLF" were Series One's Arc Words, and they tended to show up even after the "arc" was over. More than once, someone could get the Doctor's attention as to the severity of the situation (and whether they could be trusted) by saying those words to him.
  • In the 2005 Children in Need special, the Tenth Doctor gets Rose to realize that he is the Doctor by repeating the first thing he ever said to her: "Run."
  • "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood": Martha Jones, a medical student from the future disguised as a maid, uses her knowledge of anatomy to prove that she's more than she seems.
  • "Forest of the Dead": Professor River Song whispers the Doctor's name into his ear to prove that she knows him in the future.
  • "Journey's End": Two seasons earlier, Rose Tyler was locked in an alternate universe and separated from the Doctor, who only had the energy to send her one message to tell her he loves her. However, his energy source runs out at "Rose Tyler, I—". In this episode, there are two Doctors, one of which is human while the other one is still a Time Lord. The human Doctor is offering, and able, to stay by her side and grow old together, and Rose has to decide if she can trust this Doctor. So she asks both of them what they meant to tell her two seasons earlier. The Time Lord Doctor Cannot Spit It Out, but the human one whispers his answer into her ear. She seems to find the answer acceptable and kisses him, accepting him.
  • "The Impossible Astronaut": When Amy needs to get the Doctor to trust her, she tells him a detail only they would know: the Doctor's Wacky Cravings from their first meeting.
    Amy: Trust me.
    The Doctor: Okay.
    Amy: You have to do this. And you can't ask why.
    The Doctor: Are you being threatened? Is someone making you say that?
    Amy: No.
    The Doctor: You're lying.
    Amy: I'm not lying.
    The Doctor: Swear to me. Swear to me on something that matters.
    [Beat]
    Amy: Fish fingers and custard.
    The Doctor: My life in your hands. Amelia Pond.
  • "Wild Blue Yonder": In the climax of the episode, Donna and her Not-Thing clone both try to convince the Doctor that they are the real Donna, which is difficult since the Not-Thing can read minds and knows everything Donna knows. The Doctor asks them what the name of Donna's old choir teacher is ("Mrs. Beans"), and then asks why that is funny. One Donna tries to logically explain, the other replies "It just is," and the Doctor pulls the second one in. It turns out that was the wrong one. The Doctor only realizes his mistake when the TARDIS scans the fake Donna and shows him that her arms are a fraction of a millimeter too long, and he has to scramble to eject her and grab the real Donna.
• One episode of Family Matters had a crazed criminal trying to hunt Steve down. Carl and his partner were assigned to protect him, but the criminal disguised himself as said partner to get close. Just when it seemed all was lost, Carl burst into the room and arrested the fake. It turns out that he and his real partner always said goodbye using a secret exchange of "See you later/Not if I see you first," and when the criminal didn't respond the right way, Carl immediately knew something was wrong.
• An unintentional variation occurs in Farscape. John is having a normal conversation with Aeryn until he mentions her baby and she doesn't know what he's talking about. This gives away that she is a bioloid duplicate and the real Aeryn has been kidnapped.
• The Goodies. In "Invasion of the Moon Creatures", the password for getting into Graeme's Mission Control is Bill shouting, "Let us in, you great Nana!"
• On Haven, an aborted attempt at Sex for Solace becomes this for Audrey and Duke. They shared a kiss in Colorado while investigating a lead related to the show's mythology, stemming from Audrey's season-long identity crisis and stress over the thought of disappearing in a matter of days. They keep this to themselves, but the fact that only they know what did—and didn't—happen in that hotel room comes in handy several times after, when they need to confirm that they are who they say they are.
• In Jessica Jones, Trish and Jessica decide they need some sort of signal to indicate Jess is not under Kilgrave's mind control. Since Kilgrave would make Jessica pretend like everything's normal, they decide to use a phrase that Jessica would never say: "I love you."
  Trish: You say it, you're still you.
• Legends of Tomorrow: After some effort, Zari manages to convince Nate that she's caught in a "Groundhog Day" Loop. Nate says that on her following iterations, to come to him and say: "Groundhog Day".
• In one episode of Lois & Clark, a time-traveler is able to enlist Clark's aid by whispering to him, "I know you're Superman, and I need your help."
• Lost:
  • In season 4 episode "The Constant", 2004-Daniel tells Desmond to tell 1996-Daniel that he knows about Eloise, and give him some important numbers for an experiment. This proves to Daniel that Desmond is traveling in time and has spoken to a future version of Daniel.
  • Played with in season 5. Hurley is afraid of inadvertently being God Tested and revealed to be a time traveler when he's unable to answer a question that someone living in 1977 should be able to (which in his case goes as far as "who's President in 1977?") Pierre Chang eventually gets suspicious and trips him up easily.
    Pierre: What year were you born?
    Hurley: 1930.
    Pierre: So you're 47 years old?
    Hurley: Yes.
    Pierre: And you fought in The Korean War?
    Hurley: Ha! No such thing!
• In the series 2 premiere of Misfits, the gang have to deal with a shapeshifter. In order to make sure it's really them, they greet each other with "Monkeyslut!" As befits their general methods, this is horribly ineffective. When one of them does encounter the shifter, he just says it with prompting, and fails to notice the shifter's look of confusion.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In "Tribunal", the elderly Karl Rademacher from 1999 is brought back to Auschwitz in 1944 by Aaron Zgierski and Nicholas Prentice and forced to dress in the clothes of an inmate. When he is brought before him, he tries to convince the younger Rademacher that he is him from more than 50 years in the future by relating what happened on his tenth birthday: his father gave him a green bicycle and beat him when he drove it into a river. The younger Rademacher is disturbed by this since, as far as he knows, there is no way that this elderly Jewish prisoner could have known about that incident. He then shoots his older self in the head.
• Quantum Leap: Sam has leaped into an illiterate murderer on the run who is holding a woman and her daughter hostage. He decides to drop the masquerade, telling her he's a doctor from the future in a Time Travel experiment. She doesn't believe him. Then he notices her medical textbook, and she reveals that she's in medical school. So he has her quiz him on medical stuff to prove that he's telling the truth. At first she still doesn't believe him, saying that he looked at the book already, so could have memorized the information. Sam quickly fires back: "When was the last time you met an illiterate speed-reader?"
• In an episode of Salute Your Shorts, Camp Anawana is playing a very intense game of Capture the Flag with a rival camp. Pinsky ends up going to Donkeylips for help. Donkeylips and Z.Z. aren't sure if he's real or an impostor, so Donkeylips decides to ask him something that he told him earlier in the episode.
  Donkeylips: What are the four S's of warfare?
  Pinsky: Strength, strategy, and surprise.
  Z.Z.: It's Pinsky!
  Donkeylips: Shhhh!
  Pinsky: That's the fourth S.
• Time Travel was the whole point of Seven Days, and the team set up a code phrase for the protagonist to use so that they'd always know when he had shown up from the future, and they weren't dealing with a hoax. The password used is Frank contacting Backstep and identifying himself as "Conundrum". Interestingly, it was never used this way after the first episode, once the team knows full well who he is — it's just a signal for them to put him through to the right people.
• In Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod and Abbie use a fist-bump to identify each other in Purgatory, as Abbie had recently taught it to Ichabod. Also while in Purgatory, Abbie correctly identifies a Crane imposter since the fake didn't pronounce her title using Crane's insistent British pronunciation: "Lef-tenant".
• Smallville:
  • In "Relic", Clark Kent proves to his father Jonathan that he's really been seeing visions of the past by revealing that Jonathan's father Hiram wanted to name him Gene.
  • In "Transference", Clark Kent and Lionel Luthor swap bodies. In Lionel's body, Clark convinces Martha Kent it's really him by telling the story of how he discovered Super-Speed at age 6.
  • Subverted in "Apocalypse". Clark tries to prove he's a friend to Chloe by revealing some of their past experiences, but since he's in an Alternate Universe where they have never met, it fails.
  • In "Kent", Clark gets stranded in an alternate universe that had been terrorized by his counterpart Clark Luthor. The alternate Jonathan Kent, who did not find and raise Clark Luthor, attacks and subdues him with kryptonite. Clark gets Jonathan to trust him and let him go by knowing where he keeps his father's shotgun and quoting some of his lessons.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • The team accidentally travels back in time to 1969. Since this was a Stable Time Loop, General Hammond knew to send them with a sealed note explaining things to his rookie past-self. When he finds it, Lieutenant Hammond believes it and helps them escape imprisonment (and remembers to write the note "again" 30 years later). In the same incident, O'Neill convinces Lt. Hammond that the team knows him in the future by telling him he watched the first moon landing two weeks prior from his father's bedside after a heart attack.
  • The team finds a crystal skull inside a chamber filled with radiation, and their attempt to examine it results in Daniel being made invisible and immaterial. The rest of the cast has no idea what happened to him until it is revealed that Daniel's grandfather Nick (who had once seen a similar skull and was living in a mental institution) can see him. Jack is skeptical, but is convinced by this exchange:
    Daniel: Repeat after me: He's standing right beside me.
    Nick: He is standing right beside me.
    Jack: Well, he's lost a few pounds...
    Daniel: Jack, don't be an ass.
    Nick: Jack, don't be an ass.
    Jack: ...Daniel?
  • Similarly, Daniel is inclined to believe that a teenager that got on the base is O'Neill because of the exasperated way the kid shouted "Daniel!" In the same episode, the teen convinces a group of seasoned pilots that he really is O'Neill (a full-bird colonel) with a well-known phrase. The majors and captains visibly straighten in their seats and lose their smiles.
  • Parodied a few times in one episode where the team is dealing with aliens that can shapeshift into other people:
    Jack: Daniel, are you you?
    Daniel: Yes, are you?
    Jack: What?
    Daniel: Never mind.
    [later]
    Jack: Wait, how do I know you're the real Daniel?
    Daniel: [exasperated] Because.
    Jack: [Beat] Yeah, okay...
  • The free Jaffa use the phrase "Shal kek nem ron" as a password to identify other members of the resistance.
  • In Stargate: Continuum, the trope is subverted twice: O'Neill refuses to believe the alternate timeline SG-1 (partly because what Daniel tries to use — his son's accidental death — didn't happen in the alternate timeline), while Landry cuts them off as they are about to do this by telling them he believes them (having previously seen the tapes of their interrogations).
• Star Trek:
  • In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Whom Gods Destroy", a shapeshifting madman assumes Kirk's appearance and tells Scotty to beam him back aboard. Much to his chagrin, Scotty challenges him with a three-dimensional chess move "Queen to Queen's level three, sir" — to which only Kirk and Spock knew the appropriate countersign (Queen to King's level one).
  • The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Firstborn" has Worf visited by a Klingon who first claims to be an advisor, and then later admits that he is Worf's now-grown son Alexander, traveling back in time to urge his younger self into becoming a warrior. To prove his identity, Worf asks future!Alexander to say what his mother said before she died.
    Alexander: I was three years old. She was dying when we found her. She barely managed to whisper my name. And then she took my hand and placed it in yours. And she died. And then you howled in rage, and said "Look upon her. Look upon death, and always remember." And I always have.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: In "Shattered", Chakotay is flung to different points of time throughout the show. In one instance, he ends up just before the events of the pilot episode "Caretaker". Since he was still with the Maquis at that point, Janeway is about to have him arrested until Chakotay shares some personal details about her in an attempt to convince her he really is from the future.
  • In an alternate future of Star Trek: Enterprise seen in the episode "Twilight", the now elderly Captain Jonathan Archer is being cared for by his "caretaker" T'Pol. However, an injury prevents him from remembering all that's happened since he was last on the Enterprise. T'Pol says to him that she fully understands that he might consider all this to be an illusion or an elaborate deception. To alleviate his fears, she tells him the story of an old girlfriend he wanted to marry back on Earth. The stunned Archer wants to know just what kind of "relationship" he and T'Pol have that he'd ever tell her the story. She'll only say their relationship has "evolved".
  • Mildly Played for Laughs in the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad". When a vengeful Mudd uses Time Travel to repeatedly destroy the Discovery, and Lt. Stamets' tardigrade genes make him the only one who can retain his memory, he convinces Burnham to tell him a personal secret to use as a trust password. At the next reset, he walks up to her and blurts out "You've never been in love!" without any context. Her reaction immediately puts Stamets into damage control mode.
  • Star Trek: Picard:
    • The Titan is attempting to ascertain whether Captain Tuvok is a Changeling over a subspace communication. The voice result is inconclusive. Seven of Nine then references the game kal-toh, which she and Tuvok played often aboard Voyager. After Tuvok's response, she appears relieved. This, however, is a Double Subversion: One, because he is a Changeling, and two, because Seven's next sentence was another test, bringing up the Voyager episode "Infinite Regress"... which Changeling!Tuvok fails.
    • Later Played for Laughs when Picard and Geordi have to prove to each other who they are.
      Geordi: Six years ago, you brought a gift to my anniversary dinner on Rigel.
      Picard: A Chateau Picard Bordeaux, which you said was too dry because your taste in wine is pedestrian at best.
      Geordi: (to his daughter Alandra) Definitely Picard.
• Supernatural:
  • Sam and Dean have a series of passwords and routines established for if they get separated, captured or arrested. The phrase "Funky Town" means the brother who says it is being held at gunpoint. "Poughkeepsie" means drop everything and run. A note addressed to "Hilts" and signed "Steve McQueen (actor)" means the brother who sent it will create a distraction while the brother who received it makes an escape.
  • In "The End", Dean is sent to the future and proves his identity to Future Dean by telling a story that only he would know:
    Dean: Rhonda Hurley. We were, uh... 19. She made us try on her panties. They were pink. And satiny. And you know what? We kind of liked it.
  • When Dean travels back in time, he has to convince his mother, Mary, that he is her son sent from the future. He convinces her by telling her that she always sang "Hey Jude" to him as a kid because it was her favorite song.
• On The Terror: Infamy, the Nakayamas and the Ojedas set up one in "Come and Get Me" with the Spanish nursery rhyme "Los Pollitos" to try to keep Yuko Tanabe out so that she can't get Chesster and Luz's baby. When they sing "Los pollitos dicen pio, pio, pio, cuando tienen hambre..." the person at the other end of the door is supposed to finish with "Cuando tienen frio." Unfortunately, Yuko somehow overhears the password, possesses the priest Father Ysidro, and uses it to get in.
• The West Wing:
  • The Chinese Christian pastor seeking refugee status for him and his group knows who the four writers of the Gospel are when Bartlet asks him as the latter is trying to determine whether the group is genuine in their faith as opposed to just pretending to be in order to get into the United States, but he notes that for Christianity "faith is the true shibboleth". That phrasing is what convinces Bartlet that the stowaways are genuine and he decides to figure out a way to let them into the country despite the Chinese government's objections.
  • During the second-season arc revolving around President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis and the fact that he hid it, the word "Sagittarius" is used to denote a person who knows about it prior to its public uncovering.
• In one episode of Without a Trace, the episode's missing person is a preteen girl who's been kidnapped as part of a pedophile ring. At the episode's outset, while talking about her quirks, the girl's uncle tells Malone that his nickname for the child is "Chicken Little". Much later, this comes in handy when Malone, having determined where the girl's abductor is, poses as a pedophile customer and gets to talk to the girl, but he can't say anything too suspicious to her since they're both still in the antagonist's line of sight. What does he wind up saying to gain her trust?
  Malone: Chicken Little says hi. (the girl immediately looks hopeful)

Podcasts

• In the "Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars" episode of the Thrilling Adventure Hour, the first time Croach the Tracker sees Sparks Nevada after returning from the dead, Nevada needs more than just Croach's word that it's really him and demands something only the two of them would know about. To Nevada's dismay, Croach chooses to use the time Nevada massaged his egg sacks in the second episode.
• In the Red Panda Adventures episode "The World Next Door", Baboon McSmoothie needs to do this twice. The first time, to convince the Red Panda he's from an Alternate Timeline, he gives the Panda a message from his counterpart with nothing but the Red Panda's real name on it. That convinces him McSmoothie is telling the truth, but isn't enough to secure the Red Panda's help stealing a prototype device from a Nazi scientist that, while destined to become one of the series greatest villains, hasn't done anything yet. What convinces the Panda to help is a file created by his counterpart detailing the supervillain Death Trap that killed his Flying Squirrel.

Tabletop Games

• In Continuum, Spanners use a form of sign/countersign to identify other spanners. They ask what time it is. Levellers will respond with the time. Other spanners will respond by repeating the question back to the asker, word for word.

Video Games

• In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the trust password for identifying ally under EMP is "Star", to which the proper response is "Texas", as seen in Second Sun stage.
• In Escape from Monkey Island, Guybrush asks his future counterpart to guess what number he's thinking of. Since you "remember" what future-Guybrush said to past-Guybrush, you can answer him.
• In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Prince proves his story to the princess (events that never happened due to the events in the game) by telling her a word invented by her mother, "Kakolukia".
• In Betrayal at Krondor, James sends Gorath, a dark elf, to warn Prince Arutha of an attack, and tells him to use the phrase "There's a party at Mother's" to convince Arutha that the message is indeed from James, as it's a phrase they used years earlier in their adventures together and Something Only They Would Say.
• A non-verbal example in Geist: Since Raimi has the ability to Body Surf, he has to prove his identity to Bryson by reproducing their Secret Handshake.
• Near the ending of Planescape: Torment, the only way you can knock some sanity into the Paranoid Incarnation is to talk to him in the obscure language of Uyo, one of the things he used to lock away some journals of his. After all, if he killed everyone who ever knew the language, how could the new guy in the crystal be anything other than a more lucid aspect of himself? The change from "paranoid psychopath" to "scared puppy" is heartbreaking.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Early on in Final Fantasy VIII the Player Party is sent on a mission to aid an anti-government group called "The Forest Owls" and is given a Password to confirm their identity. Upon reaching the rendezvous point and saying the password to the group's representative (regardless of whether or not you gave the correct response), he takes you to meet the other members.
  • During one side quest in Final Fantasy XIII-2, Serah and Noel need to find six members of a military squad that have been split up. Since some of them are in completely different time periods, the commander tells Serah and Noel to use "Thunder", his call sign, as proof that the other men should follow his orders to cooperate with them.
  • Downplayed in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII when Lightning says the first half of their personal motto ("Keep your eyes front") and Hope fails to correctly finish the phrase ("I'll watch the rear") even after Lightning prompts him, so she stops trusting him. She doesn't know what's wrong with him (he's possessed), but it's something big for him to forget that.
• In the Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC, Cave Johnson realizes that it's very difficult to discern who is the original Cave, and who's from an Alternate Universe. He therefore announces that his trust password is "chariots", and only messages where he says that word come from the real him. Of course, he then discovers that there's an alternate him who just likes to say "chariots" randomly, so he changes the password to him saying it twice in a row: "chariots, chariots". You will never hear so many references to ancient Greek vehicles.
• In Full Throttle, at one point Ben is about to be painfully killed by a gang led by Maureen, who believes that Ben killed her father Malcolm. Of course, Ben's innocent, and to prove it, you have to call Maureen by her childhood nickname, "Diapered Dynamo", which Malcolm told you shortly before he died.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening has several for most child characters. Generally they prove their identity with a future version of a unique item, generally a wedding ring but in one case Falchion. Amusingly, one character points out the problem with the item passwords; it is possible that the person presenting it murdered the time-traveller and stole their mom's wedding ring.
• There's a way to use this in Millennia: Altered Destinies to get the most powerful weapon in the game. Occasionally, when you perform a temporal jump, you will end up in a green mist with a mirror of your ship in front of you. You can contact your other self, and he will tell you a number. The next time you're in the same mist, you can tell your other self the same number. He will then teleport a set of plans onto your ship that can be given to a sufficiently-advanced race to build.
• Mass Effect:
  • Quarians are issued one of these to give when returning to the migrant fleet. They are also issued another phrase that indicates they are returning under duress and their ship should be fired upon before it gets too close.
  • In the second game, during the first meeting with Tali, Shepard can mention the geth data that they gave her during the first game, wondering if it helped her complete her Pilgrimage. As Tali was the only other person who knew that Shepard had disobeyed orders by giving her a copy of classified intel, this proves that Shepard had indeed come Back from the Dead.
  • In the Citadel DLC for the third game, Shepard can prove to Traynor that it was their evil clone that just fired her and threw her off the Normandy, by describing the toothbrush that Traynor mentioned as wanting to buy during their first conversation. Alternatively, a Female Shepard in a romance with her can do this via a "Shut Up" Kiss.
  • One example from the third game had David Archer, the Tragic Villain from the Overlord DLC in the previous game, vouching for Shepard when the school he was sent to is under attack by Cerberus.
    David: The square root of 906.01 equals—
    Shepard: 30.1.
• Played for Laughs in Halo 3. There's an Easter Egg (guest-starring the cast of Red vs. Blue) where one Marine has to give another a password to prove that he isn't a Brute. Unfortunately, the marine has forgotten the password, and the other refuses to let him in without it, no matter how he argues.
• In Undertale, if the player loads the game immediately after receiving a pacifist judgement from Sans and receives it again, he will notice that you seem to have heard his speech before; to put you to the test, he gives you a Trust Password that he's been setting up just in case he ever needed to verify if someone's a time traveler. If you load again, The Child will tell Sans the password, "I'm a stupid doodoo butt," and he will, in turn, give you the true trust password that will verify, once and for all, that you're a time traveler. Load again and The Child will give Sans the second password, "I'm the legendary fartmaster," and he will, in turn, gives them the key to his room.
• In Dragonsphere a group of guards bar you from entering a land of shapeshifters, even though you are their king, out of concern that the "you" who ends up returning may in fact be a shapeshifter who took your place. This is resolved by giving them an item from your inventory (any item will do) so that they will know that the real "you" will ask for that item upon your return. Ironically, you actually are a shapeshifter all along, you just don't realise it at first.
• SOON: Dr. Fang decided on a "time travel password" as a kid just in case someone had to prove time travel was real.
  Atlas: A password? Why didn't you think of that?
• Fallout 4's Railroad faction has "Do you have a Geiger Counter?" with the countersign "Mine is in the shop".
• In one of Connor's endings of Detroit: Become Human, he's put in a situation where Hank must decide whether to shoot him or a non-Deviant version of him and asks the two what the name of his son is. However, a potential problem that can come up is that it is fully possible for the players to miss out on the options that leads to Connor learning the name of Hank's son, meaning that they either don't know the Trust Password or have to simply guess.
• In Shardlight, members of La Résistance identify each other and their collaborators with the phrase "I'd have/I've got the perfect life." It makes quite a bit of sense, in that it would be a very uncommon phrase in a Crapsack World set After the End.
• Love of Magic: When Kulbir arrives at the Crowley, he confirms Owyn's trustworthiness by asking, "Elanora's spark is...?" Owyn responds, "Golden," which confirms to Kulbir that he is the person he was sent to meet while confirming to Owyn that Kulbir is trustworthy.

Web Animation

• In Red vs. Blue: The Recollection, Agent Washington verifies to the Reds that he is from Command by knowing Sarge's ultimate secret codeword: it's "codeword".

Webcomics

• Bob and George pay homage to Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure this way when Time Travel becomes a regular occurrence in the comic; since Mega Man and Bass are legendarily stupid, it goes about the same way.
  • Used more intelligently in this strip. Future Alternate Bass believes in free will, and doesn't believe that Far Future Alternate Bass knows exactly what he's thinking because FFAB remembers the conversation from when he was FAB. So FAB picks a number and tells FFAB to guess. FFAB not only answers correctly, he points out that FAB was planning to cheat by switching to a different number, and guesses that one, too.
• In Home On The Strange, Tanner sets one of these up with Izzy, to the latter's bemusement.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • During their adventures in the Punyverse, Bun-Bun cons Lord Grater into believing he works for his boss, Zorgon Gola. Lord Grater responds, "if you know everything about me, what am I thinking about right now?" Bun-Bun responds that the information is classified, which instantly appeases him.
  • In "Oceans Unmoving", (major spoilers), it's inverted. Bun-Bun can't appear himself to his past self as himself, because he knows that if he were to see someone claiming to be himself from the future, he'd figure it was a trap and kill them, expecting that if it were really him he would have expected that.
• In Panthera, when Onca tries to tell Tigris that Ovid isn't the evil corporation they've been told it is, Tigris thinks Onca betrayed Panthera and attacks her. However, when Pardus shows up, she tells him that Leo told her Pardus dyes his fur. Pardus knows Leo wouldn't tell her that unless he had to to validate a message to the others.
• Double-subverted in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!. In the dragon Hibachi's first appearance, he claims to be a friend of Mrs. Primrose who'd been sent to pick up the box she had left with Bob. Bob is understandably suspicious, and demands the seemingly-useless Trust Password of her favorite color. Turns out it's such an obscure color (a specific discontinued shade of paint), and it has such an involved story attached to it, it really would be impossible for anyone who didn't know her to guess.
• In Homestuck, Jade implements a system of these, though it's less about trust and more about trying to keep her conversations relatively linear, since the Trolls tend to skip around a lot regarding time shenanigans. Subverted in one conversation with Karkat, who can't remember the password, but does remember that it's insulting. He rattles off a truly impressive self-loathing monologue, which convinces Jade anyway, because Karkat is the only person who hates himself enough to put that much effort into insulting himself.
• In Skullkickers, when Shorty and Baldy make a stop in a tavern while hunting a doppelganger, Baldy suggests establishing a trust password, so that they will know if the doppelganger is impersonating the other. Shorty suggests some passwords, but Baldy dismisses all of Shorty's suggestions and kills the false "Shorty" on the spot. As it happens, they'd already established such a password.
• In xkcd #1121 Cueball asks Megan for a server password over the phone. When she asks how she knows it's him he begins to excitedly suggest a proof-of-identity protocol. She stops him mid-sentence; that suggestion alone was enough to confirm his identity.
• Used oddly in True Magic. Nobles "salute" by making a plume of fire come from their hand. Since peasants can't do that, they're able to keep them out of places they're unwelcome.

Web Original

• Something Awful goons answer the question "Do you have stairs in your house?" with the countersign "I am protected."
• Worm has these as a major component of Master/Stranger protocols the Protectorate uses as a guard against parahumans who can mind-control and/or impersonate people. The most prominent example of this is after the protagonists capture and bodyjack Shadow Stalker in order to infiltrate the Wards. When Weld uses the standard password, they're able to make Shadow Stalker reply with the standard countersign indicating that she's uncompromised — but they are at a loss when Weld asks who it was Shadow Stalker recently got in trouble for harassing. The incorrect response turns an until-then-successful infiltration into a firefight.
• Kitboga is a scambaiter popular on Twitch and YouTube. A common tactic of certain scammers is to set up a password with the victim and then the victim isn't supposed to answer any calls unless the caller is able to give the password. For Kitboga, this is just another opportunity for more fun, making up ridiculous passwords like "I love the mailman" or hanging up if they are even slightly off with the password.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold:
  • In "The Criss-Cross Conspiracy!", Batman is trapped in Batwoman's body. Nightwing asks him to prove it by saying something only Batman would know.
    Batman: Your favorite color is blue, you used to sleep with a night light, and you're deathly afraid of monkeys.
    Nightwing: It's him.
  • When Batman is projecting himself astrally after being Buried Alive (It Makes Sense in Context), he possesses Speedy and starts telling Green Arrow about what's going on. Arrow initially thinks it's Speedy doing an impression, before Bats grabs him by the hem of his shirt and threatens him to his face.
    "It really is you, isn't it?"
• In Ben 10: Alien Force, Past Gwen demands Future Gwen say something only she would know. Future Gwen whispers something to her, prompting a disgusted reaction. We never find out what it was, even Dwayne MacDuffie refused to comment, saying it was "personal".
• In Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, when Manyfaces has tricked Dynomutt into believing that Blue Falcon is an impostor, the hero proves himself by showing his friend that he knows Dynomutt's "one ticklish spot".
• In an episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy, after Double D gathers up stuff on how to counter aliens, Ed asks him for the password, which Double D knows nothing about since no one mentioned anything about a password to him. Ed immediately attacks him thinking he's an alien, only since Ed made up the password by himself and assumed the others already knew the password cause he didn't need to tell them.
• In the Family Guy episode "Prick Up Your Ears", Stewie tries to catch the Tooth Fairy. He sets up a trap, which catches Brian.
  Brian: Stewie, what the hell? Get me down from here.
  Stewie: No, way, man! How do I know you're not the Tooth Fairy in disguise?
  Brian: Your middle name is Gilligan.
  Stewie: Not good enough!
  Brian: You think my girlfriend's a moron.
  Stewie: So does everyone!
  Brian: You have a picture of Chris Noth in your wallet.
  Stewie: Okay.
• In Justice League Unlimited, when Flash and Lex Luthor switch minds, Flash proves he's really himself again by starting to reveal Green Lantern's old nickname.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the two-parter "A Canterlot Wedding", Twilight and Cadance have a rhyme from way back when. When the false Cadance doesn't know it, Twilight smells a rat. When, due to Fake Cadance's manipulations, she nearly blasts the head off the real one, the Real Cadance does this to prove it's really her this time.
    • It proves useful in "The Times They Are A Changeling." The Crystal Empire is on guard against a changeling. They don't know if the visitors from Ponyville are really them, so Cadance initiates the rhyme and Twilight reciprocates almost immediately, calming the guards down.
  • In the sixth season finale, "To Where and Back Again", Starlight Glimmer and her team, venturing into a kingdom full of Changelings, use the phrase "klutzy draconequus" as a trust password. Discord isn't exactly pleased. However when the phony Discord doesn't say "draconequus" after Starlight says "klutzy," she, Trixie, and Thorax immediately know what's up.
• In the Sonic Boom episode "Hedgehog Day", Eggman asks Sonic and Tails what he can say in order to convince them quickly that the time loop exists. After time resets itself again:
  Tails: There's no such thing as a time—
  Eggman: Last night, you dreamed you were being chased by a giant sock puppet.
• In South Park, Cartman wants to be a Human Popsicle so that he won't have to wait for the Nintendo Wii to come out. He badly overshoots his goal and ends up in a Bad Future, where there's a war going on which prevents him from playing the Wii. He calls his past self to fix things and tries to convince him of his identity by explaining things only he would know, liking drinking Ovaltine and putting Clyde Frog in the closet before going to Butters and trying to freeze himself. But his past self merely thinks someone was spying on him and is not convinced.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • "Blood Sisters": The courier Sabine and Ezra are sent to meet will respond to the code phrase "It's a long way to Alderaan." Played for Laughs as we get a Failure Montage of Sabine and Ezra trying it on every passenger they can find (and getting some odd looks, as they're not very subtle about it) while completely overlooking the actual courier—an unassuming power droid, who only responds when Ezra mentions the password while sitting on him.
  • "An Inside Man" reveals that Fulcrum II has "By the light of Lothal's moons" as a code phrase.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)': Played for Laughs when Burne Thompson goes looking for information on the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, accidentally walks into a spy dead drop and ends up kidnapped and subjected to three hours of Tickle Torture when he doesn't know the rest of the code phrase.
  Burne: I'm looking for the giant turtles.
  Spy: Is the tablecloth red?
• In Young Justice (2010), Wally is initially the only member of the Team who knows Robin's Secret Identity. In one issue of the tie-in comic they battle Clayface and Robin is met by two Wallys; he asks them for his middle name. Unfortunately for him, both were Clayface.
  • A variant: in an issue given for Free Comic Book Day, Psycho Pirate is crushing Wally under the weight of his own insecurities. However, remembering that Robin trusted him enough to reveal his identity gave him the confidence boost that he needed to overcome it.

Real Life

• Trust Passwords are naturally commonly used in the military and to detect spies. A common way to accomplish this was with a shibboleth, a word whose pronunciation is unique enough that only certain speakers can say it correctly. It's originally from The Bible. It was also used commonly in World War II.
  • In the Pacific Theater, the word "lollapalooza", which abused the Japanese inability to pronounce the letter "L" to allow Americans to weed out Japanese soldiers.
  • Passwords on the expected invasion coast of Southern England might take a form like "Weymouth War Weapons Week", as Germans have trouble pronouncing the letter 'w'.
  • One World War II variation was used to Bluff the Impostor. The guard would state, "The land of the free", to which an American would reply, "And the home of the brave" — an easy reference to the national anthem. Then the guard would state "The terror of flight", and if the reply was "And the gloom of the grave", the guard knows it's really a German soldier — because only a spy trying too hard to pass as an American would know the third verse of the anthem.
  • American POWs in Vietnam communicated by tapping Morse code on their cell walls. One would initiate a conversation by tapping the familiar "Shave And A Haircut." The other person would finish with a "two bits" knock. If the respondent instead repeated "shave and a haircut", it meant he was a Vietnamese agent.
  • In the US military, revealing a currently used sign / countersign to the enemy or to anyone not cleared to know, is a capital offense.
  • According to tradition the phrase "schild en vriend" (Flemish for "shield and friend") was used during the Matins of Bruges (1302) to weed out and slaughter the members of the French garrison because the "sch" sound was hard to pronounce correctly for French speakers. (Some suggest it was actually meant to be " 's gilden vriend" ("friend of the guilds"- as in "Are you a friend of the guilds?") but there's little to no proof to support this.)
  • Secret agents are typically given several security checks they can insert into a message to verify that it's real. That said, they don't always work; a British agent captured by the Germans during World War II tried this, but his bosses didn't pay attention, and it led to Das Englandspiel (a.k.a. Operation North Pole) and the capture and execution of fifty Allied agents. What's scarier is the possibility that the bosses did get the message but considered their cover more valuable than the agent's life.
  • Rafael Trujillo's genocide of the Haitian population in the Dominican Republic has gone down in history as the "parsley massacre": the Spanish word for parsley ("perejil") was used as a shibboleth to identify the creole-speaking Haitians, from the Spansish-speaking Black Dominicans. However, historians argued that the killings were indiscriminate.
  • "Palianytsia" (a type of bread typical of Ukraine) has become the shibboleth for civilians to identify covert Russian operatives during Putin's Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Although Russian and Ukrainian languages have some similarities, Russians struggle to pronounce this word correctly.
  • In modern military operations, ground troops will use code words to describe a situation to an extraction unit (usually a helicopter) rather than describing it outright; this allows them to call off an extraction if they're captured without tipping anyone off.
• According to tradition, Joan of Arc convinced the Dauphin that she had really been divinely inspired to help him claim the French throne by whispering a secret into his ear. That secret ranges from a prayer the Dauphin had said in private (which Joan could learn only from God Himself), to God wanting the Dauphin to be king, to describing an embarrassing birthmark on his backside.
• Magician Harry Houdini had spent much of his later career debunking mediums and others who claimed to speak "from beyond the grave". He debunked several mediums who tried to contact his mother and made the mistake of having her address him as "Harry" (which was his stage name, when she would use his real name, Erik) or speaking in English (when she was more confident in Hungarian or Yiddish). (Notably, one of these incidents was what ended his friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle, a fervent spiritualist.) Houdini also arranged a number of code phrases (one being a song called "Rosabelle") with his wife Bess which he promised to use if he died before her and tried to contact her after death. He died in 1926, well before Bess, and no one was ever able to deliver a message she was satisfied was genuine.
• Careful parents often arrange these with their children, so that the children can verify that anyone who claims to be sent by mom and dad actually was. PSAs also recommend this for if the family gets separated. This is the basis for a few fictional portrayals where the hero tries to save a kid in danger but needs the password from the parents.
• Some birds teach these to their unhatched chicks, which then use the password in their begging calls. If the parents return to their nest and do not hear the password, they'll know that the nest has likely been taken over by brood parasites and will abandon the nest.
• And in general, more people than you'd think have trust passwords just because they're Genre Savvy, Crazy-Prepared, or extremely nerdy. One old website was touted as a "time traveler's support network" which designated secret meeting places and times in various cities, where a "volunteer" would help anyone who used the correct password. The website is long since dead (not that this should be any problem for a time traveler anyway).
  • Some people even have passphrases for themselves in the off-chance that they somehow end up talking to their future selves.
• Similar to the above example with children, news outlets have been recommending this in relation to the "grandparent scam," a scam in which someone calls up and pretends to be a family member and needs money. Recommended tips to avoid becoming a victim include "If you're suspicious, ask a question only a family member would know."
• The Mexican national anthem sometimes sees use as a means of proving people's identity, i.e. whether or not they are "true Mexicans". Japanese police officers once used it to identify four burglars they had just arrested. Needless to say, they turned out to be Colombians who had used forged Mexican passports, as discovered after they proved unable to sing it.
• Some websites that offer files for download (particularly open source projects and Linux distributions) publish cryptographic hashes of the download files in algorithms such as MD5, SHA or SHA2. A user can compute the hash on a downloaded file and compare it to the one on the website to verify a file's integrity.
  • For the most part, hashes are used more often to detect accidental data corruption than tampering, because anyone capable of replacing the file on the server with a compromised version could also update the hashes to match the fake.
• More informally, you can often tell an "outsider" by their pronunciation of certain words. For example, an Italian-American will know you're not a paisan if you use the "correct" pronunciations of prosciutto, capocollo, and sopressata instead of saying "bra-ZHOOT," "gabba-GOOL," and "super-SAHD."
• During various rebellions, hymns and songs with biblical imagery have been used in this way. The biblical imagery is easy to decode... if you know that it's a code: so this is frequently used as a way to get sensitive information to a large number of people quickly. Singing hymns is almost never an activity that arouses suspicion, so it's easy to get away with. Even groups generally opposed to religion have used this technique: such as socialists, particularly when operating in more heavily religious areas where singing secular songs sometimes IS considered suspicious.
• Citizenship fraud is very rampant in the Philippines (mostly by Chinese) that officials resorted to asking trivia questions about Filipino celebrities to weed out fradulent applicants.

---