Unperson / Comic Books

• Any character or event from a joint venture comic book crossover would fall into this. If, for example, Superman meets Spider-Man in a crossover event by DC and Marvel, they should better try all the things they may want to do together in the comic book of the crossover, and close all the plot directions that they may open. Once it is done, goodbye, Superman will never appear or be remembered in the Amazing Spider-Man comic book, and Spider-Man will never appear in Action Comics either.
• During the brief period of time Spider-Man's enemy the Vulture was a young man due to use of stolen technology, he was determined to do this to himself, and delete any evidence that his Adrian Toomes identity existed. (The experience had caused Toomes to go off the deep end in the process.) Unfortunately, this plan included murdering every person who knew about it (Spider-Man included). He offered to help fellow criminal the Owl (who was having quite an identity crisis at the time and could have benefited from such) do the same, but the Owl eventually decided against it and broke off their partnership.
• In Brightest Day, Max Lord did this to himself with his Psychic Powers. Anybody sees a photo of him? They see someone else. They are asked about anything from his past? Whatever it was, they don't remember him. When confronted with what the man did? They blame someone else. In Justice League: Generation Lost, the reformed JLI has been shoved into confrontations with the biggest guns of the DCU as a direct result of this, and they still couldn't prove anything... until Batman came back, and he wasn't around at the moment of the mindwipe... Amusingly, about halfway through his master plan, Wonder Woman, who Max wanted revenge on, was herself Un-personed in an unrelated plotline, and only Max and those he avoided mindwhipping^note Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, and Captain Atom could remember she ever existed. He noted the irony of this.
• Darth Vader : In The Cry of Shadows, it is mentioned that the civilian leaders of the Rebel city include poet Phootla Veer and lawyer Lina Starcourt, both of whom had their once-renowned accomplishments censored and erased from history by the Empire, with the memoirs the narrator is considering writing being one of the few things which might preserve knowledge of them.
• In a weirdly Meta Fictional case, the DCU actually has a realm of this, with Comic-Book Limbo, where characters go when nobody remembers them and they're not written about in stories anymore. Grant Morrison introduced this as an actual place in their Animal Man run, and later revisited it during Final Crisis in the Superman Beyond tie-in.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen universe makes use of this trope extensively, outright stating that an incredible number of "fictional characters" are in fact Unpersons, including Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, and Fu Manchu. The third book increases their ranks a great deal, going so far as to imply Lovecraftian horrors are Unpersons.
  • Lovecraftian Horrors were involved in the supplementary material for volume 1.
• Batman becomes (or always was?) this in Batman: Year 100 as James Gordon III tries to find any information about him. Arkham Asylum and the Bat's vaudevillians all exist and are widely-known... but Lieutenant Gordon can only find 3 witness reports from wildly different periods of a strange cloaked figure who was once famous enough to attend charity functions. He later burns all the evidence after reading his grandfather's secret laptop, proving the Gordons are ALWAYS hardcore about protecting Bruce Wayne... whatever he is after over a century of crime fighting.
• A Daredevil villain called the Mauler was an accountant who wanted revenge on the CEO who'd kept him from receiving his pension due to an accidental erasure of his work record. He tracked the guy down in a suit of Powered Armor and, instead of killing him as Daredevil had expected, destroyed all proof of his legal identity. Then corporate security shot him down.
• A real-world cross-media example originating in comics: Live-action and animated adaptations of Alan Moore's comic book work routinely include no credit for him, at his insistence. He regards adaptations with horror. He only made such an insistence because Hollywood burned him over an earlier adaptation deal.
• In The Sandman story "August", Caesar Augustus calmly tells Lycius that, if he gave the order, Lycius would disappear sometime during the night, and the next day, no one would dare to mention that he even existed in the first place.
• In early issues of X-Factor, Mr. Sinister did this to Cyclops' estranged wife Madelyne Pryor — records were altered, people who knew her disappeared, etc. It was never clear exactly why he bothered, since Cyclops knew perfectly well that she'd existed, and the whole thing was infinitely more suspicious than a faked death would have been.
  • Taken to an absurd extreme by Marvel's editorial in a Meta-action of Life Imitates Art, in that for nearly six years after doing Character Derailment and Murder the Hypotenuse on Pryor in 1989, it was absolutely forbidden to have her name mentioned anywhere in the X-books, and scripting Cyclops and all other X-Men behaving as if Pryor never, ever existed. Especially ridiculous about that was Marvel producing numerous reprint books which include all her earlier appearances, but treating Marvel's readers as being Viewers Are Morons.
• X-Men: Legacy and X-Force (2013) introduced a mutant called ForgetMeNot, whose power basically made him this. His power alters people's visual perception of him, making him difficult to shoot at or even notice, and the second they look away from him they immediately forget he ever existed. He was present for the fight against the Brood, the relocation to Utopia, the fight during the Age of X, and memorializing Professor X, but everyone forgot he was there. Professor X was the only person who remembered him, but after he died he tried to have Omega take away his powers but was talked out of it.
• Rom the Spaceknight, a toy by the Parker Brothers, was promoted by giving a licence to Marvel Comics to publish a comic book about him. It was published from 1979 to 1986, and interacted with the other characters of the Marvel Universe. But, as Marvel does not have the license anymore, Rom is now completely off-limits. He is not around the Marvel universe, but he isn't either mentioned in flashbacks, found in alternate universes, or other similar tricks. Rom simply does not exist. Consider for example Avengers 221◊ (Rom is in the first column, second row), and the parody of that cover made for Secret Invasion, in New Avengers 42◊ (Rom was replaced with Jocasta)
• This was done hilariously in Civil War towards Howard the Duck. When he attempts to register for the Superhuman Registration Act, he's told that he's such a legal quagmire (which is true in real life; long story) that the government's decided to just pretend he doesn't exist. Howard's overjoyed at this, mostly because he doesn't need to pay taxes anymore.
• In Secret Wars (2015) a number of characters suffer this throughout the various titles:
  • In Spider-Verse, the Spiders (Spider-Gwen, Spider-Ham, Spider-UK, Spider Man India and Spider-Man Noir) suffer this, Gwen especially according to local history, she's supposed to be dead.
  • None of the domains have a counterpart of Reed Richards. Fitting since the god of Battleworld is Doctor Doom, who notes that he spent years searching Battleworld for a version of Richards to no avail.
  • And apparently, despite existing in most domains, there are no files or official documents of Jane Foster to the point of nobody being able to identify her when a serial killer begins to hunt her versions down.
• The Retroactive Cannon (or "Ret-Can") from Dan Slott's She-Hulk is a powerful weapon from the Time Variance Authority's arsenal that bombards an individual with anti-temporal rays, unraveling them backwards through time and erasing them from all reality.
• This is the horrific fate of The Gibborim's sacrifices in Runaways. After the beast devours a person's soul, their being is slowly broken down such that all memory and proof of their existence is wiped from reality.
• The underground comic "Dopin' Dan" has a strip where the title Army private is being run through a typical bureaucratic procedure, but the girl at the desk can't find his papers. After a lengthy search she concludes "I guess you don't exist" and he happily goes along with it...but his sergeant doesn't, ordering him out of bed the next day.
• In Nightmares & Fairy Tales, the Beauty and the Beast chapter has Beauty's father giving her to the Beast to save himself. He then tells her younger sister that Beauty was ungrateful and ran away from and thus should be forgotten. When the sister later expresses concern for Beauty's well-being and begs her father to forgive Beauty and try to find her, he hits her for not listening to him.
• One of the past Witchblade bearers in Switch, Zala, had her name erased from history out of fear that other bearers would imitate her tyrannical example.
• During Secret Wars II, the Beyonder does this to the New Mutants, the only connection still to the team is a bond Kitty Pryde had to Magik.
• The Sentry's origin relies on his un-person-ness being dropped. His nemesis, with the help of a few others, erased any records, knowledge or memory of the Sentry from the world, including the minds of his closest friend Reed Richards and other fellow heroes whom he had teamed up with and helped in various instrumental ways.
• In Star Wars: Republic, it's established that after The Empire took over they erased the accomplishments of the Jedi generals in the Clone Wars and reattributed them to their new officers. When an Imperial captain questions Sidious' decision and his allegations of the supposed attempt on his life, Vader proceeds to Force choke him to death in front of everyone to send the message that The Emperor's word was absolute.
• One issue of Mickey Mouse Detective have Mickey take on a case of a missing husband. The only proof of his existence is the words of his wife, as all records of him were erased and his apartment (where Hayden lived with his wife) occupied by an elderly woman who claimed that she always lived there. Turned out that Hayden had a very complicated life, juggling jobs to make ends meet and during his work accidentally broke vial that contained a strain of very deadly desease. Seeking help he visits the doctor who happened to be a good friend of mayor and mayor fearing the mass hysteria/panic and possible outbreak made him this.
• Wonder Woman supervillain the First-Born was subjected to this in his backstory. After being exiled from Mount Olympus shortly after his birth, he tried to take revenge on his parents for abandoning him. He founded an barbaric kingdom from the peoples he conquered and rose an massive army to lay siege to Olympus itself only for the gods to destroy it with a tidal wave. Zeus imprisoned his son beneath the earth and practically erased all remnants of his existence, including his kingdom. Until the First-Born re-emerged 7,000 years later, only four people knew his existence: his parents Zeus and Hera, and his uncles Poseidon (who sent the tidal wave that destroyed his army) and Hades (who took the souls of his warriors to his realm).
• The Ultimates: The Chitauri planned to do this with the soldiers that died in Micronesia. As they are black op soldiers, nobody will even know about the explosion.
• It happens in the 2020 Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld series. By the time Amy comes back to Gemworld from her adventures with Young Justice, this fate has somehow befallen her entire House.
• X-Men Red (2022) reveals this is the Shi'ar policy toward Vulcan and his reign. Easy enough when the guy was presumed dead, far harder when he's alive and screaming in peoples' faces.
  • The Fisher King unpersoned himself by having a mutant named Azazoth psychically amputate his name and history, allowing him to work against his enemies in secret.
• Spider-Man (2022): The finale of the End of the Spider-Verse storyline introduces Bailey Briggs a.k.a. Spider-Boy, who was erased from history along with many other Spider-Totems, but for some reason is still not remembered by anyone or recorded anywhere even once he's restored to existence.

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