Mysterious Past

Louis: Did you abscond with the church funds? Run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man; it's the romantic in me.
Rick: It was a combination of all three.

— Casablanca

A character has a mysterious past which is hinted at but never fully revealed. It may be suggested by the character evading questions about their past, or by making a mistake that shows that their cover story is untrue. Sometimes a character is forced by circumstances to reveal a skill that could normally only be acquired from experience different than the background they claim. For example, a mild-mannered accountant who is taken hostage by armed terrorists may take out all the attackers, suggesting a military background and combat experience. In a detective story or spy thriller, there may be gaps, redacted portions, or Over-the-Top Secret parts in their file...or the file is blank.

This trope provides the writers with enormous freedom to have previously unknown (to the viewer and possibly also the character) relationships to other characters, special skills, prior histories with the Big Bad, knowledge of prophecies or the future itself, a MacGuffin, or other examples of Ass Pull as needed. In effect, since nothing is known, anything can be true. This is limited to such elements as can reasonably be fit into the time period. A thirty-five-year-old can't have sixty years' past (unless they're Really 700 Years Old but that is only an option in fantasy or science fiction). Failure to submit to this limit results in an Expansion Pack Past.

A character can have a partially mysterious past as well; for instance, Alice was Bob's friend in college, but when they meet up as ten years later, Alice has KGB agents on her tail and the ability to pilot a military helicopter to escape (or in fantasy, shoot fire from her eyes).

Often a Former Teen Rebel's old rebellion, such as run-ins with the law and drug-fueled misadventures, will be part of their mysterious past. Any dark deeds done in this period are part of a Dark and Troubled Past. If the occasional hints given out are contradictory, the person may also have a Multiple-Choice Past.

A Noodle Incident or ten might have happened in such a Past. Film Noir characters such as Hardboiled Detectives and Femme Fatales often have a mysterious past. Any French Foreign Legion soldiers have a mysterious past (crime, owing money to the Big Bad) that they keep hidden. The Spook is this trope taken up to eleven; they may have done illegal research at a Black Site, run hit teams, or destabilized countries. We don't know anything about the person's past, and maybe not even their real identity.

It is noted that overusing this trope or having it overstay its welcome for certain characters, especially main ones, is generally not recommended and frowned upon by the audience. This is because it can easily be taken as the writer using it as a smokescreen to avoid actually fleshing out their characters.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In Noir, Kirika defines the trope nicely, although Mirielle has elements of her own past mysterious to her as well; although hers are more or less revealed in time, Kirika's past is basically left unexplained save for fragments.
• Death Note: Despite being the Big Bad and the main protagonist of the series, there is little known about Light Yagami's life before the Death Note. We don't even know what his personality was from a more complex perspective, his childhood, his general relationship with his peers, or at least what motivated him to be so self-centered beyond the praises he received on a daily basis. While Mikami has a backstory that largely explains why he's like this, Light doesn't.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Rei Ayanami is a Justified Trope. She is introduced as a mysterious person whose past has been erased. Documents and data files are either redacted heavily or just not there. Many characters comment on this exact gap in information, in particular Ritsuko Akagi and Naoko Akagi. As such, her birth date or actual age in years is never revealed, and subsequent glimpses into the character's life only add to the mystery rather than explaining it. Moreover, NERV and especially her adoptive father Gendou Ikari go to great lengths to conceal Rei from the outside world (in particular, the SEELE organization which is becoming more and more curious about Rei).
• Vash, from Trigun, has this for most of the anime and around a third of the manga; all we know about him is that Rem found him in space.
• Kakegurui: The main character, Yumeko, is a walking question mark. Sayaka, the secretary of the Student Council President, reports that everything she found out about her was that she lives alone, her parents are dead (of causes never explained) and she has a sister who has been in a University Hospital for a long time (for reasons again unexplained). She also has loads of cash at her disposal, heavily implying that hundreds of millions of yen are nothing for her, and this is all the information people are able to find out about her. The Re-Election arc reveals she is part of The Clan headed by the Student Council President Kirari, being a distant relative of the main branches, and even they have little information on her.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, contrasting with his fellow main characters, Zenitsu’s life as an infant isn’t shown, anything before his life as a young child who lived among wandering children is completely nebulous. The databook reveals Zenitsu was born near Tokyo, but who were his birth parents, why they abandoned him, who actually named him, a nameless baby, Zenitsu Agatsuma isn’t ever disclosed.
• Nabeshin, the Director Avatar of Excel♡Saga, is revealed to share a Mysterious Past with almost all of the one-shot supporting characters, who upon reuniting with him often refer to some unspecified nebulous event that happened "that one time in Bogota".
  • A lot of people in Excel♡Saga have pasts that are not elaborated on. According to Dr. Kabapu, Il Palazzo and he are the sole survivors of a lost civilization, but nothing has ever been explained in detail. Hyatt and Elgala might have had normal lives before joining ACROSS, but the only thing mentioned about their lives is that Hyatt joined ACROSS after seeing an ad in a newspaper, and Elgala worked at a hotel before joining ACROSS. The title character Excel might have been a completely different person before meeting Il Palazzo, based on her personality when she was amnesiac. And nothing has been revealed about Kabapu's secretary Ms. Momochi, even though she is always seen with Kabapu and interacts regularly with the rest of the cast.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Tieria's past and origins were not shown nor written unlike the Dark and Troubled Pasts of the other three (or four) meisters. Until the second season, although it's more on his origins that is revealed, not his past.
• In the earlier days of the Tsubasa fandom, Fay's past was one of the things in the series most often speculated on by Fan Fiction writers. Everybody knew something bad had to have happened, for him to be the way he was, but nobody knew what. CLAMP held out on it for about twenty volumes, and of course when it finally did come out it was worse than anyone had imagined.
  • Played with in regards to the main character Syaoran, who at first appears to have nothing to hide, but as the series goes on, hints are dropped that not all is as it seems with his history (namely, he was apparently found on the streets, at a young age, by his foster father, and has no memory prior to that). Then the REAL Syaoran shows up and things get complicated. He becomes the main character, but we never find out what HIS story is until near the end of the manga, and that just makes things confusing.
• Cowboy Bebop with the entire team. Jet is fairly straightforward but still doesn't reveal everything. Faye at first doesn't remember her past at all, but then learns. All we know about Ein is that he's a "data dog" (We never learn what that is), and Spike and Ed we are told frustratingly nothing about, even though we meet Ed's father and Spike's past is the Myth Arc of the show! With Spike, we're just given mostly vague allusions to his past in the Red Dragon Syndicate, with the only hard facts revealed being the identities of his mentor, his ex-girlfriend and his partner-turned-archenemy. Everything beyond that is just flashbacks without context (or dialogue).
• Asuna, from Negima! Magister Negi Magi. Throughout the series clues and facts are dropped like breadcrumbs, each one redefining her as a character and the entire manga's story as a whole, but even now, with a very, very general outline, we're still mostly in the dark about it. Whatever it was, it was bad enough that she needed to erase all memory of it before she could be normal, and those memories are so dark that their unlocking created a Split Personality... and left her comatose for a week.
• Agito of Lyrical Nanoha, a Unison Device from Ancient Belka who had been smacked with a case of amnesia. What little she does remember has fueled a good amount of fan discussion, especially after the Sound Stage that featured her story dropped not so subtle hints that Signum was her original master, implying that the Wolkenritter themselves are not just ordinary living programs but have a Mysterious Past of heir own.
• Amatsuki utilises this in magnificent fashion as part of its Jigsaw Puzzle Plot, and the more that is actually revealed about past events, the more confusing things become. What happened to Toki's dead childhood mentor? What connection does Chitose have to them and to the science project that may/may not be responsible for time travel? What caused Lily's brain damage and the fire that killed her mother? What is Susutake's connection to the demons? Why did Sensai Midori disappear? Why did Kanzou split from Kuchiha? How does Bonten know the man with the IV drip? Who did Tsuyukusa kill and why was he separated from his tree? Who was Utsubushi originally? What made Yakou kidnap humans and trap them in the past? And what the hell has Kon got to do with all of this? Since when was he a hacker? Does he even have a family?
  • Interestingly, while the two characters from the modern world (Toki and Kon) have very mysterious pasts, most minor characters' backstories have been explained.
• Bleach has a large cast and almost as many mysterious pasts, such as the strange gaps in Rukia's personal history (and possibly memory) during her time in the Rukongai. The most plot-triggering Mysterious Past is the origin of the mutually self-loathing friendship between Ryuuken Ishida and Isshin Kurosaki (the fathers of protagonists Ichigo Kurosaki and Uryuu Ishida) and their connection to Kisuke Urahara, which was implied early on to be directly connected to their relationships with their sons. The little known about them suggested parallel pasts, with both men having missing wives. Even in the Final Arc, the truth about Isshin and Ryuuken and about their sons' shared family history is slow to unfold as it turns out to be the driving force behind the entire main storyline. And there's still a major chunk of Ryuuken's backstory unaccounted-for.
• Black Butler: While none of the characters' backstories are ever elaborated on, Sebastian is the most mysterious character of them all. Little is known about him other than he is a demon, not even his true name or form (though certain aspects of the latter are shown, such as the fact that he wears high heels as a demon). The anime gives a few tidbits: He met an Egyptian pharaoh, he spread a famous, major, and real life plague more then 100 years prior to the events of the series, and he probably is of the Fallen Angel variety of demon because a crapload of feathers swirl around him like a twister in his true form.
• D.Gray-Man: The Noah family members. Absolutely nothing is known about a single one of them's backstory until Skin Bolic dies and his awakening and job are revealed. Apart from him, nothing is known about a few clues here and there.
  • The bookmen's past too is very mysterious. We only know that they witness many battlefields, but nothing is known about what those battlefields were, why Lavi was chosen as a sucessor, who he was before he met Bookman, or what Bookman did before.
• Fairy Tail: Acnologia is a character that is essential to the main plotline, and has elements of his past hinted at, but otherwise we know nothing about him.
• Macross 7: We know very little about Nekki Basara from before he was taken in by Ray as a teenager and started Fire Bomber. Lampshaded in one of the Encore episodes, where a reporter tries very hard to uncover this past, and gets basically nowhere. She did manage to track down his original hometown, but even then, only one inhabitant remembers the young Basara, and knows nothing about his parents and origins.
• Soul Eater: Many of the characters' pasts are never elaborated. For instance, almost nothing is known about witches; how they are born, how they are raised, how they use and learn magic, and what most of them spend their time doing is a total mystery. Free also counts — it's a complete mystery how he managed to steal Mabaa's eye, or how he attained immortality. The Eight Powerful Warriors, too, are enigmas; after Asura's betrayal, three were eaten by Asura and the remaining five, with the exception of Shinigami, became hermits. Nothing is ever revealed about their past beyond their history as witch-hunters, and, strangely, both Shinigami (if there is, in fact, anything under his cloak) and Eibon keep themselves covered at all times.
• In Mother Keeper, Zelik's life before the Cocytus seems to be so mysterious that even Graham, who's known him for 30 years, doesn't know anything about it.
• Dragon Ball Z:
  • Despite being one of the major villains who most directly impacted the universe and the lives of several main characters, there is little known about Frieza. We don't even know the name of his species. From the little supplemental materials we learn that Frieza and his family are mutants who are born ungodly strong among their race and are also unnaturally cruel. And that's about it. His relationship with the Saiyans isn't even clearly defined.
  • The Saiyans themselves. Going just by the canon of the manga we know nothing about them outside they worked for Frieza, they plunder planets, there used to be good Saiyans among them who banded together to create a Super Saiyan God (which may or may not have happened before they worked for Frieza), and they got wiped out by their boss. Even using information from the anime opens more questions than answers. Like it's hinted that Planet Vegeta wasn't the Saiyans' original homeworld and that they actually came from another planet which may or may not been destroyed by the original Super Saiyan. Super clears some of this up, in that Planet Vegeta wasn't the Saiyans' original homeworld. They originally came from Planet Sadal, which was destroyed by infighting. Although it isn't explained how Saiyans can transform into gods, especially since no other species has shown to be able to do it. Which includes Golden Frieza, who had the power of a god without obtaining god energy.
  • After his origins got retconned, nothing is really known about Majin Buu outside of being as old as the universe and summoned to act as Bibidi's weapon for universal conquest.
  • Chiaotzu, what exactly is he? Is he a type of human or an alien hybrid like Tien? How did he come to meet Tien and the Crane Hermit? It doesn't help that Chiaotzu gets the least amount of screen time of the original cast. Speaking of Tien, he also gets almost no background information outside of being the Crane Hermit's student and training to be an assassin. How he met the Crane Hermit or Chiaotzu is never explained.
  • We have no clue what Yamcha or Puar did before they were desert bandits.
  • Nothing is really known about Beerus and Champa except they're twins and the Gods of Destruction from Universes 7 and 6 respectively. It is heavily hinted by statements from Whis, Vados, and Zen'o that neither of them were born gods, but appointed to that position.
  • What is Whis? He is stronger than Beerus, who is the God of Destruction, and he appears to have god energy, but isn't a god. He can also rewind time by three minutes and is a Reality Warper on par with Buu. When Vegeta asks what Whis is, he is given a non-answer. According to U7's Supreme Kai, Whis and Vados are a type of angel that only functions as long as the Gods of Destruction are alive.
• Sailor Moon:
  • The Outer Senshi minus Hotaru have it:
    • Haruka Tenou/Sailor Uranus. In the first anime we get her origin story, but it still leaves out how she can possibly drive a car at 16 (in Japan the minimum age is 18). In the manga we know she's a famed racer and that she was probably Awakened by Michiru, and nothing else.
    • Michiru Kaioh/Sailor Neptune. In both manga and anime we know exactly three things about her: she earned herself some fame as a violinist and painter, got her powers and knowledge of the past from dreams of her previous life (and this one comes from the author), and was responsible for Awakening Haruka... And the latter isn't actually certain in the manga.
    • Setsuna Meioh/Sailor Pluto, at least in her modern day incarnation. She just appeared from nowhere, no explanation given on how someone specifically from the future can have a secret identity in the modern day. The manga explains that, after she died, Neo Queen Serenity made her reincarnate in the past as a reward for her services, but that makes one wonder how, given that the only Sailor Soldier with powers over time is Pluto herself.
  • Minako Aino/Sailor Venus appears to have nothing to hide, but had already Seen It All before becoming a Sailor Soldier (her reaction when Artemis appeared to her while she was in the shower was to treat him as a pervert and scream, and only later began wondering why there was a talking cat), could already kick like a Savate practitioner, and shows a great familiarity with airports. The anime episode specifically dedicated to her backstory only adds more mystery, as it shows her time as Sailor V in London... And adds she knew at least one person from there before that specific visit.
• Yuri Plisetsky fromYuri!!! on Ice has a mysterious, and possibly tragic, past that is only briefly touched upon in a flashback where he tells his grandfather "I'll be fine, even if Mom's not there," after skating.
• Heine in The Royal Tutor has a past that has yet to be fully revealed, though certain details such as knowing the king on a personal level and that he previously taught in a church have been revealed.
• YuYu Hakusho: Hiei's backstory and history are completely mysterious up until the final season. Before then all we know is that he has a younger sister who he lies about and says she's his half sister. In the final season we learn everything about his past, even more so than any other of the main characters.
• Pokémon: The Series: Ash's Pikachu has a touch of mystery to him. Originally, he has a much more headstrong and aggressive personality than most Pikachu, until Character Development causes him to soften up, and also hates being in Poké Balls, suggesting he had a bad experience with a Poké Balls and humans in general. His backstory wasn't elaborated until Pokémon Journeys: The Series, where it's revealed he was once an orphaned Pichu raised by Kangaskhan four years ago. But even that doesn't explain when or how Professor Oak caught him.
• Zombieland Saga:
  • The Legendary Tae Yamada. As the only member of Franchouchou to remain a (mostly) mindless zombie, she's not saying anything. We know three things about her life pre-mortem: she was 29 when she died, one of her favorite foods was mentaiko, and she liked to visit travel agencies (implying she lived no earlier than the 20th century).
  • Franchouchou's producer Kotaro Tatsumi once called himself a "mysterious idol producer", and for all his hamminess and boasting, this is one thing he's been pretty accurate about. All we know is he learned his impressive makeup skills in Hollywood, "Kotaro Tatsumi" isn't his original name, he went to high school with one of Franchouchou's members, and he has a possibly-immortal acquaintance - the Cryptic Background Reference who namedropped Yugiri - who he's told about his secret Zombie Land Saga Project.
• Played for Laughs in Squid Girl: In an extra mini-chapter, the titular protagonist asks Chizuru about her past. Chizuru wonders if it's OK to talk about it in a shonen manga, and Squid Girl doesn't inquire any further.
• Digimon Adventure has Wizardmon. All we ever learn is that he used to be a loner until one day he collapsed in a desert and was given water by Gatomon, which lead to him joining Myotismon in order to stay by her side, but that's it. A CD Drama set before the series just raises more questions - it reveals that he isn't a native of the Digital World, but never explains just WHERE he's from or HOW he got to the Digital World in the first place.
• Shaman King: Despite being one of the more outwardly jovial and peppy allies Yoh has, Horohoro is the clammiest about his background. Even the comedian Chocolove is willing to to be somewhat upfront about his history as a thug in New York who killed innocent people. But Horohoro is the last to reveal anything about himself besides his ultimate goal after becoming Shaman King, and it turns out even his name "Horohoro" is actually an alias for his real name, Usui Horokeu.
• Black Lagoon: Initially, Dutch seems to have a perfectly normal and detailed backstory as The Vietnam Vet. But then everything the reader knows about him gets thrown into question when Major Caxton reveals that Dutch's claims about his time in the military don't match up with reality at all (amongst other things, he says he fought in a specific battle while in a unit that never took part in said battle) and further points out that Dutch seems awfully ignorant of basic GI lingo for a former soldier. Is everything that Dutch has been telling the rest of the team (and the reader) all a huge lie? Later on, it is increasingly implied that rather than Vietnam, Dutch was involved in former French colonies in Africa, particularly the alleged coup attempt in Burkina Faso, which just raises more questions about his past.
• Weathering With You: Makoto Shinkai deliberately kept the backstory of his protagonist Hodaka Morishima unrevealed, simply because “if we explained it in the script, it would turn into one of the same old stories you have heard before”. What we do know from the movie itself, the novelization and the manga is that he had an abusive father and the other aspects of his home life absolutely sucked.
• Hidamari Sketch:
  • There are lots of rumors about Yoshinoya-sensei's past and the little information she gives just adds to the mystery.
  • Miyako also has one of her own, as she occasionally drops comments about having to navigate using the stars along with an incident involving a lack of lifeboats and having to learn to swim quickly. She also drops hints about her family history, including singing in bars and inheriting her brothers' toys.
• In The Morose Mononokean, we never get to know how or why Abeno became an employee of the Mononokean. We know that he started working from a very young age (about 7-8), and he shares numerous parallels with his predecessor, Ashiya Sakae, who died long before Abeno was recruited by Aoi. But even though Sakae gets his backstory and motives revealed, Abeno's remain a mystery. Numerous characters point out that he's mellowed out ever since recruting Ashiya, and is more willing to empathize with other people, though we never know why he—a human—has shunned humankind in favour of demonkind in the first place.
• The past of Kenshin Himura in Rurouni Kenshin is left vague for the first two of the manga's three story arcs, until a Flash Back finally reveals how he got his cross-shaped scar and how he is related to the third arc's Big Bad.
• Yato in Noragami is a god that has existed for centuries (without reincarnating, since that's something he's probably not capable of), and that past is one big question mark at the beginning of the series. Certain aspects about his past are revealed very slowly.
• Crazy Food Truck: Both Gordon and Arisa have secrets in their past: Gordon is a former Vald general who faked his own death, and Arisa is an Artificial Human who Escaped from the Lab.
• One Piece: For most of the series, Bartholomew Kuma's past is shrouded in deep mystery both in-universe and out. Many of his close friends don't know what caused him to go from hating the World Government to becoming one of their lackeys. It's not until the Egghead arc, over eight hundred chapters after his debut, that his past is finally elaborated on.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica has Homura's backstory before she met Madoka for the first time all but completely unknown. While most characters in the franchise have mentions of family, or what happened to said family, detailed in various scenes, side material, or expanded universe material, very little about Homura is known beyond a history in a catholic school in Tokyo and an illness that hospitalized her for some time.
• Dream Hunter Rem: Rem's. All it is shown is that she descends from an ancient clan of Dream Guardians and she lost her mother and her ability to dream by herself.

Audio Play

• 36 Questions: During the song "Our Word", Judith implies that she did something illegal and had to escape the consequences three times by Bluffing the Authorities.

Comic Books

• Birthright: Sameal is one of the five mages who escaped Terrenos for Earth, but is the only one of the five not born on Terrenos. Whether he was born on Earth, how he developed mage powers, and how he got the titular birthright to jump worlds is so far unrevealed.
• Diabolik: Diabolik's history is mostly known: saved from a shipwreck when he was still a toddler and raised on an island of criminals until he realized that King, the boss and his adopted father, was about to kill him to be the only one knowing the secret of Latex Perfection, at which point he struck first and ran away with his treasure. Also, once in a while an issue reveals something of what he did between escaping from King's Island and the first issue. But two things always remain secret, even to Diabolik himself: his true identity, and what he was doing on that ship. King and The Dragon Prof (who went on his own way when Diabolik was still too young to remember him) knew, but King, as already said, was killed by Diabolik before he could decide to tell him, and Prof, captured by Diabolik for a completely unrelated reason, was killed by Diabolik for being a human trafficker before he could even tell him who he was. There is around a time capsule containing the documents proving Diabolik's real identity and possibly what he was doing on that ship, but the only ones knowing about it were King and the engineer Suanda, and the latter not only knows why King made him built it but has disappeared after King's death.
• Green Lantern: Indigo-1. Apparently Abin Sur had left a big impression on her and her tribe, but all we've known about her past so far is that she was violent and self-centered and had to be incarcerated by Sur, and her real name is Iroque. It's eventually revealed that she was Abin Sur's greatest enemy, and murdered his daughter. Although the whole Indigo Corps works on Heel–Face Brainwashing, she truly regretted and felt sorry about her crimes even when the brainwashing was temporarily undone.
• House Of Gold And Bones: Corey Taylor's graphic novel revolves around the main character, called the Human, who awakens to a surreal landscape with no memory of how he got there. Throughout the story, the Human is given some backstory that is briefly visited for moments at a time in flashbacks, but it is never thoroughly explained how he ended up where he is. We know about his childhood with an abusive stepfather, and we know that he might have drowned attempting to save the daughter of his neighbors from drowning in a nearby lake. Beyond all of that, the rest is up to interpretation.
• Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: The titular character is an enigma. The only thing about his past that was revealed is that his parents were killed by an evil man.
  • This is parodied in Squee where one absurdly muscular super hero constantly brags about his "mysterious past and shit".
• Pack: Little is known about Diligence's life, even within the Pack. All they truly know is that she's been with Patience the longest of them.
• Scott Pilgrim:
  • Ramona Flowers is often very reluctant to share facts of her past with her boyfriend, Scott. The little we do learn is through rumour and so very suspect. Author of the series Bryan Lee O'Malley gave Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who played Ramona in the film), along with some of the other actors, a sheet listing 10 facts of Ramona's past, but even he said that these need not necessarily be true.
  • Interestingly, Scott is the same way with Ramona, though in his case, it's less about being stuck than simply not liking his past self, so he constantly reinvents himself in an effort to be a better person. Except he's actually kind of an asshole, which he eventually comes to realize and deal with.
• Supergirl: In the story arc Many Happy Returns, Kara Zor-El and Linda Danvers face Xenon, an enigmatic demoniac being that is bent on slaying Supergirls. It is not known who Xenon was or where he came from, and he only alludes to be imprisoned by a Supergirl during an earlier battle.
• The Tick: The only two things known about the Tick's past is that he escaped from an insane asylum and that he has an ex-wife. Everything else—where he comes from, how he got his powers—is never revealed.
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: No one seems to know exactly where Tarn, leader of the Decepticon Justice Division, came from. He always wears a mask in public, is using an alias, and has had enough body modifications that he likely doesn't resemble how he used to. He's a Phase-Sixer, is an Outlier, and was personally trained by Megatron, but that's about all we know. Even after we do learn his true identity, we don't learn much of anything about his past or how he became Tarn, aside from some rueful comments by Megatron that it was his fault.
• Wonder Woman: In Wonder Woman: Warbringer, Hippolyta told Diana the stories of the other Amazons, and how they died in battle before being granted the chance to live again as Amazons if they swore an oath to protect the wider world from the evils the island keeps at bay, but she never told her daughter her own story. It's hinted that unlkie the others Hippolyta wasn't a normal human in her previous life, as the armor she died in is unmistakably magical.
• X-Men:
  • Wolverine, aka Logan, aka James Howlett. He has the longest real-world time between introduction and full origin stor, as we was introduced in 1974, but readers didn't learn his real name or family background until the Origin miniseries published in 2001. Some of his backstory was revealed in 1991, when the Weapon X (1991) storyline revealed how he got his adamantium skeleton.
    • The Wolverine from Ultimate X-Men (2001) seems to have done a lot less globe-trotting, spending most of his time between World War 2 and the 90's imprisoned by Weapon X.
  • Rogue also qualified as having something of a Mysterious Past until her background and given name were finally revealed in her now-cancelled ongoing series, more than twenty years of realtime after her debut.

Fan Works

• Dr. Kit Bennett in Children of Time: she's an intelligent woman of action who knows Holmes, Watson, and the Doctor in their future. She ends up revealing her real first name, Katherine, and the fact that she's a century-old Time Lord. But her connection to Holmes and Watson remains unknown at the end of her episode, to the two men and the audience.
• Child of the Storm and its sequel has Doctor Strange, whose past before he became Sorcerer Supreme in 1645 is more or less a complete mystery, until chapter 20 of the sequel, when he finally reveals his true name and backstory: his name is Taliesin, though he was born Gwion Bach, and he was the son of a couple of minor mages in a druidic clan in Camelot under Uther Pendragon. When he was an infant, they were caught up in the purge of magic users, and he was put in a basket and set adrift, before being found and taken in by a fisherman and his wife in the town of Camelot itself, who named him Taliesin. He ended up as a student/junior assistant to, Gaius, Court Physician and teacher of Merlin himself, who was a Big Brother Mentor to Taliesin/Strange. He became Court Physician (and Court Bard) to Camelot under Arthur Pendragon, served loyally, before teaching a successor and then Walking the Earth to learn more magic to make Camelot even greater. He returned to find Arthur dead at the Battle of Camlann at the hands of Mordred, Taliesin's Evil Counterpart, Merlin vanished in mourning, and Guinevere trying to hold the Kingdom and The Alliance together, which ultimately failed. In despair, he managed to accidentally summon the Time Stone, which made a bargain with him, turning him into Doctor Strange.
• Played with in the Facing the Future Series when Jack uses a familiar line from The Fairly OddParents!.
• Played with. In Foundling, Yukari's past is mostly hinted at but, with small details here and there, it implies that she was a prostitute and her past was not a happy one.
• Timeless Academia has an In-Universe example with Archer EMIYA. While those familiar with the original Fate/stay night know that he's an Alternate Self/Future Badass of Shirou Emiya, the fic's characters however do not know much about his life before becoming a Heroic Spirit. This is rather justified since unlike other Heroic Spirits, EMIYA is an Original Generation instead of being based on a historical or mythological figure and that he's been keeping a tight lip about his past.
• Wander over Foster's AU One-Shot (Wander over Yonder, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends): Invoked. At Foster's, imaginary friend's pasts aren't often dwelled on. It's considered rude to question someone on why they're at Foster's.
• Serena in The Road to be a Pokemon Master realizes this about herself: she used to live in Vaniville Town in Kalos before she and Grace moved to Pallet Town in Kanto when she was seven... but despite the fact that she has been living in Pallet town for little more than three years, she barely has any memory of Vaniville Town, the house she used to live in or the identity of her father.
• While canon One Piece doesn't really put much emphasis on it due to the secondary theme of how a Family of Choice can sometimes be better than one's blood, Supernova does this to Nami past before her adoption by Bell-mère as nothing is known of the island she came from, but at the same time Robin can only speculate that Nami's supernatural sensibility to even the slightest change in the weather can only come from a a multi-generational ability.
• Castling Cozy Glow: Cozy Glow's past in the first story is kept vague. All Twilight finds out through her personal investigation, is Cozy showed up at an orphanage in Cloudsdale four years ago with nothing but a large wooden chess rook resembling her cutie mark and an unsigned note asking the orphanage to take care of her, informing them she's already officially completed all her primary schooling despite being just nine years old at the time, and a sizable sum of money has been donated to the orphanage, in hopes they'll put it towards taking care of her. (Which Twilight later confirms was made through dozens of ponies coming in and transferring small suns of money to avoid the paper trail a single large transfer would leave). She was already showing signs of her manipulative side and two faced nature during her time at the orphanage. Before she ran away out of the blue to join Twilight's school with forged documents that Twilight doubts she would be able to forge herself. The only details Cozy gives herself during the first story, is that she got her cutie mark from making the wooden chess rook she was first found with which we later learn is actually a small magical lamp and that she was involved in shady circles even before showing up at the orphanage.
• Similarly, The Ending of the End - Love and Tolerance Edition intentionally keeps Cozy Glow's past and motives vague to not conflict with the show's continuity before the events of the story. Despite giving a lot more focus and development towards the villains, her included. The author did publish a one-shot, "An Interview with Cozy", that's said to be in continuity with this story and does have her give an in-depth interview revealing her motives and thought process behind her prior scheme… but that story also leaves it ambiguous how genuine she was being.
• Sunset's Isekai: Applies to the Rarity who is Sunset’s business partner. We know she had a bad relationship with the Spike from her home universe (at least it might be. This was mentioned in the very first chapter, even before the Isekai had been set up.), that her original form involved horns, and not much else.

Film — Animation

• Ratatouille: Most of the chefs. Lalo was runaway who became a circus acrobat, Horst has done time, Pompidou has been banned from Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, and Larousse ran guns for the Resistance.

Film — Live-Action

• American Psycho 2: All American Girl: We never find out Rachel's true name and history beyond her killing Patrick Bateman as a child.
• Parodied with Chance the Gardener in Being There. In the novel, it's explained that he was the offspring of a mentally damaged woman who suffered Death by Childbirth. It is strongly suggested that the wealthy "Old Man" who raised him and told him this is the father, a possibility also raised in the film adaptation though the mother's backstory is not brought up. In any case, Chance is not allowed to leave the house (in the book, he was told that he would wind up institutionalized if he did) and only does so when forced out by the Old Man's death. When the FBI and CIA investigate "Chauncey Gardiner", as the world accidentally comes to know him, no trace of him can be found (birth certificate, driver's license, etc. — all of which Chance likely never had anyway), leaving his past completely mysterious to all but a few.
• Ted from Burn After Reading is shown to have once been a European Orthodox priest, before getting the job as the manager of... "Hardbodies". How does this happen and why? We may never know.
• Supplier of the Page Quote above, Rick Blaine in Casablanca. For all that is revealed, we still don't know why (and exactly when) he left America or why he can't return.
  Major Strasser: Richard Blaine, American. Age, 37. Cannot return to his country. The reason is a little vague.
  • Rick's past was such a mystery, even the writers didn't know. They spent a lot of time trying to come up with something appropriately cool; they failed. One finally suggested 'unpaid parking tickets.' That was the point when they gave up and left it "a little vague."
• Sergio Leone used this as a foundation of the Dollars Trilogy, and star Clint Eastwood also used it for the first Western he directed, High Plains Drifter.
• This trope was gleefully subverted in the Grindhouse film Planet Terror. Bad Ass El Wray's Mysterious Past is ultimately revealed, earning him the instant respect and trust of the formerly suspicious Sheriff. Unfortunately, this revelation is made in the never-actually-filmed 'missing reel'.
• In Jungle, Kurt drops a number of mysterious hints about his past and his reasons for being in Bolivia, including hints that he was a revolutionary. Given later revelations, it seems likely that at least some of this was made up in attempt to seem impressive and romantic, but, like most things regarding Kurt, his true past will remain a Riddle for the Ages.
• MonsterVerse:
  • The Skullcrawlers which debuted in Kong: Skull Island initially. Their Monarch profile in the spin-off graphic novel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong lists their origins as little-known. Subverted following the publication of the Godzilla vs. Kong novelization, which reveals genetic analysis has suggested they evolved from a lineage which split off from the amniote before the amniote gave way to modern reptiles, birds and mammals.
  • King Ghidorah, who debuted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). The Monarch profile states his origins as ancient but unknown. After piecing together what little legends there are about him stating he Came from the Sky, along with observing Ghidorah's Bizarre Alien Biology and unnaturally malicious behavior, Monarch reason that he must be an alien lifeform who arrived on Earth in ancient times. Apart from that, nothing else is known about Ghidorah's origin before he came to Earth.
• The villains of the obscure slasher movie Neon Maniacs. They're a posse of deformed, monstrous killers who melt if they get wet. Absolutely no attempt is made to explain where they came from.
• Paris, Texas plays this completely straight: the main character, Travis, has a huge lapse of memory concerning his last four years, and whatever he remembers, he isn't willing to talk about. His memory gets better and some of his past is explained near the ending, but what he actually did for all those years to wind up nearly dehydrated and alone in a desert is still a mystery to everyone but him.
• The Postman: We never learn anything about Shakespeare's aside from his birth date at the end and how he was just a child when the war happened, even his real name. The memorial just says "The Postman".
• Sonic the Hedgehog series:
  • Not as vague as the games tend to be, but in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) much of Sonic's history remains unexplained with very little time spent in his homeworld prior to coming to Earth. All that can be said is he's been pursued for his Super-Speed since childhood, he was raised as an orphan by a talking owl named Longclaw, and he's been living around Green Hills for ten years since he came to Earth.
  • The most that's explained about Tails in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) is that he is from another planet similar to Sonic and was shunned by his village due to his extra tail.
• Star Wars:
  • Both great masters of the Force, Yoda and Sidious are given little background on their origins. Nothing is revealed in the film continuity about Sidious's origins other than him being Palpatine: what little is commonly "known" is in fact only implied by the film and never confirmed. Indeed, it's believed that there was a ban on Expanded Universe authors detailing either's backstory as a novel (one about Sidious's Master, Darth Plagueis, was cancelled for this reason). It was eventually Un-Canceled, and revealed a lot of Sidious's backstory... but still left plenty that's ambiguous. Meanwhile, Yoda's past remains so mysterious that even his species remains unidentified, for reasons apparently known only to George Lucas. Then, since Disney has de-canonized this, the old Palpatine backstory went too. Disney continues the mandate of not exploring Yoda's past or species; even when introducing another member of the species in The Mandalorian, we don't get a name or home planet or anything about "Baby Yoda". The most we know about the species is their longevity; Yoda himself lived to be over 900, and apparently 50 years old is still infancy for them.
  • Both Legends and the current Expanded Universe show that, In-Universe, most of the galaxy has no idea where Darth Vader came from—or that he had once been the famous war hero Anakin Skywalker. From their point of view, Vader just appeared out of nowhere shortly after the Empire's founding and starting doing the Emperor's bidding. Some aren't even sure that's he actually human, thinking that he might be an alien or some kind of droid.
  • Snoke in the sequel films also has yet to be given an origin story of any kind or his species identified (as he doesn't seem human). That is, until The Rise of Skywalker reveals that he's a clone of Palpatine.
• The Stunt Man. It isn't made clear why Cameron is running from the police in the first place.
• The Protagonist of Tenet. He has no name, no backstory aside from being a black ops agent, and no apparent motivation beyond protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. He is, essentially, The Hero distilled down to its Logical Extreme; he has no apparent life or history outside of his role in the plot. He just exists, seemingly for the no reason other than there needs to be a Protagonist.
• Violet & Daisy: Neither Violet or Daisy's past is ever explained. Just how did two teenage girls get recruited and become assassins by a shady criminal organization? Also, where are their parents? We only learn that Violet is estranged from her dad, but nothing more.

Literature

• Around the World in Eighty Days: Nothing is known about Phineas Fogg, except that he is Idle Rich and spends most of his time at the Reform Club, reading newspapers and playing whist (donating his winnings to charitable causes). However, over the course of the book, Fogg proves to be capable of speaking several languages, handling firearms, navigating and conning a ship, rattling off obscure engineering facts off the top of his head and telling the difference between rabbit and cat by taste. One fan theory is that Fogg was involved in some ungentlemanly warfare during the Crimean War, and his Clock King-tendencies are his way of dealing with PTSD.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events uses this trope. Nearly every character has a mysterious past, and none are ever fully revealed. For example, Esme reveals that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl, but Lemony later states that he was involved too. Just HOW he was involved, we do not know.
• The Bourne books/movies is driven by this trope. Though they do eventually explain...
• Sherlock Holmes at least partially fits this trope, given that Watson comments more than once in the stories about how he knows virtually nothing of Holmes's past. All that is eventually revealed is that he's distantly related to a bunch of French painters, he attended university somewhere, he's descended from country squires, and he has an older brother who's even cleverer than he is.
• The titular assassin in The Day of the Jackal. Although referred to throughout the book as "the Englishman" and eventually assumed to be former arms dealer Charles Calthrop, we eventually discover Calthrop is a completely different person and we've no way of knowing if the Jackal was even English - the reason why the OAS called him "the Englishman" before he took the codename of Jackal was to distinguish him from two other candidates they had considered hiring, who were German and South African. And even this only proves that he was living in England when they first contacted him, not that he necessarily was English.
• John The Valiant: John tells his backstory where he was found in a cornfield as an orphan and he was adapted by a farmer and his wife. Beyond that there is nothing known about his origins.
• Amusingly lampshaded in The War Against the Chtorr novel "A Matter for Men" by David Gerrold, when the protagonist first meets his Global Ethics teacher.
  The instructor was somebody named Whitlaw. Nobody knew much about him. It was his first semester here. We'd heard some rumors though - that he'd once punched a kid for mouthing off and broken his jaw. That he couldn't be fired. That he'd seen active duty in Pakistan, and still had the ears of the men and women he'd killed. That he was still involved in some super-secret operation and this teaching job was just a cover. And so on.
  The first time I saw him, I believed it all.
• "Bish" Ware, the town drunk in H. Beam Piper's Four-Day Planet. It's short for "bishop," because people think he looks like the stereotype. He's actually one of The Federation's best secret agents, hunting down a particularly vile criminal.
  A lot of people ... still believed that, and they blamed him on every denomination from Anglicans to Zen Buddhists, not even missing the Satanists, and there were all sorts of theories about what he'd done to get excommunicated, the mildest of which was that somewhere there was a cathedral standing unfinished because he'd hypered out with the building fund.
• Very little is known about the past of Ciaphas Cain before he began attending the Schola Progenium. He claims to be from the lower levels of a hive world, that his parents served in a Guard regiment before being killed in a battle against some kroot, and that his great-grandfather hunted bounties (and sometimes had bounties on his own head). However, Amberley, his sometimes lover and posthumous editor, has noted that there is absolutely no documentation substantiating any of that, that some of the events described are implausible when not impossible, and that Cain tended to edit his background story to appeal to his target audience on the rare occasions that he talked about it at all. The only part of that list of facts that is likely to be true is the bit about being a hive worlder, and even then, Amberley never figured out Cain's exact world of origin.
• Harry Dresden, of The Dresden Files, has shades of this, mostly tied up in who his mother was.
• In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Monster Men, Bulan's past to Virginia. Once Sing reveals that he was in fact a shipwreck victim, to him as well, because of Easy Amnesia. Virginia rejects the notion he may be a criminal, but is deeply troubled by the possibility of his being married.
• Rock and Midnight from Warrior Cats. They pretty much say that they've been around since the beginning of time, but it's not revealed exactly what they are.
• In Devon Monk's Magic to the Bone, Zayvion reveals very little of his. It's one reason why Allie suspects him of being untrustworthy.
• In The Elves and the Otterskin by Elizabeth H. Boyer, there's Eilifer. Ivarr is forced to help a group of outcast elves. The elves are supposed to be incompetent both as warriors and mages but gradually develop competency as the story develops. However, it's very strongly hinted that Eilifer's been lying about his competence level from the beginning and is, in fact, both extremely powerful and extremely reluctant to use his power. Why, is never revealed leaving Eilifer an unsolved mystery even at the end of the story. Lampshaded by several characters throughout the story, including a hint that this alleged outcast is connected to the elven king himself when he ambushes three evil witches by letting them turn him into a horse for hag-riding rather than their usual Designated Victim.
  Nidbjorg: "What did you do different, Thorvor? He's not the same colour. This time he's grey."
  Thorvor: "Grey! Elbegast's horses are grey!"
• Leslie Charteris kept The Saint as an exemplar of this throughout the author's life. "The Saint in Pursuit", published after more than 40 years of adventures, has a minor character tell Simon Templar, "I haven't been completely briefed on your background." "Nobody has," Simon replies.
• In George MacDonald Fraser's Mr American, the very proper and reserved title character admits to having been a cowboy and a prospector before he struck it lucky and made his millions. What he won't tell anyone is that he was also a member of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's gang and killed a man in a duel.
• Adventure Hunters: Regina and Lisa have brief backstories but Artorius is a blank. All that is revealed is that he used to be a paladin and was branded with the Sigil of Disgrace at some point in the past.
• In Andre Norton's The Zero Stone, Jern's father. Despite its criminal elements, not dark and troubled.
• In Julie Kagawa's The Iron King, Puck and Ash have a history, as Meghan realizes when they fight in a duel. She even finds herself wondering if they had been friends.
• Louis L'Amour: Red Mike, one of the cowhands in Kiowa Trail, started working for Kate and Tom after they found him floating down a river with three bullet holes in him and nursed him back to health. Mike never reveals the story behind who shot him.
• Thomas Cromwell is portrayed as having such in Wolf Hall. We know he was out of England for a decade and a half and various small stories about what he did there, but never the overall picture. Cardinal Wolsey helps by loudly chiding Cromwell for made-up transgressions (like impregnating an abbess) whenever anyone's in earshot, largely for entertainment and partly because mysterious pasts can be useful.
• In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, Gabriel, an angelic hero with six wings, has a blog, but refuses to speak of his past or where he got his powers. Lucyfar claims that he is the Archangel Gabriel (and she, as the Archangel Lucifer, is his sister), which he denies.
• In the Eddie LaCrosse series, Angelina, the proprietor of the inn above which Eddie has his office (and therefore one of the few recurring characters), doesn't talk about her past — enough so that Eddie's shorthand for "mind your own business" is to ask her an innocuous about her own background, reminding her that since he doesn't pry, nor should she. There are hints that something doesn't quite add up about her, but exactly what the deal is isn't explored until the fourth book.
• In The Spirit Thief, all three main characters have mysterious origins, and there's an unspoken agreement between them to never discuss this. As the books go on, though, their backstories are slowly revealed due to various blasts from the pasts coming back to haunt them.
• Most of the Wild Dogs in Survivor Dogs are mixes who were born in the wild, however there are several purebreds amongst them that suggest they were either originally pets or their parents were. This element of their characters hasn't been explored. Examples include Moon (a Border Collie) and Whine (a Pug).
• William Kraft in Victoria is a man of evidently considerable means, as well as a political mastermind with a sprawling network of contacts and informants in national and even international politics, which he uses to good effect to help the revolution against the setting's Oppressive States of America. How he amassed this wealth of soft power is never explained; various hints given could be taken to imply some sort of prior diplomatic career, but this is neither confirmed nor elaborated on.
• The Han Solo Trilogy: Han never finds out what happened for him to get dumped on the street, and doesn't remember anything past that (as his mind shuts off the fragments of memory which he has). Garris Shrike appears to know, and goads him using it, but is killed before he can reveal what really happened. Han's aunt also knows apparently, but is so distraught to see him he never learns anything of his past from her.
• Saif Dhu Hadin, the primary antagonist of The Mental State, has gone to extreme lengths to maintain his anonymity and conceal his true identity. Nobody knows anything about who he was before being sent to prison. It is suspected that he might have been a member of a black-ops unit, but no one knows which one he belonged to if this is true.
• An interesting variation of this trope appears in Trash of the Count's Family, where the protagonist's past before he was reincarnated into another world remains a complete mystery to the audience. No details about him, including his exact age, family or friends, his job, or anyhing else, are revealed until 270+ chapters into the story. Even then, a lot of things are still left unexplained. Choi Han's past is also mysterious to everyone except for the audience and Cale, notable because it's brought up by other characters.
• The Impossible Us: We know Henrietta is the chair of the Berenstain Society. We also know she has the connections and/or computer skills to expose a journalist as a plagiarist, to get the authorities to arrest one of the world's richest men and investigate him for a potpourri of crimes, and to illegally clone a zone account while appearing only to read its i-mail. We can only guess which intelligence agency, if any, is backing her.
• The Stormlight Archive: Lampshaded; while the audience gets to learn Kaladin's past through flashbacks in the first book, most of the cast regards him as this trope during the early parts of the series. Adolin notes that, from the perspective of the rest of the army, he just showed up one day with slave brands on his forehead, the skills of a master soldier, the knowledge base of an experienced surgeon, and a massive grudge against his country's aristocracy, all while being barely twenty. The audience learns the reasons for all of this, but to the cast he comes across like an Inexplicably Awesome mysterious badass.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: We never learn much of Magdelene's past, just how she was a thirteen year old apprenticed to a wizard at the beginning, with no information on her parents or background otherwise.
• The Wise Man's Fear: Kvothe invokes this in-universe to improve his standing when he visits the Vintish court. As a foreign guest of the ruler, etiquette requires the nobles to treat him as an equal until they work out how his rank compares to theirs; he carefully obfuscates the matter to Politeness Judo his way somewhere into the middle nobility.

Live-Action TV

• Every major character in Babylon 5 had a Mysterious Past, or acquired one during the course of the show. All of them.
  G'kar: Let me pass on to you the one thing I've learned about this place. No one here is exactly what he appears. Not Mollari, not Delenn, not Sinclair, and not me.
• On Banshee the main protagonist's past is so mysterious that after two seasons we still do not know his real name or even the name he was using before the start of the series. He spent the last 15 years in prison but before that we only know that he was a thief working for the Ukrainian mobster Mr. Rabbit. When he was arrested even the FBI did not have any information on who he was or what his birth name was.
• Gus Fring from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. While some parts are shown, such as his encounter with Hector and Eladio in Mexico, and some kind of situation in Santiago where he met and befriended Schuler, much of it is left unexplained. Hank can't find any record of a "Gustavo Fring" having ever lived in Chile, and not even his criminal associates know much about him. Gus says that the records were simply lost during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which is a reasonable explanation, but it's never indicated if it's true or just another fabrication, since this comes just after another cover story which the audience knows is fake.
• Buffyverse:
  • Angel's mysterious past proved fodder for multiple flashback scenes in both BtVS and Angel. Ultimately, almost all of his past is explained and shown on-screen, so by about the end of season 4 he no longer has a Mysterious Past—he has a Very Dark Past that is no longer mysterious.
  • The Master was the first Big Bad, one of the oldest vampires in existence, and a guy who figures prominently in the past of several other characters, and yet we never learn that much about him.
  • Adam. "Before Adam? Not a man among us can remember." One comic suggests that he was once a human member of the Initiative and Professor Walsh's favorite alongside Riley, and was used in the 314 Project after he was killed by a demon corpse possessed by the spirit of Mayor Wilkins.
• Daredevil (2015): Karen is hinted multiple times in seasons 1 and 2 to have prior skeletons in her closet, ones that Ben Urich and even Mitchell Ellison know about. It's in season 3 that we see the full truth, in a flashback episode aptly named "Karen".
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor initially had a completely unknown past. By the time of the Seventh Doctor, much about his past had been explained, so the writers attempted to restore the mystery by implying that we hadn't been told the whole truth, and that he had a much darker past than had previously been suggested. Sadly, the series was cancelled before the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan" could be put into effect, but the revival has returned to the idea with its own take on it. In addition, much of what happened during the Time War (which happened in-between the original series and the new one) is mysterious. We still haven't learned his birthname - the closest the show has come to revealing that was "Theta Sigma", which was apparently his college nickname.
  • Captain Jack Harkness has a lot, with both his time before he met the Doctor and between "The Parting of the Ways" and "Everything Changes" being mysterious. His spinoff, Torchwood, specializes in revealing dark aspects of his past.
• Mephisto in Double the Fist. What we do know is that there was a time when he wasn't batshit insane, he used to be a security guard, and is on the run for tax evasion. One episode has us meet his friend from his time in training, who is excited to see his good friend again. Mephisto proceeds to use his face as a mask.
• Many of Moya's passengers in Farscape have mysterious pasts until they get their day in the limelight and things are revealed, though some of them remained mysterious throughout the series.
• Shepherd Book from Firefly, who seems to have extensive government connections, intimate knowledge of criminal culture, and can identify the exact model of a particular rifle just by looking at the bullet wounds it leaves behind, despite being "just a simple preacher."
  Shepherd Book: I wasn't born a shepherd, Mal.
  Mal: You have to tell me about that sometime.
  Shepherd Book: No, I don't.
  • His past was eventually revealed in the spin-off comics.
• Game of Thrones: Shae. What is her background? Why did she leave Lorath when she was 13? Why (and how) did her mother "make sure" that she became "a woman" at 9?
• Highlander: One word: Methos. With a 5000 year backstory, we may never learn all of his secrets.
• Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha: According to the villagers, nobody knows what Du-sik was up to in the five years after he graduated university. Whatever it was is implied to be incredibly traumatic and the reason he lives life the way he does in the countryside when he could be more successful if he wanted.
• The title character of House, M.D. Why is he such a jerk?
  • For the first season, House's employees and fans alike just wanted to know what happened to his leg. That was revealed in Three Stories, as House told said stories about 3 patients, each with a leg problem, to a group of med students. One of the patients was him, which Foreman caught on to, revealing it to us.
  • And as to why he is a jerk... After mumbling around the whos, wheres and whys, House may have revealed in One Day, One Room that his military father inadvertently abused him.
• In From the Cold: Jenny's, to her daughter Becca. She never tells her about her parents or background.
• Played for Laughs with Adam Klaus, the suave American magician in Jonathan Creek. In "The Problem At Gallows Gate" he turns out to have a Scottish sister who calls him Chester, and no-one comments on this.
• Eliot Spencer and Sophie Devereaux from Leverage. We sometimes get hints about Eliot's past (flashback: Where's the monkey?!) but rarely any details, which is used mostly for comedic purposes. Except for the time in which he worked and even killed for Damien Moreau, the Big Bad of season 3. Sophie, meanwhile, never brings up any details of her childhood and only ever talks about cons and acting roles she's had when her past does come up. Hell, the show doesn't even reveal her real name.
• Toby Logan in the Canadian show The Listener has one of these.
• Little Fires Everywhere: In the series almost nothing is known about Mia's past initially, and continuing slivers of it are revealed while it goes on.
• The major characters in Lost.
  • The flashbacks of the most mysterious character, Locke, managed to erode almost all the mystery in his past, and add in some time in a commune never mentioned before or since. So what did the producers do? Skip ahead a few years in flashforward...and give him a new one. How did he get off the island? What happened on the island? Why Jeremy Bentham? How did he die? Why is Locke so badass?
  • You could also add in the island itself, given all the airplane crashes, ship moorings, secret buildings and structures, healing properties, etc. Also, the time travel. Oh, the time travel!
• During the first season of Mad Men, Don Draper became an instant poster boy for this trope. Although most of his mysterious past got revealed over the next season or two, it's continued to have significant repercussions throughout the series.
• Higgins, the Battle Butler of Magnum, P.I., clearly had a complex as well as mysterious past. And his present was none too clear either, WAS he the real Robin Masters?
• Jefferson in Married... with Children, although this was done for comedic effect.
• In practically every other episode of Mutant X, someone from one of the main characters' Mysterious Past would turn up. How many ex-lovers does the typical young mutant-on-the-go have, anyway? Or never-before-mentioned siblings or parents?
• NCIS: Los Angeles: G. Callen. So flippin' mysterious even he doesn't know it. What does the "G" stand for? Even he doesn't know. At least until he learns that his birth name is Grisha Alexandrovich Nikolaev.
• NUMB3RS: Other than serving in the military as a sniper, which he now does for the FBI, nothing else is known for Edgerton's past.
• Odd Squad: Out of everyone in the main cast, only Oprah, Otis and Olive have had their pasts revealed in some manner (i.e., life before Odd Squad). Everyone else's pasts have never been mentioned.
  • Oprah's life before joining Odd Squad is an Expansion Pack Past. All we know is that she was a fruit stand vendor who worked with Yucks Shmumbers on the creation of "juice on the go" (eventually helping her to invent juice boxes), helped get a traitorous Odd Squad agent fired, then joined the organization. What happened between the firing of said agent and her joining Odd Squad includes her delivering newspapers in Norway, then becoming the queen of Portugal, but these events aren't expanded on.
  • Otis's past is more expansive, although we don't know what his backstory is until the Season 2 finale. He was raised by a villainous duck family as a young child, and as he grew older he realized how toxic his family was, eventually bringing in Odd Squad to deal with them once they decided to commit what was essentially genocide. Once they were captured, he became the personal apprentice of Ms. O and joined the organization. Despite this, however, it's not elaborated on exactly how he came to be raised by the ducks.
  • Olive's past is only merely hinted at in one episode, where all that's really revealed of merit is that she was born on a stormy night "many, many moons ago". Since Olive is known for being dramatic at times, mileage tends to vary among fans on whether she actually was born a long time ago on a stormy night, or if she's just overexaggerating.
  • Most, if not all, Enfant Terrible villains seen in the show avert this trope, as it's eventually revealed how they came to be villains in the first place.
• Tristan's background history in The Other Kingdom is intentionally left ambiguous with him playing the typical friendly boy role. The closest he gets to a backstory is that he and his mother constantly had to move and that Tristan's been to four schools within three years, so he's used to having to adjust to his surroundings quickly. Although this leaves the door open for his massive reveal of being a fairy prince, and his long-lost father being the malevolent king of Spartania
• Goofy coroner Woody in Psych appears to have a mysterious past. When being filmed for a documentary, he asked a few oddly specific questions about which countries the film might be seen in, and then spends the rest of the episode trying to disguise his voice and/or face.
• The title character of Remington Steele.
• Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation past was partially explained in Star Trek: Generations, where she was revealed as an El-Aurian refugee but how she ran into Q is still not explained. Also, if there had been a fifth season of Enterprise they would have had a episode featuring Guinan during that era. Whether this would add to or remove some of the mysteriousness will never be known.
• "Plain, simple Garak" of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine may be a tailor, but he's a tailor with several interesting stories about his past... some of which might have some grain of truth to them. While some important facts about him are revealed over the course of the series, his past never gets any less mysterious. In fact, some of the revelations just add to the mystery.
• Bon Chance Louie, of the regrettably short lived Tales of the Gold Monkey, played with this by dropping improbable hints about his own unknown past.
• We Are Lady Parts: According to Amina, no one really knows what Momtaz's past is; she mentions rumors that she's spent time in jail, and that she may or may not have divorced some sheikh. This sense of mystery is only helped by how she's The Faceless, since she wears a niqab.
• As in the books, Thomas Cromwell's past in Wolf Hall is a source of much speculation, though Cardinal Wolsey's additions are left out. When he starts relating an anecdote from his youth to one of his apprentices, everyone in the vicinity quickly gathers around because it's such a rare event.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The enigmatic Dark Angels chapter of Space Marines deliberately keeps an in-universe Mysterious Past to prevent the Inquisition looking too closely at them. With very good reason.
  • The Blood Ravens chapter's recorded history only goes back to M37. They have no verifiable records of any activities before then, so they don't know when the chapter was founded or from which chapter they descend. That means they could be descended from the Thousand Sons (as several pieces of lore suggest) and not know it.
  • Perturabo, Primarch of the Iron Warriors, has no memory of his past before a certain point. He simply woke up one day as a young man on a cliffside with a plethora of oddly known knowledge. All he did know was he felt like something (The Eye of Terror) was watching him.
• Dead of Winter: Alone among the playable characters, Anita Wallace's occupation before the Zombie Apocalypse is "Unknown", and all three of her special event cards have her blatantly lie about her old job. She also has the best possible attack stat and the unique ability to auto-kill a zombie (or wound a fellow survivor) as a free action.

Theatre

• In Tsukino Empire - Unleash your mind - , this is why Hajime is mistrusted by many of the other high-ranking officials in the empire. He is the empire's most powerful soldier, and widely regarded as humanity's last hope, however, he appeared suddenly with no connections or past record. On top of that, he is the only person powerful enough to connect with the genbu one of the most powerful Shinjuu. The only other person powerful enough to connect with a Tier 1 Shinjuu is Prince Shun, and it turns out neither of them are human, and Hajime was summoned to this world by Shun.

Video Games

• Absented Age: Squarebound: Mika had most of her memories stolen by the Gangers and somehow knew that Karen was trapped in the Driftworlds, but not much else about her is revealed in this game.
• Baldur's Gate III has Withers, the mysterious animated skeleton who accompanies the player, and can be found in a temple dedicated to Jergal, Faerun's former God of the Dead before the position was taken by the Dead Three: Myrkul, Bane, and Bhaal. While never explicitly confirmed, it is heavily implied, by his original location in a temple for Jergal, some of his interactions with certain classes, and The Stinger when he addresses the Dead Three with a mix of familiarity and disdain, that Withers actually is Jergal. Concept art of Withers also names him "Jergal".
• In Deadly Premonition, the trading card depicting Olivia states that she has a mysterious past. Nothing about her past is ever revealed, with the plot showing her to be in love with her husband and worried that his frequent drinking with Diane might actually be an affair.
• Death Road to Canada has a Trait revolving around this. As a positive, any character with Mysterious Past gets three points to any combat skill at random, but the downside is that their personality stats are randomized and extreme.
• All Guardians from Destiny have no recollection of their past lives when they are resurrected by their Ghosts for the first time, which is exacerbated by the fact that, in certain cases, centuries have gone by since their death. This is an Enforced Trope, as the Vanguard forbids Guardians from trying to learn about their pre-resurrection lives to prevent them from being distracted from their duty to defend the City. Ana Bray is an outcast in part because of her insistence on researching her past. It's also enforced by the Traveler itself, which seems to want Guardians to stay amnesiac for unknown reasons; Eris Morn eventually admits that she's been slowly regaining memories of her pre-Guardian life ever since her Ghost was destroyed prior to the events of the series, suggesting that Ghosts latently suppress the memories of their Guardians.
• Dragon Age II has Malcolm, Hawke's father. All we know is that he was a Circle Mage once and then he somehow ended up as an apostate and a mercenary. He was very secretive about his past, refusing to speak about it with his own family. His only reply to Hawke's mother Leandra about "freedom's price" never being cheap, may hint it was of dark and troubled kind.
  • The Legacy DLC reveals a bit more about Malcolm's past. He was forced by the Grey Wardens into using Blood Magic to help seal an ancient darkspawn/Tevinter Magister in an old ruin. The reason he never told Leandra was that they threatened to kill her and their unborn child if he refused. Still dark and troubled, but not so much his fault as many other examples.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Pelinal Whitestrake, the legendary 1st Era hero of mankind/racist berserker. Believed to have been a Shezarrine, physical incarnations of the spirit of the "dead" creator god Lorkhan (known to the Imperials as "Shezarr"), Pelinal came to St. Alessia to serve as her divine champion in the war against the Ayleids. He first appeared in a vision to Alessia and later showed up in person to Alessia's camp, drenched in Ayleid blood. Nothing else about where he came from is really known, though there are hints that he might be a Cyborg the Divines plucked from the future, which would also help explain his madness.
  • The legendary Chimeri/Dunmeri hero Lord Indoril Nerevar. Very little is known of his early life and even then, there are conflicting sources. Vivec states that Nerevar was a mere merchant caravan guard before rising to become the leader of the Chimer people. Additionally, Ashlander tradition holds that he was not born in the land that would eventually become Morrowind, though does not specify where he was born. Even the year of Nerevar's birth is unknown, though had to have been prior to 1E 369 when he first appears in the historical record.
  • Rajhin, the legendary Khajiiti Impossible Thief, is another. He is credited with, among other things, stealing the Ring of Khajiiti off the arm of the Daedric Prince Mephala, stealing a tattoo off the neck of the sleeping Empress, and stealing the entire city of Falinesti. Understandably, most tales of Rajhin have reached the point of legend, which obscure the facts of his life. The place of his birth is known (Black Kiergo, Senchal, Elsweyr), but not the year. He was apparently already deceased prior to the events of the Planemeld in 2E 582, however, Empress Kintrya (from whom Rajhin stole a neck tattoo according to legend) began rule in 3E 48, hundreds of years later. With Khajiiti legend holding that Rajhin became a demigod, and given other examples in the series of how achieving godhood can alter the universe's timeline (Talos, the Tribunal, etc.), it could possibly explain some of the conflicting tales and timelines.
  • Very little is known about the Night Mother, a mysterious figure who has appeared in several games in the series as the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, and even much of that information conflicts with or is disputed by other sources. It is believed that she was once a mortal woman, but when she lived and died, and even what race she was, is not definitely known.
• In Fallout: New Vegas, the Player Character themself (called the Courier) has one. You find out more about the past of your companions than anything about your own.
  • Arcade Gannon's past remains largely a mystery until the Courier earns his trust.
  • Lonesome Road, the final story-based DLC, reveals some of the Courier's past before the events of the main game. They were formerly a courier working in NCR territory who helped create a thriving community before it was annexed by the NCR. One day, they delivered a package from Navarro that activated the dormant nukes under the place (formerly a military missile base) and inadvertently detonated them, thus turning a possible nation in the making to the hellhole that is The Divide. That's still the extent of what you learn about the Courier's past, and the game even lets you deny that it is their past and insist that Ulysses has the wrong person.
• From F-Zero, Captain Falcon qualifies. Besides allegedly coming from Port Town, literally nothing is known about him, be it his origins or motivation. We don't even know who built the Blue Falcon (although it is hinted that he built it himself).
• Subverted Trope in Ghostrunner. The Amnesiac Hero asks about his past several times and the game sets you up for some sort of reveal about who you did before the game later on. It turns out that you were biologically grown to be a Ghostrunner, and therefore had no past before becoming what you are now.
• In Little Nightmares, virtually nothing is known about who the protagonist Six is or how she ended up in the Maw. Even in the second game, there is no information about how she ended up in the Wilderness in the beginning of the game.
• In Little Nightmares II, it's not clear how and why the protagonist Mono ends up in the Wilderness or how he has power and control over televisions. The TV behind him at the start of the game might imply that he came from somewhere else before ending up in the Wilderness.
• Mass Effect: An Earthborn Commander Shepard was in a gang growing up. It's not exactly clear how much trouble he/she actually got into, but it's more-or-less explicit that there was at least some petty crime going on.
  • The kett of Mass Effect: Andromeda are a whole race with one of these. Something happened to them which made them think turning other aliens into more kett was a great idea, but they're unwilling to share it with outsiders, and anything they did tell the angara about their origins at first contact was contradictory.
• Zero from Mega Man X. No one knows about his past at all, except for the Big Bad Sigma, resulting in an Evil Plan in what's supposed to be the series' ending, Mega Man X5.
• Sylux from Metroid Prime: Hunters. Nothing is known about it except that it hates the Galactic Federation and Samus for helping them.
• The Stranger in the Terminal Reality game Nocturne (1999). Several characters make passing reference to it. A sequel is not out of the question.
• Seimei and Kagura from Onmyoji, seeing as they're both amnesiac. Helping them learn about their pasts is an important part of the story.
• Befitting an expy of the Man with No Name from the Dollars Trilogy, Cole Cassidy's past in Overwatch is more questions than answers. We still have no idea on his upbringing and the circumstances that led him to join the Deadlock Gang, or what incident caused him to lose his arm and have it replaced with a prosthetic, or how he came up with "Jesse McCree", the contrived identity that threatened to consume his sense of self.
• Daniel Garner from Pain Killer is frequently hinted to have a evil yet mysterious past that prevents him to enter Heaven, even though he vehemently denies it. By the time of the sequel/remake, he begins to question his memory, and we are presented with some glimpses from it that suggest he may have had a violent life in the military. In the end, however, we discover that his impossibility to enter Heaven was not tied to his past, and so whatever he was indeed guilty of something terrible or not is left unclear.
• The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment, very much so. He starts out with complete amnesia and even after he finds out the overall story of his former lives, much is still left vague.
• Puyo Puyo: The game Puyo Puyo Puzzle Pop reveals that despite Amitie's warm-hearted and open personality, no one knows about her upbringing and personal background.
• Certain characters in Rainbow Six Siege have pieces of their biography redacted out. Vigil's takes it a step further and redacts his birthplace ^notethough it's somewhere in North Korea, from the globe on his bio. Furthermore, he's abandoned/forgotten his birth name and has very little memory of his childhood, beyond being on the run constantly and having to abandon his mother in a jungle.
• In the Rune Factory series of games, the protagonist is always one of these, due to Laser-Guided Amnesia where he forgets his past. Lampshaded by a character in Rune Factory 3.
• Justified in Sonny, where the titular protagonist remembers nothing about his life; he can't even remember his own name, leading him to take the moniker "Sonny" after the guy who finds him addresses him as such (Sonny's dead before the first game even starts and resurrected as a zombie aboard a research vessel). In fact, the only major character who seems to have any real semblance of a canon backstory as of the end of the second game is Roald.
• Oddly enough for a protagonist, Sonic the Hedgehog's past is almost completely unknown besides his birthplace (Christmas Island) and the fact that he and Dr. Eggman have been enemies since before the first game. Even as characters like Knuckles and Shadow have their backstories fleshed out, Sonic remains as enigmatic as ever. However, this is only really the case for the main series titles, as the various cartoons, comics, and film have gone into his history.
• Marina from Splatoon 2 is the only known octoling living amongst inklings. Octolings are still considered enemies to inklings, so Marina is especially jarring. It's unknown how she got above ground or how she met her music partner Pearl. There are some implications that she was a high-ranking part of the Octarian army. All we know thus far is that Marina heard the Squid Sisters during the final battle in the first game and she was inspired to become a musician.
• Sunset Overdrive: The poster for B.V.R, a.k.a "Borg - The Vengeful Rider":
  A missing alien with a secret past...
  A twisted family legacy...
  And a lizard who is right behind you...
• Anderson from Three the Hard Way. Initially introduced as a simple martial artist looking for new challenges, he is later revealed to have much deeper ties to the conflict that is happening in the game, and beyond. His dialogues with other characters imply that he is closely affiliated with the Kaibutsu lords (who call him their "brother"), King Carolus and even the Govan's founder, Candor — meaning that he's probably several centuries old, and the game wraps up with almost absolutely nothing concluded about his nature, identity or his motivations.

Visual Novels

• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: Despite having the game named after him, next to nothing is known about Apollo's past, and what we do learn pertains to other characters (i.e. how he happens to be Thalassa's abandoned baby). This was somewhat alleviated in the followup Dual Destinies, but it still doesn't cover that much. Spirit of Justice answered a lot more, making Apollo no longer an example.
• Rosé Mulan from Spirit Hunter: NG starts off as a mysterious woman who offers to open up to Akira after they've worked together. She eventually shows that she works as a magician, knows about the supernatural, was raised in the upper-class, and has criminal knowledge, but besides that she keeps tight-lipped about her past and how it all connects together.

Webcomics

• Almost all the characters from Collar 6 had this to an extent, with the author using how little we know about them to create suspicion of a traitor (and some real Epileptic Trees). It's now being played dead-straight with Butterfly who, as it turns out has been in the Association for less than a year, and wants revenge on Michelle for some reason, even though Michelle has no idea who she is.
• In Crimson Knights we know very little about why Mot joined the Order, only that it involved something terrible that he must atone for.
• Jorge, an outfielder for The Portland Wheatshippers from The Dugs- Baseball Comics has a mysterious past speckled with action sequences and general gratuitous violence. Another example can be found here.
• In El Goonish Shive, the backstory to Tedd's mom has yet to be fully revealed, and everything we learn about it raises more questions. Elliot's parents, who can inexplicably organise a search party including flying searchers as efficiently as some of the more military-trained characters, possibly have a mysterious past as well, although in this case Dan has said he has no intent of ever explaining it in any way.
• In Gifts of Wandering Ice Elie is a girl who thought to be a living "ice gift". But who she really is she is yet to learn.
• In Groovy, Kinda, Edison Lighthouse, as Rosemary Pipkin, lived with her husband and teenage son in a Riverdale like suburb. Now she's a presumably single, alcoholic artist living in an apartment in Innesmount. Larry Pye used to date The Famous Supermodel Victoria, Eleanor's sister, until something happened that no one is ever allowed to mention.
• The Guy Upstairs: We know next to nothing about Rozy, only that she has no parents, grew up in an orphanage, and doesn’t remember much of her childhood. She also has a scar on her stomach that Hawa says looks like a stab wound.
• In Impure Blood, Caspian, Elnor, and Dara all have this. Bits and pieces are emerging.
  • Whatever things Caspian's father covered up.
  • Why Elnore got attached to Dara, and why either of them sticks around Caspian when they could individually beat him to a pulp.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Haley has a mysterious past, although most of it was revealed during the Empire of Blood arc.
  • Nale also revealed one, by telling Malak that he wanted to kill him since he was nine.
• John from Out There.
• Jonas Faulkner in The Phoenix Requiem.
• Fuzzy from Sam & Fuzzy. Recent arcs have shed light on his activities between his latest bout of Laser-Guided Amnesia and until he met Sam, but what went on before that is unknown.
• In Skin Horse:
  • The Abbess of the Order of Notaries Public has a mysterious past, partially revealed as having been a member of Parliament Funkadelic "But where George went, I could not follow". (It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context, and is the point where even Unity admits things are getting weird.)
  • Unity herself; Dr Lee created her for Anasigma as a bioweapon, and she was recruited by Skin Horse after a rampage. What happened between these two events is unknown.
  • Gavotte apparently just turned up at Skin Horse one day and announced she was taking the management spot until she got bored of it. The personel files have no idea why, or what backstory gives a swarm of bees human intelligence and the power of speech.
• Slightly Damned loves this trope, as characters and their pasts are revealed more or less on a need to know basis. It seems like quite a lot of things were already happening before Rhea ended up in hell...
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Bun-bun. At first he just came from a pet store as a joke and it was more that he had no past at all. Then the readers were finally shown some of it and the rest became very mysterious.
  • Oasis is similar, although by now we know so many details that what's missing is mainly the question of what the heck is she?
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Mikkel is established to have been fired from multiple jobs, most likely because of his only partially under control Deadpan Snarker and The Gadfly habits. This has so far been used to explain why he wasn't part of the Despair Event Horizon battle of the Danish army a decade ago despite having worked at its location around that time, a gag in which an admiral from his home country recognizes Mikkel among the members of his current Multinational Team and to reveal that Lalli is not actually the first time Mikkel has worked alongside a mage quite late into the story (Chapter 12). Even what he was doing right before joining the Multinational Team is left vague, as he may have very well been actually been doing a Sure, Let's Go with That to Sigrun's guess about it.
• Rin Satsuki of Touhou Nekokayou, who was Dummied Out of the Touhou game where she was supposed to make her debut. In this comic, she appears to have some sort of past in which she had a conflict with Yukari; the mystery is maintained through carefully not using As You Know. Word of God has stated that all would be eventually revealed in an associated Fan Fic.
• Tower of God:
  • Bam grew up in a cave before he met Rachel. That is all we know about his past. Nothing about his parents, nothing about how he got there.
  • Likewise, Rachel herself, who everyone attests is an extremely average person, has only a very fragmented backstory which up to this point leaves more questions than it wants to give answers. Considering the things she's done, you'd be very eager for answers.
• Gerard has one in Weak Hero. How did he earn the nickname 'Mad Hound' back in middle school? Why does he sleep in such strange places? Why does he know how to play guitar like a pro? Where and why did he learn how to read with a personalised tarot deck? What's his part-time job? Nearly a hundred chapters in and all the information known about Gerard just raises more questions.

Web Original

• Smith from Critical Hit has this problem. Neither Rob, his player, nor Rodrigo, the GM, have revealed how much he knows himself, or what exactly is the cause of this.
• Of all the party members in Break Quest Club, the one we know the least about is Goodbad the Badgood, the kindhearted barbarian who isn't happy about his past and actively shuts down inquiries into his past. The only details we know for sure are that he liked being the cook, and apparently ate a cat once (he's really not proud of that one).
• Things we know about The Storyteller: he is or was a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, and he has traveled the Fallout wastelands for many years, possibly even decades, in order to spread and receive information (hence the name). And.... that's about it.
• In SERA 00, Harley Breeze manages to keep all details of her past completely hidden not only from her fans, but also from her fellow members of the titular group.
• We know fairly little about the Unwanted Houseguest. It isn't even clear why he's called that, since he seems to be the owner and sole living resident of Aberfoyle Manor.
• Welcome to Night Vale: Cecil. Even after two episodes that actually focused on his past (Cassette and [Best Of?]), we still know very little about it. We know he had a mother and brother- they disappeared at some point when he was a teenager, and we still have no idea what happened to them, and Cecil can't even remember them. Then, a flickering movement that teenage Cecil was seeing out of the corner of his eye attacked him from a mirror- and that's it. That's all we know. Then [Best Of?] came around and raised even more questions with the revelation that Cecil is several hundred years old and has been around since before radio.
  • It's been revealed that Cecil has a sister, niece, and brother-in-law (Abbey, Janice, and Steve Carlsburg respectively) and in Ghost Stories it's revealed that his mother disappeared when he was a teenager so his sister practically raised him from that point.
  • The episode Cal revisits the brother that Cecil couldn't remember from Cassette. He appears to be from an alternate reality.
  • Carlos the Scientist, too. He's almost certainly the Carlos that used to work at the University of What It Is before going on sabbatical to investigate mysterious happenings in the desert. The problem is that that Carlos has been missing for decades, when our Carlos has only been in Night Vale for a few years. And that's all we know about him.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The Lich's origin is quite contradictory and vague. While at first it was believed that he was created by the Mushroom War, other theories suggest that he is an ancient being, or that his origin is related to GOLB. Even after the end of the series, his nature is never explained with certainty and why he wants the extinction of all life.
• Ben 10: While he's considered the biggest enemy in Ben's vast and ever-growing Rogues Gallery and his action triggered the events that shaped the entire franchise, not much is known about Vilgax's backstory in the Classic timeline. Although we catch glimpses of his past through the flashbacks of other characters, little is known about who he was before his fixation on obtaining the Omnitrix. In Omniverse's finale, we discover that Vilgax stumbled upon the Omnitrix via time travel shenanigans and had a history of betrayal even as a youngster. However, beyond these details, very little else is revealed about him.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • King Sombra enslaved a hidden Fisher Kingdom and hid its one Kryptonite Factor to him behind traps, and... that's it. We never learn how he became One-Man Army-powerful, nor just why he wanted the kingdom—but it's implied he wanted to boost himself even more via its special magic before taking the rest of the world.
  • Princess Celestia and Princess Luna's backstories have never been given in full, the depictions have various contradictions, and the youngest we've seen them at has been adolescence. According to The Journal of the Two Sisters, the two were raised as alicorns and were most likely born alicorns, but The Crystalling contradicts this by implying they were not born alicorn. The book has also been contradicted elsewhere such as My Little Pony: Legends of Magic showing they had Cutie Marks as teens (versus getting them as adults like in the book) and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Forgotten Friendship stating Clover the Clever was male (as opposed to Captain Hurricane being the sole male of the Founders). As a result, the sisters' backstories are vaguely defined at best.
  • Cozy Glow, one of the members of the Big Bad Ensemble of the last two seasons, is a sociopathic little pony (literally, she's an Enfante Terrible) who manipulates everybody in Twilight's Friendship School and seeks to destroy it from within (and later just plain tries to take over/destroy Equestria) for reasons that are never explained. She never gives a Motive Rant, we never get any information regarding why. In fact, the only reason she was created, was to be a twist villain. Needless to say, the lack of a backstory of clear cut motives did not do well with portions of the fandom.
• Gadget from Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is an interesting case. She is seen as a character with a very mysterious past, with Fan Fic authors having a large slew of differing ideas. However, the important parts of her backstory were stated within minutes of her first appearance: she's the daughter of an old pilot friend of Monty's, Geegaw Hackwrench, who had died a year before to the start of the series
• Galaxy Rangers: Robert Mandell and crew explored three of the Rangers' pasts with "Ariel" and duologies "Phoenix / New Frontier" and "Supertroopers / Galaxy Stranger." The show was canned before exploring Doc's backstory, leaving only a few hints that, given Doc's fast-talk ability, may or may not be the whole truth...
• The titular character of Jimmy Two-Shoes. There have been several references to the fact that he's an outsider, but exactly what he's doing in Miseryville, and how he ended up there, has not been revealed. In the original concept, the answer was he had specifically been sent to Hell by accident, but even after Executive Meddling turned Hell into Miseryville in the final product, fans still commonly accept this as canon.
• The main antagonist in the animated series "Belphegor". There are a few hints throughout the episodes that he may have lost someone dear to him and that, at first, he wasn't a Diabolical Mastermind with a secret identity. One episode implies Belphegor may have been a high rank military official and still remain one as a cover and to have access to secret weapons and technology. But who he is, how he became Belphegor and what happened in his past is never revealed.
• Bulkhead in Transformers: Prime served in the Great War as part of a team called the Wreckers, and he also has a bit of a history with the Decepticon Breakdown. Though tidbits are dropped here and there, we never get the full story.
• Played with in The Fairly OddParents!. After learning that Cosmo sunk the city of Atlantis nine times, Wanda asks where was she when this happened and he responded "I have a whole secret past that you know nothing about".
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, the essential areas of the main characters' pasts are revealed through flashbacks. Except for Uncle Iroh's; all that is revealed about his backstory come in the form of vague statements by characters who know more than we do.
  • And Iroh isn't the only one, either; we know virtually nothing about Guru Pathik — where he came from, where his people are, and what happened to him after he helped Aang gain control of the Avatar State. All that we do know is that he was a "spiritual brother" of the Air Nomads, and a personal friend of Aang's airbending teacher and father figure, Monk Gyatso.
• The titular Wander from Wander over Yonder is very secretive about his past, with the few tidbits given over the course of the series establishing that he is far, far older than he appears, and little else. This is occasionally Played for Laughs, most notably "The Legend", where a group of children share their (horribly inaccurate) theories about a legendary hero (aka Wander, who's sitting right next to them) to the shock and confusion of him and Sylvia.
• Rick and Morty
  • The details of Rick Sanchez life before he moved back in with the Smiths is almost entirely unaccounted for; all we know is that he was at least still living with Beth and her mother around the time she was a young child. Other than that, both his life before getting married and the whatever he was doing while separated from his family is entirely unknown. Beth even alludes to his "incredibly vague backstory" at one point. It's mentioned in "The Wedding Squanchers" that Rick and others were involved in numerous atrocities fighting for freedom from the Galactic Federation, to the point of being labeled a terrorist. Exactly what these atrocities were are unknown though. Knowing Rick, probably best it remains that way.
  • When asked, Evil Morty avoids the question of who his original Rick was and which was his original reality. It's especially egregious because he looks no different from a standard Morty- who all tend to share similar histories and temperaments- but his personality and utterly unabashed hatred of Rick is so extreme compared to his other selves that it's hard to imagine he had a "standard" Morty upbringing, in any case. The glimpse of his Start of Darkness in "Unmortricken" shows the event that finally pushed him to don his signature eyepatch and usurp his Rick, as well as what he was doing during his prior appearances, but raises further questions regarding his apparently absent family from the house and what prior events he underwent that eventually solidified into his utter contempt for the entire Rick-Morty dynamic, not to mention where he learned about the Central Finite Curve.
• The Gems in Steven Universe all have these due to being thousands of years old. Even when we do learn about some of their involvements in the Great Offscreen War, there is still a lot about them that has yet to be revealed, such as who Pearl originally belonged to before she joined Rose's rebellion, why Lapis was visiting Earth before getting trapped in the mirror if she wasn't fighting in the war, and most importantly, Rose's exact origins and what caused her to rebel and prevent Earth from being turned into a colony. You'd think Steven would just ask them about their pasts, especially after they learned that they shouldn't keep so much information from him, but instead they repeat the same mistakes of not telling him even when it would solve problems much faster, likely because if we found out sooner, there would be less of a plot.
  • Gems in general have this. It is unknown how they first came into being (As they are artificially created), why they feel the need to reproduce despite being almost immortal, the origins of the Diamonds and their Fantastic Caste System (And Disproportionate Retribution), and Why Pink Diamond was significantly smaller and less mature than Blue and Yellow.
• Miraculous Ladybug has Lila Rossi: suddenly appearing as a Foreign Exchange Student at the end of season one, she started making up some wild claims to get attention. Some are very clearly Blatant Lies, but the season 2 finale showed she was telling the truth about being the daughter of an Italian diplomat, and there's still no explanation for the hand-to-hand combat skills she had not mentioned,^note In "Chameleon" an irritated Marinette threw a paper ball at her, and Lila reflexively caught it in the same way boxers normally parry a punch. Later in the episode she's Akumatized with the ability to transform, powers and all, in whoever she kisses, and as Chat Noir she inflicts a massive Curb-Stomp Battle on Ladybug with hand-to-hand skills that Chat Noir never showed or why she seemed to recognize the picture of a past Chinese holder of the Fox Miraculous... That by some coincidence looks like an adult Lila (although the last bit is eventually explained by The Reveal that Lila has been wearing a wig and colored contact lenses the whole time). Season five ups the ante by revealing that Lila has multiple identities, claims to be the daughter of at least three different women, and that Lila probably isn't her real name.
• Sonic Boom: In the mainline game series, Shadow's origin involves a number of human characters, but with the exception of Eggman and his robots this series is set in a World of Funny Animals and he's never given an explained origin.

Real Life

• Tommy Wiseau's past is virtually unknown. He claims to be from New Orleans, but his accent suggests somewhere in Eastern Europe. He's also independently wealthy, but the source of his wealth is unknown–he claims it was from selling leather jackets. Several people who worked with him on The Room (2003) have proposed theories, and one—who claims to have seen something official from the US government regarding his immigration—said that the truth was the saddest story he had ever heard. He did not share the details.

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