Basic Trope: A supernatural, artificial, or otherwise not completely normal character is able to seamlessly integrate into society despite lacking a birth certificate, official citizenship, or other documents and records vital for modern living.
- Straight: Bob, a vampire who's been alive for close to three centuries, is able to buy a house in Tropetown despite the fact that he has no bank records or credit history.
- Exaggerated: Bob, a vampire who's been alive for close to three centuries, is able to acquire a top-secret security clearance despite the fact that the government has literally no record of him.
- Downplayed:
- Bob has a driver's license, but no real credit history, which makes getting a bank loan a bit tricky.
- Bob officially claims to be The Stateless after the collapse of Troperia and while his origin is accepted it is still a laborious and slow or expensive process to become a citizen of someplace else.
- Bob's identity looks utterly spotless but a background check by a private investigator or agency would find that nobody remembers him, there are no yearbook pictures or even his name with a placeholder image in old yearbooks.
- Justified:
- Bob uses magic to forge identity documents.
- Bob has friends in the relevant departments who can manipulate records.
- Bob's cover story gives him a plausible excuse for not having the appropriate documents.
- Bob (or his friends) engineered the holes in his cover story to reek of Witness Protection.
- Bob's mortal Secret Keepers (or newly turned immortal friends) are able to take care of all of his needs, making it unnecessary for him to have an official identity.
- Inverted:
- Bob, an ordinary human, has trouble dealing with the human bureaucracy despite the fact that all of his records are in order.
- Bob is exposed as a vampire due to record keeping being good enough that people grow suspicious of his lack of aging.
- Bob, an ordinary human ends up cursed to suffer issues with documentation and integration into society, no matter how good or true his records are nobody will believe them.
- Two hundred years after After the End having any old records match you exposes you as either supernatural or a relic of Lost Technology which are synonymous as far as they are concerned. And not always in a good way.
- Subverted: Bob sets up an identity - and it gets spotted as a fake quickly and presumed a spy or criminal.
- Double Subverted: Bob often shows up with his real date of birth from old documents entered into computer systems. But everyone thinks it is a glitch or data entry mistake.
- Parodied: Bob is hunted by a group of robed figures with cross painted armor and fully automatic stake launchers. Knight Templars determined to put an end to his unnatural existence? No, they're the IRS and it turns out they want centuries of back taxes with compound interest and penalties - even though that would amount to more than all of the world's wealth.
- Zig Zagged: Bob has been attempting to My Grandson, Myself for several generations to duck suspicion. However the fact said 'grandson' was never born causes it to fall apart. He later flees, adopts a new identity and doesn't have any problems with it. Alice does the same thing but adopts a child who looks similar to her and kills them repeatedly once they get to an age she can pass as. Later her monstrous conduct gets exposed. She tries to adopt another identity like Charlie but it always fails and when it does she is recognized as an infamous serial killer of children. Meanwhile Charlie the angel always has issues with bureaucracy even when all documentation is miraculously added. This is later explained to be because angels are different and it can be felt. They are fundamentally seen as strangers and foreigners. Charlie finally learns from this however and is able to pass himself as a member of a foreign country and is accepted as legitimate without presenting any documentation.
- Averted:
- Bob is never shown attempting to integrate into society.
- There are no supernatural or artificial characters in the work.
- The work is set before records were kept.
- The existence of vampires, immortals, and/or other supernatural beings are common knowledge in this setting — which, naturally, results in an alternative legal system that renders this trope moot.
- Enforced: Bob originally had an arc where he used his vampire powers to do some very difficult infiltration to add himself into records.
- Lampshaded: "I didn't know vampires could buy houses. How do they work around their lack of records?"
- Invoked: Alice offers this to Friendly Neighborhood Vampires as part of a benefits package in exchange for favors.
- Exploited: Alice creates a new golem Charlie as a spy knowing that he would go unquestioned unlike a foreigner.
- Defied:
- Bob is shown working around it with a Jedi Mind Trick.
- When people realize that Bob's a vampire, the tax collectors promptly come to his doorstep demanding that he pays all of his taxes.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played For Laughs: An obvious alien shows up and attempts to do many things that normally require identification. Everyone just goes along with it, stunned by the sheer absurdity.
- Played For Horror: Monsters are able to blend in seamlessly, anybody could be one and documentation is no defense.
I don't need to show you my non-existent papers to go back to Undead Tax Exemption.
