History Main / HidingYourHeritage

** In Volume 11, [[spoiler:Arthur and the resurrected Sylvie return from the Hearth accompanied by the titan Asura Wren and the Djinn/phoenix hybrid Chul. In the two months Arthur spent in the aether realm trying to resurrect Sylvie, Kezess sent down his forces to occupy Dicathen under the pretext of protection against the Vritra, which forces the latter two to hide their identities. Wren is a fugitive from Epheotus due to being an associate of the DefectorFromDecadence Aldir. Chul on the other hand would have a target placed on his back by Kezess, as the Hearth from which he hails from was founded by Mordain, a PersonNonGrata among the Asuras for opposing Kezess for orchestrating the genocide of the Djinn]].

** The reason King wears a mask and outfit that completely hide his head and skin is to hide the fact that he's a [[spoiler:[[UltimateLifeform Lunarian]]]], which are highly sought after by the World Government to the point that a large sum of money is offered for any hints as to their whereabouts. Considering that the last time the World Government got their hands on him [[spoiler:he was used as a test subject in Punk Hazard, [[TheyWouldCutYouUp where he was subjected to rather painful experiments]]]], he's completely justified.

* ''Series/{{Bones}}'': Arastoo Vaziri is arguably a subversion. A devout Iranian Muslim, he never tries to hide these aspects, but rather speaks with an artificial and exaggerated accent to emphasize them. When it eventually slips that he has no accent at all and the charade is given up, he admits that he played up the stereotype to minimize mockery.

* ''Anime/CodeGeass'' : Kallen Kozuki is half-Japanese and half-Britannian. She passes as Britannian amongst Britannians (and goes by "Kallen Stadtfeld"), but prefers to be seen as Japanese.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Maus}}'', The mice (Jews) [[AssInALionSkin wear pig masks]] to pass among the general population of pigs (Poles). As the story is non-fiction, it's understood that the Jews didn't actually do this, but is just the comic's way of depicting their attempts to blend in. Played with in Anja's case, whose pig mask disguise doesn't hold up as well as her husband Vladek's because of her more 'Jewish' characteristics, which in this case is depicted as a relatively longer mouse tail.

* ''Series/Watchmen2019'': As [[spoiler: Hooded Justice]] Will pretended to be white by putting makeup on what little skin showed beneath his mask, due to the rampant racism of the time.

** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses''

* Kallen Kozuki from ''Anime/CodeGeass'' is half-Japanese and half-Britannian. She passes as Britannian amongst Britannians (and goes by "Kallen Stadtfeld"), but prefers to be seen as Japanese.

* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'': Due to the persecution that the Ishvalans face, Scar, on a journey of vengeance to kill as many State Alchemists in the country of Amestris following their participation in the Ishvalan war of extermination, hides his heritage by way of wearing sunglasses to avoid revealing the distinctive red irises that Ishvalans have.
* ''Manga/SoulEater'': Averted in one set of episodes. Black Star and Tsubaki on assignment go to a village to track down and detain a weapon. However, the duo encounter hostility due to the former's relation to the murderous, avaricious, and soul-stealing Star Clan (of which Black Star was the only one spared by Lord Death due to being only an infant and thus not having taken part in those afflictions committed by his family). Rather than keeping a low profile and keeping any part of his heritage a secret, Black Star, given his arrogant nature, proudly proclaimed who he was and made their mission all the bit more difficult.
* Hybrids in ''Manga/{{Beastars}}'' that can convincingly pass for a purebreed species generally try to do so to avoid HalfBreedDiscrimination.

* In ''ComicBook/AnyasGhost'', Anya hides the fact she is Russian by saying that her last name is "Brown" instead of "Borzakovskaya". She eventually decides to own up to it.

* In the ''Fullmetal Alchemist'' fanfic ''Fanfic/SonOfTheDesert'', Edward and Alphonse are half-Ishvalan through their mother. They don't look Ishvalan, so people don't know this unless [[YouKnowImBlackRight they mention it]].

* In the ''Avatar the Last Airbender'' oneshot ''Fanfic/OnlyTrulyDead'', June, Ty Lee, the sand-benders, and the Yu-Yan Archers are all descended from Air Nomads who survived the Fire Nation genocide. They all either hide their heritage or don't know of it, leaving Aang to believe he is the LastOfHisKind.

* Solon in ''Fanfic/MyDeepestDarkestSecret'' [[HidingYourHeritage has to keep his werewolf half a secret]] from his pure vampire brothers and from the rest of the world, for [[BeyondTheImpossible there's no such thing as a hybrid between a vampire and a werewolf]]. [[spoiler: Fittingly enough, his brothers [[DisappointingHeritageReveal weren't too happy]] to discover his werewolf heritage and he gets targeted and kidnapped by hunters later in the story]].

* Elia Kazan attempted this in the 1949 film ''Pinky''. He tried the reverse of this in the Oscar-winning film ''Film/GentlemansAgreement''.
* ''Film/TheHindenburg1975:'' Breslau's grandmother was Jewish, but he hides this from his wife and children (as well as the Nazis) and claims to have no relatives in Germany.

* Horace in ''Film/CSATheConfederateStatesOfAmerica'' accuses John Ambrose Fauntroy of having black ancestry, which would ruin his chances at the Confederate presidency. Most damning was the phrase "he got the jungle blood, and he know it too!" -- hinting that Fauntroy knew he was part black and hid it. [[spoiler: It's not made clear if Horace was telling the truth or not, but Fauntroy killed himself after losing the election.]]
* Jefferson from the 1920 film ''Film/TheSymbolOfTheUnconquered'' is half-black and half-white. He tries to pass as white and it usually works. His one PassFail occurred because his (black) mother showed up at the wrong time.

* When the titular character of ''Literature/{{Sarny}}'' meets Miss Laura, she describes her as the "prettiest white woman I ever saw". Miss Laura takes in Sarny and her friend Lucy. She lets them work for her during the final portion of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. Not soon afterwards Sarny finds out that Miss Laura is what used to be called an "octoroon" (people who are 1/8 black), and that she hides her curly hair underneath a head scarf. Sarny is amazed that a black woman could be as rich and high class as Miss Laura.

* In Edith Hahn Beer's autobiography ''The Nazi Officer's Wife'' she tells the story of how she was able to pass as an Aryan when a friend of hers would pretend to have lost her ID and leave her documents to her. The plan goes a little too well as the eponymous Nazi officer started courting her and proposing marriage... even after finding out that she's Jewish.

* In ''The Freedom Maze'' by Delia Sherman, a girl who counts as white in 1960 goes back in time to 1860, where because of her suntan, curly hair, and resemblance to her plantation-owning ancestors she is classified as black and assumed to be the offspring of a wayward son of the family and one of his slaves, making her a slave herself. After she returns to her own time, she is assumed to have run away and an advertisement is issued. In the description of her, it says, "Could pass for white." Researching her family history, she learns that [[spoiler:after the Civil War, the aforementioned wayward son inherited the plantation and passed off his former-slave wife as a white woman from France so as their descendant, the protagonist really does have a few black genes]].
* The entire point of James Weldon Johnson's ''Literature/TheAutobiographyOfAnExColoredMan''. The nameless protagonist is a very light-skinned "octaroon" (or less) in the late 19th-early 20th century, who is nonetheless raised as black (albeit a very sheltered kind of black, only mingling with the black upper crust and with an unusually large number of white people in his social circle (easier to believe in New England). A gifted pianist, he spends his young adulthood in that field, eventually learning ragtime music and touring Europe with a rich white man. However, he [[spoiler: eventually quits ragtime after seeing a lynching, decides to pass as white, and becomes a businessman and marries a white woman, who does not realize his heritage]]. The book is based in part on Johnson's life (he could pass if he grew his facial hair right), but also on the lives of others Johnson knew.
* This is part of the backstory of the Fannie Flagg novel ''Welcome To the World, Baby Girl!'' The [[spoiler:(blonde, blue-eyed) protagonist's]] mother turned out to be of mixed race, the daughter of a German woman and a very light-skinned African American man who had moved to Europe to escape from the racial discrimination of the United States but had been forced to move back with the rise of Hitler. She could, physically, pass for white without trying, but had spent her adult life in terror of being "outed" by someone who knew about her background which was the reason for [[spoiler: her secretive and evasive behavior during the protagonist's childhood]].
* Gustave de Beaumont's novel "''Marie; ou, L'Esclavage aux Etats-Unis''" ("Marie, or Slavery in the United States"), published in 1835, is the first known novel featuring Black-White racial passing.
-->'''Narrator:''' Public opinion, ordinarily so indulgent to fortune-seekers who conceal their names and previous lives, is pitiless in its search for proofs of African descent.... There is but one crime, of which the guilty bear everywhere the penalty and the infamy; it is that of belonging to a family reputed to be of color. Though the color may be effaced, the stigma remains.

* In ''The Human Stain'' by Creator/PhilipRoth, the elderly professor Coleman Silk is a pale-skinned black man who spent his entire adult life posing as Jewish in order to avoid institutional racism in the 1950s. He goes so far as to cut his family out of his life entirely, claiming that they had died. Ironically, he's forced into retirement after being accused of racism by two black students, but he maintains the pretense even then.
* [[BigBad Lord Voldemort]] from ''Literature/HarryPotter'' covers up his half-{{Muggle|s}} ancestry so he can use [[FantasticCasteSystem pureblood supremacism]] to rally his followers, called Death Eaters. At least some of them may know his parentage since the ritual that resurrects him requires bone from his father's grave in a Muggle cemetery. Furthermore, some older Death Eaters who went to WizardingSchool with Voldemort may remember that his original surname didn't come from any [[BlueBlood pureblood families]]. But the only Death Eater to acknowledge this is [[spoiler: Barty Crouch Junior]], who sympathises with Voldemort because they "both had disappointing fathers".
* ''Jacob's Rescue'': In this account set in Poland during the Holocaust, Jacob stays with a family named the Roslans in order to avoid capture by the Nazis. In addition, he is joined by his brothers Sholom and David, and he also has the aid of his uncle in hiding him from the Nazis. Jacob's uncle and David are able to more easily pass as non-Jewish (in David's case because he has straight, blond hair), of which brings Jacob some envy towards David as the latter can go about more freely with less concern of being captured and taken away.
* In ''The Roman Hat Mystery'' by Creator/ElleryQueen, a blackmailer has been going after several of the novel's characters. One of them was being threatened with this trope; the character in question had a black ancestor (but appeared Caucasian).

* ''Literature/ShatterTheSky'': Maren hides anything which would show she's of Verran heritage, putting on Zefedi clothing and going by their customs to infiltrate a Zefedi fortress. As her father is Zefedi, with Maren's looks akin to his, she passes physically quite well. Her name is also Zefedi, after his mother.

** "Hero" has a demon-blooded youth sneer to Doyle that Doyle's life must have been a cakewalk compared to his own, as Doyle, while also part-demon, is "passing" (i.e., looks human, unlike the boy).
** "Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been" involves a half-black woman who was fired from her job at a bank in the '50s when it was learned she had been passing as white.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In the episode "The Drumhead" Simon Tarses is one-quarter Romulan, but claimed to be one-quarter Vulcan to avoid prejudice.

* Inverted in ''Videogame/{{Arcanum}}'' by Gar, a human who, by a freak accident of birth, has the appearance of a full-blooded orc. He keeps his human heritage secret because his own existence brings shame in his family (orcs being frequent victims of FantasticRacism) and because the freakshow act he performs in needs the customers to believe he's an orc in order to be a success.

* In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemPathOfRadiance'' and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'', Branded are HalfHumanHybrids of Beorc and Laguz, and are treated with FantasticRacism by ''both'', so most have to hide it. Some pass themselves off as mages who've made contracts with spirits, another act that leaves skin markings. This rarely works, as Laguz' SuperSenses can detect them, and Beorc will notice how slowly they age after enough time in their company.
* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses''
** [[spoiler: Claude von Riegan]] is half Almyran, but due to cultural and racial prejudice he has to hide it especially since [[spoiler: he is the future head of one of the three houses of Fodlan]]. He only opens up about his racial identity to Byleth, Petra, Balthus, and his fellow Almyran Cyril, and even then he still hides the fact [[spoiler: that he is not just Almyran but also Almyran royalty]].
** Seteth and Flayn [[spoiler: are part of a dragon-like race called the Nabataeans]], but hide this due to certain villainous groups [[spoiler: namely, "those who slither in the dark"]] seeking their blood for its magical properties. To keep up the ruse, [[spoiler: Seteth pretends to be Flayn's older brother, when he's actually her father.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': In "Family Goy", Lois discovers that her mother hid the fact that she was Jewish so Carter could get into country clubs. She found out when Dr. Hartman went through her family's medical history and mentioned that her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.

* One episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' has a black guy who spent his whole adult life passing for white. He's only found out after his second wife was killed when they considered taking back their darker-skinned baby they had given up for adoption. [[spoiler: His first wife killed the second in order to maintain the illusion of an all-white family for ''her son'', who was attending a very upper-class-white school with subtle social discrimination against non-whites. Or, so she said, until it was revealed that she'd never wanted to take custody of their son in the divorce, had to be bribed to do it, and she was really just a big ol' racist.]]
* One ''Series/BlueBloods'' episode has Erin trying to get an apparently light-skinned black rapper to testify against an associate in a murder. His white parents turn up during TheTeaser; his skin color is implied to be from cosmetics, e.g. spray-on tan. He says he identifies more with working-class inner-city blacks despite being a middle-class white guy from suburbia.
* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "The Drumhead" Simon Tarses is one-quarter Romulan, but claimed to be one-quarter Vulcan to avoid prejudice.
* One case of ''Series/CasoCerrado'' involved a woman pressing charges against her husband because he refused to have biological children with her. She was black and he was mixed-race, albeit white-passing. His grandmother was black but began to pass as white and married a white man. She was dying and wouldn't allow her grandchildren any inheritance if they had children with black or brown women.

* ''Series/TheGeorgeLopezShow'' had a variant: George's biological sister (who's Hispanic) was [[ObliviousAdoption adopted by an Italian family]] and thus grew up unintentionally passing until she discovered her biological family.
* Laura Montez from ''Series/{{Veep}}'''s maiden name is the very British "Cunningham" and she was born in the very white state of Connecticut before moving to another very white state, Ohio as a child. After college, she married a man who was born in Mexico, took his surname, and moved to the majority Latino state of New Mexico. In order to be the TokenMinority, she lets people assume she's a white-passing Latina. She often says her first name "Low-rah" like you would in Spanish rather than "Lore-a" like you would in English.
* Jacqueline from ''Series/UnbreakableKimmySchmidt'' is Native American (Lakota specifically), but uses hair dye and make-up to look white. She treated her heritage as a point of shame but comes to embrace it more after divorcing her cheating husband.

* ''Series/MixedIsh'': Johan's done this at his school, it turns out, saying he's Mexican after other students thought he was. Bo and his parents are not happy with this, but they understand as he's tired of explaining he's mixed race, plus had been called a racial slur over it.
* ''Series/{{Queen}}'' attempts this several times, honestly feeling that it will make things easier for her in the post Civil War South. Unfortunately, she blurts out that she's really black to her white fiancé, after a friend of hers warns her that's she's playing a dangerous game in deceiving him. Indeed, he's so enraged that he beats and rapes her.

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': When Aang and friends are moving undercover through the Fire Nation in Book 3, Aang wears a bandana to hide the Air Nomad arrow tattoo on his forehead. While at first reluctant to do so ("I'm not going out if I can't wear my arrow proudly."), he soon realizes the necessity for discretion, particularly since Princess Azula was proclaimed to have killed him.

* Miss Martian is a White Martian in ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'', just like in the comics, however, her reason for hiding it is different. It's instead written like a more traditional example of this trope. In this verse, White Martians and Green Martians co-exist, however White Martians suffer FantasticRacism back on Mars. M'gann is half-White and half-Green, though physically she looks like a White Martian.

* ''WesternAnimation/AlfredJKwak'': [[spoiler: The major villain Dolf is the son of a crow and a blackbird. He's mostly able to pass for a crow, but is left with a yellow beak which he has dyed black since he was a young child.]]

* ''Series/{{Andor}}'': Cassian changed his birth name and forged documents claiming to be from another planet to hide his true Kenari heritage since that marked him as a Separatist under the Republic, and part of an apparently anti-tech, or at least resistant to strip mining, culture the Empire wiped out under the Empire.

** Spanish WarriorPoet and spymaster Francisco de Aldana disguised himself as a Jew in order to infiltrate Morocco.
** Explorer Pedro Páez de Jaramillo, the first western man to see the origin of the Nile, crossed Africa disguised as an Ottoman Armenian merchant.

* Solon in ''[[Fanfic/MyDeepestDarkestSecret 𝕸𝖞 𝕯𝖊𝖊𝖕𝖊𝖘𝖙, 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐𝖊𝖘𝖙 𝕾𝖊𝖈𝖗𝖊𝖙]]'' [[HidingYourHeritage has to keep his werewolf half a secret]] from his pure vampire brothers and from the rest of the world, for [[BeyondTheImpossible there's no such thing as a hybrid between a vampire and a werewolf]]. [[spoiler: Fittingly enough, his brothers [[DisappointingHeritageReveal weren't too happy]] to discover his werewolf heritage and he gets targeted and kidnapped by hunters later in the story]].