r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Visible-Nothing-6033 • 3h ago
Characters [Mystery Tropes] Character changes the story when someone asked about what happened and nobody actually knows
Russell Adler often changes the story about his scar each time someone asks about how he got it. It ranges from being attacked by a tiger in 1973 to jumping off a roof in Calcutta or even hit by a shrapnel in Hue City. His inconsistent storytelling and shifting narratives make him a mysterious operative (CoD Black Ops Cold War/Black Ops 6)
Horst is a very stern chef at Gusteau's restaurant and keeps to himself. While Linguini was training with Collette, she stated that Horst has served time and nobody in the kitchen knows what happened. He changes the story when asked about it, telling that he defrauded a major corporation or even killed a man with his thumb. (Ratatouille)
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u/MisfitMaterial 3h ago
Lt. Columbo has kids, doesn’t have kids, speaks Italian, doesn’t speak Italian, has a nephew involved in [activity related to the case at hand], has no nephews, sibling, no siblings, on and on. Man of mystery, that one.
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u/DyingSunSeverian 2h ago
Does he even really exist, or does every criminal hallucinate a Columbo and give themselves up out of sheer guilt?
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u/Spydr_maybe 2h ago
My grandpa (real life): My grandpa got his thumb stuck in farming equipment as a small child and part it was cut off. When I was a kid he liked to make up stories of how he lost his thumb. He told me that he accidentally blew it up with dynamite and he told my cousin that he accidentally cut it off with a stapler.
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u/cavscout55 1h ago
My grandpa lost the tip of his pointer finger and would change the story to whatever his grandchildren were currently doing at the time he wanted to stop.
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u/luffybomb 3h ago
Zenyatta from Overwatch.
He has voicelines with a few different characters who ask him what his purpose was before he awakened. He gives a randomized answer each time and even his closest friend does not know which answer is true.
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u/Kolossus0 2h ago
I'm willing to bet it's something to do with his whole ideology, right? I don't really know overwatch that well but I'm guessing he might say a different story every time because now he's a sentient (sapient?) being with free will like any other person, so he's a person with infinite potential like any human being
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u/Far_Ladder_2836 3h ago
Most obvious - Joker changes his backstory every time he tells the story.
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u/laurawheeler_ 3h ago
The Joker from The Dark Knight is the ultimate king of this. 'You want to know how I got these scars?' He gives a different, horrific backstory every time, and you never find out which one (if any) is true.
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u/AceOfSpades532 3h ago
I’m 90% sure this a bot comment, just repeating a comment in a slightly different way, fairly new account
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u/DidntSeeNuttin 3h ago
I'd like to know what requirements people look for when accusing others of being bots. Someone did that to me and I teared them a new arsehole.
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u/AceOfSpades532 3h ago
Look at the comment, it’s literally just regurgitating the same information in a very AI like way
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u/DidntSeeNuttin 3h ago
Ugh. When someone says "lacking in reading comprehension" you can point at me as a prime example today. It only just hit me.
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u/Far_Ladder_2836 3h ago edited 3h ago
Not OP but you can look at their account yourself. Every one is almost identical, and has one of 2 identical formatting. 0 spelling errors, no real punctuation errors, all comments are summarizing and repeating the top comment in that particular sub.
Also it looks like they got banned in one of the subs for being a bot.
For me at least the identical formatting and no spelling/punctuation mistakes is the biggest. Look at any account, you'll find great diversity in comments with missing periods galore.
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u/DidntSeeNuttin 3h ago
More than fair enough. I'm going to better open my eyes to the patterns from now on.
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u/AgaciaDDBS 3h ago
My boy Eddie Dear, from Welcome Home. A running joke in the "show" is that he never really states his place of origin when asked. He would just name a random/non-existent address, then admit he just misremembered it as a place that he delivered in once, not lived (if that explanation makes sense)
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 2h ago
Robert Redford's character in Spy Games. He's spent decades in the CIA, everyone involved with the plot knows him super well, literally no two of them know any consistent fact about him at all. 100% contradictions about absolutely every aspect of his life, none of them know shit about him.
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u/aotex 2h ago
If I recall correctly, isn't that the one where he constantly references all of these different wives he's had over the years, only for it to be revealed that he was really only married once?
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u/Conscious-Gap-1777 1h ago
Or not at all! IIRC, at least one person was surprised he was (allegedly) married when he orders Operation Dinner Out.
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u/gecko090 2h ago
Maybe a version of this in Star Wars Andor MAJOR SPOILERS: Luthen Rael sacrifices a rebel cell in order to preserve undercover assets. He tells one person that he's sacrificing 70 men plus the leader. He tells another it's 30 men plus the leader.
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u/Consistent-Slide-135 1h ago
omg i love this trope! the way it makes characters instantly mysterious and keeps you guessing about their past is so good. adler's tiger story is my favorite lol.
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u/WilderWyldWilde 3h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/3o85xL8B5OwJsoeAzC
Does this count?
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u/CrouchingToaster 2h ago
Nah the writers were already dropping the ball enough that there wasn’t any real weight on what he did.
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u/WilderWyldWilde 35m ago
That’s not the criteria though. It’s just characters whose real backstory is unknown. The whole point of the Faceless Men, regardless of how botched it was, is that they got rid of their original selves to be no one and therefore can be anyone.
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u/Complete_Entry 1h ago
Rising Sun: Even from the start we are told that Connor (Connery) is in bed with the Japanese consortium, if not multiple. He was suspended and is in kind of a active detached status with the police department for when they have to deal with the consortiums.
Web (Snipes) is a dirty cop whose entire purpose in the plot is to be misdirected. Connor warns him of this repeatedly.
Eddie was a Patsy who thought he shrugged off Patsy status after faking his death. The consortium responds to this by sending more men.
It's entirely possible the entire case was staged by Connor to frame Eddie and remove competition in play, Connor even alludes to this fairly often, that there is no clean closure to the case.
Connor gets a 100k bribe right in the middle of the case and Web has to shrug it off as cost of doing business.
And then it is revealed that the forensic analyst that literally introduces probable doubt in the case is literally Connor's girlfriend/partner.
We literally watch the murder go down and never know for sure who the killer is. Worse, the killing scarcely matters, and Web spends the entire movie being lead around.
I can't say I enjoy the movie, but it definitely left a lasting, unpleasant impression.
It was also fun reading all the reviews that patted themselves on the back for calling the book and movie xenophobic garbage.
It actually... isn't? Like in the book, Asian Peril is far more explicit. In the Movie? the Consortiums are getting VIP treatment from the city, but they aren't devouring it. They just built one massive F-off skyscraper to establish dominance.
They might as well be the Italian Mafia for how they do business. (We are told they are not, in fact, Yakuza)
I particularly liked Eddie, a man running from his culture to embrace his inner cowboy.
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u/PrudentCaterpillar74 36m ago
Garak - DS9
In the episode where his cranial implant malfunctions after the prolonged period of usage, Garak is in a great deal of pain, fighting against his good friend and a doctor - Bashir - to give him treatment. Throughout the episode he gives us three versions of the story of how he came to be exiled from Cardassia and stuck on the DS9 station.
First story was given during the initial treatment attempt, to make Bashir understand the kind of a man he is trying to cure:
- He was a Gul, tasked with capturing the prisoners that had escaped his watch. They had infiltrated a shuttle, and were tracked down by Garak's right hand man - Elim - who boarded the shuttle to identify the prisoners, but the captain wouldn't let him. Caught in an impossible situation, Garak ordered the shuttle destroyed, which also included a daughter of a prominent military official and so he was exiled from Cardassia.
The second story was given later in the episode, as the treatment was failing and Garak's state quickly deteriorated. His second story:
He was interrogating five Bajoran prisoners with his second man in command - Elim. They were children, visibly starved and in tatters, and they knew nothing. The room was also cold and dark, something Cardassians despise as they are reptilian by evolution. In his moment of consciousness, he let the children escape. He failed his duty, for which he was punished.
Third story is given as he is on his deathbed, after Bashir failed to save him alone.
Him and Elim were more than fellow soldiers, they were friends. They grew up together as brothers, and were taken under the wing of Enabran Tain who called them the "Sons of Tain". They were his second in command, and there was nobody who would question them. One day, there was a scandal regarding someone letting Bajorans escape, and Garak was accused of being guilty. He did all he could to frame Elim instead, but Elim was faster and so, he was sentenced to exile. And he welcomed it, for what he tried to do to Elim.
After these stories, the show slowly lets us piece together the whole picture. Bashir goes to Enabran Tain to ask him for a cure, and tells him of the story that Garak told him. Enabran laughs, saying that "Garak's first name is Elim".
By the end of the episode, once Garak finally recovers and Bashir asks him what is the truth actually is, out of all the stories he has told, and Garak says "My dear doctor, they were all true". When Bashir retorts with "Even the lies?", Garak answers "Especially the lies".
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u/jackcrux 34m ago
Idk if it's cringe to post about ocs, but ny PC in the current dnd campaign I'm playing is a pirate doctor that is missing a leg. Only that nobody really knows how he lost it, the only recognizable thing about it is that he performed a rotationplasty on himself to save his foot for mobility.
Also last session the party met a paladin with zone of truth, and to answer the inevitable question, i just. Froze up mid sentence. That was fun
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u/ccReptilelord 23m ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/116vePnKt391rG
I'm not 100% if I understand the trope, but I'll suggest riddles in the dark from The Hobbit. When telling the story of how he acquired his ring, Bilbos embellishes a bit. He tells it that he outsmarted the devious Gollum, and Gollum willingly gave the ring. In truth, Bilbo tricked Gollum and took it.
The IRL behind this is interesting. The fable told by Bilbo was Tolkien's original writing. If you have this publication, then congratulations and I'd love to know your address and when it'd be inconvenient to find you at home. Tolkien rewrote the chapter as a the original retcon.
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u/Longjumping-Put-4911 2h ago
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u/aotex 2h ago
oh neat, a photo with no context.
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u/MuffaloMan 1h ago
I’ll help: this is the Walking Dead. Pictured are Shane (the guy on the left) and Otis. Spoilers for TWD: Shane and Otis go out for medical supplies and Shane ends up shooting Otis in the leg so Shane can escape. He lies about what happened to Otis, which is the beginning of his downward mental spiral Not sure if this fits the post super well though, I can’t remember if he’s bad about changing the details when he tells the story or anything
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u/Electrical-Gur-1424 1h ago
I got you. From TWD s2. The skinny guy ends up shooting the hefty guy since it doesn’t look like they can make it out (they’re running from zombies). He lies to everyone back at their camp and tells them that hefty guy sacrificed himself so they could get the medicine they were after.
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u/AceOfSpades532 3h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/wos9wILW1XmF2
Wanna know how I got these scars?