Cody Martin: I'm Wing Lee. Who are you?
Zack Martin: Cody Martin.
Cody Martin: ... I hate you.
Bob wants to get involved in something that he has never done before, but he doesn't want anybody to know it is him. His name is easy to recognize, so he signs up under a different name. The name he uses? Fakename McPicklemeister.
There are many ways for an alias to fall under this trope. It could just be the character's real name spelled differently or backwards. It could just be the name of somebody they know. Or, if the character is really lazy, their alias could just be their real name. Sometimes, the name gives away the nature of the subterfuge, making the pseudonym pointless. The name could also be just too silly or unusual to be a real name. No matter how lazy and/or obvious the name is to the audience, their fake name still manages to fool the most of the other characters in-universe. Maybe it works because they don't actually make a physical appearance, or maybe their alias includes a disguise to conceal who they are.
These aliases are often used in Prank Calls. Typically the recipient of the call figures out the name is fake, but can't trace it to a person due to only hearing them.
It also likely works because they're presenting themselves to people who don't know them personally. If such is the case, expect the whole thing to fall apart when somebody who does know them and hears the alias shows up and reveals who they really are, either because their alias sounds like only something they would come up with or they saw them stand up when the alias was called.
Subtrope of Known by Corrupted Name. Not the same as Paper-Thin Disguise, though the two can occur at the same time. Compare and contrast Atrocious Alias, when a character chooses an embarrassing name for their secret identity. The character who chooses such a name may be a Giver of Lame Names.
Subtropes:
- Character Name Alias: Choosing a fictional character or celebrity for your fake identity.
- I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference]: A timetraveller names themselves after someone that people from their time would know but people from the past wouldn't have heard of.
- Line-of-Sight Alias: Naming yourself after the first thing you see.
- Louis Cypher: When a God or Devil's name gives their nature away.
- Real Name as an Alias: Picking your own name as an alias.
- Sdrawkcab Alias: An alias that is your own name, but backwards.
- Sue Donym: Your real name, but pronounced or spelled slightly differently.
- This Is My Name on Foreign: Giving your name translated into another language.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In The Eminence in Shadow, one member of the Seven Shadows, Epsilon, uses "Silon" as a civilian name which is only the two first letters removed from her actual name while two other members, Delta and Zeta, add a letter to the end of theirs to make "Deltan" and "Zetan".
- Gintama: Katsura is prone to giving himself these due to a combination of insisting on being referred to by his real last name and just plain not being very bright. Since he's a wanted outlaw who must avoid identification and arrest, this causes quite a lot of hilarity.
- In Hayate the Combat Butler's anime adaptation Nagi's former butler Himegami shows up wearing a mask and claims his name is "Princess God" - which is just a literal translation of "Himegami".
- Maria no Danzai: Despite cutting off all ties with her old life as a happy housewife and mother, Maria decides to use her maiden name while carrying out her revenge. A common surname, but her old surname just the same. Not to mention, she goes by the name "Maria", which is just a letter away from her real given name, Mari. It's so lazy, in fact, that her ex-husband Taiichiro strongly suspects her identity when hearing about her from Atsuki while investigating Shikimi's disappearance, but doesn't take it further when he goes to her office and finds she's on vacation.
- In chapter 57 of Moriarty the Patriot, Louis James Moriarty signs into a reception as "Lucas J. Morgans" as if absolutely no one at all could piece those names together.
- In one of the novel stories, William uses the name "Willy" to hide his identity while running a scam with Moran, a choice which is simply too embarrassing to comment on.
- In Overlord (2012), the main character, Trapped in Another World as his game character Momonga, goes by "Momon" when disguising himself as a Black Knight. This is not as lethally stupid as it sounds, since he introduces himself as "Ainz Ooal Gown" rather than Momonga when he interacts with New Worlders, so they cannot make the Momon/Momonga connection.
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Veldora decides to put up a takoyaki stall during the Tempest Founder's Festival, and asks Rimuru to get him some assistants using his foreign contacts. Rimuru is warned that the assistants would be reluctant to work with Veldora if they knew he was the Storm Dragon, so he convinces Veldora to use a pseudonym. What pseudonym does Veldora pick? "Pseudonym."
Comic Books
- Aquaman: Aquaman has had this as a character trait since the Golden Age of Comics, where he named himself Mr. Waterman while attending college and Seven-Seas Saunders upon spotting a seven-seas shipping company at the docks. Arthur Curry's names haven't been much better, as a Silver Age appearance had him use the alias "C. King" and reuse the Waterman last name when undercover, while Aquaman (2016) had him use "Aquaman" as a codename within Atlantis.
- In Asterix and the Goths, Asterix and Obelix disguise themselves as Romans, under the brilliantly original aliases of "Asterus" and "Obelus". This works for about half a page because Obelus can't stop giggling about it.
- Astro City: Samaritan uses the alias Asa Martin in order to maintain a cover identity. Granted, he only bothers with the civilian identity because he needs regular access to an Internet connection in order to run the alien computer that keeps him up-to-date with the world's crises.
- Captain America: Once in the late 60s of his comic Captain America decided to head to college to get a job there as an Athletics Instructor. He, a brilliant man, veteran of countless battles and idol to millions Steve Rogers decides to go by the alias... Roger Stevens. Really. It probably helps that he had convinced people at the time that Steve Rogers was a false identity.
- Making it even funnier is that Steve once became the artist for the In-Universe Captain America comic, in which, Depending on the Writer, the character's real name IS Roger Stevens. Steve must be lazy.
- His youthful ward Bucky Barnes himself used the alias "Bucky" throughout World War II, though this has been retconned away since due to being too silly.
- Cap's archenemy the Red Skull, real name Johann Schmidt, has been known to go by John Smith on occassion.
- U.S.A.gent used the alias Jack Daniels for a while after his real identity of John Walker was outed. They are both brands of whiskey, but that kind of goes against the point of an alias, and the brand itself is so well-known that it's rather eyebrow-raising as an alias.
- The Incredible Hulk: In The Incredible Hulk (1962), while disguising himself as a perfectly normal archaeologist, the long-lived supervillain Tyrannus goes under the name... "Mr. Tyrannus".
- Jo: An Adaptation: On Jo March's blog, she refers to her and her sisters by their first initials.
- The Killer: The Killer complains about this when his employers give him a passport with the name "Labataille" for a particular job. They thought they were being cute, but he points out that it's too obvious, although he still manages to slip through customs.
- The Twelve: Captain Wonder's sidekick Tim kept superheroing when Captain Wonder went missing under the name Captain Tim. He went back to civilian life after his superpowers faded away.
- X-Men: During his time at the Black Womb project, Mr. Sinister disguised himself as "Nathan Milbury". In a flashback in Immortal X-Men, Destiny (who is also there) laments how lacking in subtlety this is, even for a man who willingly calls himself "Mr. Sinister".
Fan Works
- Adventures of a Time Lord & a Slayer: When the Salem witch-trial judge asks for her name in I Should Just Stay in on Halloween, Seriously, Buffy decides to give a fake name, one that is simply her friend Cordelia's name.
- In Honey
Harry gives fake names for himself, Ron, Hermione and Neville when questioned by the Ministry of Magic's phone-booth entry. His less-than-inspired choices are Abe Barnhatter, Carla Deladong, Ernie Faysworth and Greg Hoax.
- Issei: The Gaming Gear: The Purifiers' main base in Kuoh is a plumbing sewage repair company called "Pure Drains". Several characters note how obvious or unsubtle it is.
- The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Near the end of Season 1, Zim crafts a new secretive identity for himself as part of his plan to start a revolution against the Tallest, and for the name of this new identity settles on "Miz". When called out on how obvious it is, he says that that's the point, as no one would expect him to use something that obvious — and as Season 2 shows, he's right, due to a combination of that fact and no one thinking he's capable of pulling off "Miz's" acts.
- In Stranger in a Strange Land Harry Potter ends up in an alternate universe where his parents had a daughter instead. While pretending to be her boyfriend he starts to give his real surname when introducing himself to her mother, only to hastily change it to "Powers".
Film
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- In Avengers: Endgame, when Tony travels back in time to retrieve the Space Stone, he is suddenly encountered by a past version of his future father Howard Stark, and when the latter asks his name, Tony hesitates to come up with a fake name before introducing himself as "Howard Potts", using his father's given name and the surname of his wife, Pepper. Howard is surprisingly accepting of the name as it just makes it easier for him to remember.
- In Eternals, the names Phastos uses for himself and the other Eternals in front of his family are similar to their real names. He's "Phil", Sersi is "Sylvia", and Ikaris is "Isaac".
- In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, when the title character reveals his name to Katy, who knows him as Shaun, she calls out how he was very low-effort in hiding his name ("It's like a woman saying 'My name is not Geena, I'm now Gina!").
- Men In Black: When first investigating Edgar's home, K tells Edgar's wife that J is "Special Agent Black". Later, as they go to the morgue, he tells Weaver that J is "Doctor White". J is completely unamused both times.
- In Superbad, Fogell gets a fake ID with the obviously fake name "McLOVIN", no last name. He proceeds to get caught by the cops, who pretend to believe his alias and refer to him as "McLOVIN". In fact, they see right through his lie but pretend to go along with it because they want him to think they're cool.
Literature
- The titular character of Auteur is prone to this. In the story Marginalia, he comes to be known as "Walter" simply because someone mishears him saying his actual name and he decides to roll with it. In A Place Like Home, he writes under the pen name A. F. Oakehurt, an anagram of "Fake Author".
- Beware of Chicken: When he runs away from his sect to be a farmer, Jin Rou just swaps the order of his names to be Rou Jin and spells them with different characters. It's actually effective enough that it takes his old sect months to find him even after tracking him to his current province, since he's not living how you'd expect of a cultivator, and his friends and associates are able to honestly tell the people asking that they don't know anyone named Jin Rou.
- Carmilla: The vampire Carmilla seems prone to use rather transparent anagrams as aliases: her real name is Mircalla, and she also uses the name Millarca in the story. (It's implied that vampiric rules prevent her from using a completely false name.)
- In Donald Westlake's God Save the Mark, Fred Fitch believes that his late uncle's doctor might refuse to talk to him if he gives his real name, so he uses the name "Fred Nedick" when he calls to make an appointment.
- Dortmunder: In an early short story, Dortmunder is forced to make up an alias under pressure and the best he can come up with is the very silly-sounding "John Diddums". He eventually comes to like the alias and continues to use it as his go-to alias in subsequent stories.
- Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime: In "I Killed Santa Claus," William "Buck" Thomerson's police record shows that three of his aliases, Thomas Williams, William Williamson, and William Thompson, don't deviate far from his real given and/or surname, although his fourth alias, Vincente Benito de la Rosa III, stands out from this pattern.
- In Rule 34, the killer is issued fake documents to the name of John Christie. No one bats an eye at this, save for the man himself, who suspects it was specifically chosen because it's the name of a serial killer and it's this trope via his suppliers getting cute. He's not amused, and requests a change of documents. When the new set drops, and he sees the new name is that of another serial killer, he realizes someone is trying to get him caught by making him stand out more.
- Skulduggery Pleasant: Whenever Skulduggery has to interact with mortals as part of an investigation, he just calls himself Me (such as Chief Inspector Me or Captain Me). When the name is inevitably questioned, he explains that he comes from a very narcissistic family.
Live-Action TV
- In Doctor Who, the Master has the terrible habit of choosing names that either have "Master" in them or refer to concepts like domination and ruling in a variety of languages. Examples include "Colonel Masters", "Victor Magister", "Inspector LeMaitre", "Duke Dominus", and "Inspector Effendi". In a particularly extreme example of this trope, he once indulged on it to the point of calling himself "Harcourt De'ath".
- The Doctor is prone to this as well, often adopting the alias John Smith. In the episode "Midnight", which deconstructs the Doctor's usual Mysterious Stranger shtick, this comes back to bite him as an increasingly paranoid group of people begin to, somewhat understandably, question the unknown, cagey (and weirdly knowledgeable) man in their midst and his motives. When his name is demanded, he reflexively replies with the above, which is immediately called out as fake and only stokes everyone's mistrust of him.
- Drake & Josh: In "Steered Straight", when Drake makes fake-IDs for himself and Josh, he chooses the names "Jefferson Steelflexnote " for himself and "Alvin Yakitorinote " for Josh. Later on in the episode, they end up stuck with a criminal, who also thinks they're criminals. When he asks who they are, they use the fake names again. Miraculously, the criminal buys it.
- The Last Leg: One of the Tubular Bellend segments was targeted at radio host Alex Dyke, and was carried out on his radio show by getting a sousaphone player to call in, supposedly with a question. When asked who was calling, they gave the name Susan Phone.
- The Suite Life of Zack & Cody: In one episode, Zack and Cody cut school and go to the mall where they enter a contest. Cody doesn't want to use their real names though so they come up with aliases. Cody enters under the alias "Wing Lee". What alias does Zack enter under? "Cody Martin". The alias works until their mom finds out.
Professional Wrestling
- During the original El Grande Americano's feud with the new El Grande Americano, The original Americano is backed by the Creed Brothers, Julius and Brutus. The Creeds would later get the Americano treatment as masked wrestlers with the ring names "Julio Credo" for Julius and "Bruto Credo" for Brutus, which are just their names translated to Spanish.
Video Games
- "Genya Arikado" from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. It's basically just Alucard pronouncing his name in Japanese.
- In Disney Magic Kingdoms, during a Turning Red sidequest, Mei has to come up with a name on short notice for the monster in the fanfic she's writing and ends up going with "Ling Mee" which is just the name of her mother but with the first letters switched around.
- Final Fantasy XIV: The Warriors of Darkness introduced in Heavensward come from the First, one of several "shards" that serve as reflections of the Source in which most of the game takes place. Owing to different cultures between the First and the Source, most of the Warriors adopt aliases that match their races' naming conventions in Eorzeanote , but Ardbert the hume already passes for a Midlander Hyuran name... so he goes by "Arbert" on the Source. When he reappears as a ghost in Shadowbringers, Ardbert admits that his alias was "a daft one, looking back."
- Defied in Mother 3. At one point, your characters adapt aliases. If the names you gave your characters are similar to what their alias would have been, the game provides them a different alias.
- My Little Pony (Gameloft): In "The Last Problem" event, Lyra Heartstrings needs to disguise her and Bon Bon's identities, and claims that their names are "Harpy McCardio" and "Treatsy Realpony".
- Persona 5 Strikers: The newest member of the Phantom Thieves, Sophia, just uses a different version of her name, Sophie, for her codename in the Metaverse.
- In World of Warcraft, Brann Bronzebeard has all of his clothes and artifacts repossessed by F. Akename and Sons.
Visual Novels
- Anonymous;Code:
- Nakano Symphonies are located in the Symphony café in Nakano. It's surprising how literally nobody found these hackers despite them regularly leaving a Calling Card, Pollon getting doxxed and being searched by several conspiracies.
- 90110n is a Leet Lingo of Pollon. A lot of 4channelers have realized this quickly.
- A user named Swallow lives in the Swallow Apartments.
Web Animation
- Homestar Runner
- In the Strong Bad Email "Secret Identity", Strong Bad discusses various aliases he goes under starting with Tip Tappers. An Easter Egg reveals some of the other cast to also have some lazy aliases that the audience is easily able to look at and figure out who is who.
- Strong Bad chooses some pretty outlandish names for his personas when prank-calling Marizpan, such as Professor Tor Coolguy, Constable Anybody, and Dean Prankcaller. They're usually thematically linked to the nature of the prank.
- When Strong Bad gives Homestar a lesson in prank-calling, he fails even in the minimal alias requirements needed to prank-call someone. In his first attempt, he gives his own name, then he uses Strong Bad's name for the second attempt, and the name he finally settles on, "Sugarface", is even less realistic than the ones Strong Bad usually chooses.
Webcomics
- Spoofed in Brawl in the Family: meet Kingsonnn Dededoo◊ (totally not King Dedede). He is here to clean Kirby's clock. Literally. Turns out that despite all evidence to the contrary, he is not actually Dedede.
- Cirque Royale: When Will is telling his nieces and nephews about how he lost his leg, namely that he and his twin brother Will were born as Half-Identical Conjoined Twins and only had three legs between them, he changes the names of his family in-story other than his parents, the then-king and queen who are only referred to by title; he does this in very small ways, making them also SueDonyms. Quinn is "Quincy", Penelope is "Pinecone", and Manet and Pascal are "Monet" and "Pierre". The author lampshades this in the notes below and includes "Princeton and Capricorn," aka Kingston and Leo.
- In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, when Bob became a superhero for about half a day, he tried to stop a bank robbery. The robber asked his name and, suddenly realizing he hadn't thought of one, he blurts out, "I'm Bob-Man!" He immediately smacks his own face in disgust... but the name works, and the robber in question doesn't figure out it was him until much much later.
- In The Order of the Stick's "Uncivil Servant," Belkar goes by "Ali S. Fakenamington."
- Unsounded: After murdering her parents and escaping the hangman's noose Gingerly-We-Go Sanguinary takes up the handle "Tibby Palliard", "palliard" being a term for a vagabond or beggar as was her state when she took up the name. Due to Sharteshane's naming conventions her new name fits right in even though it was picked to describe her circumstances.
- In Val and Isaac, Doris is accused of this, being a DOR15 (Detective Or Retail, Mark 15) robot who goes by Doris, by her overly paranoid boss.
Web Original
- Dimension 20:
- Fig Faeth from Fantasy High's use of the Disguise Self spell combined with the Actor feat has led to her creating incredibly convincing alter egos that frequently have absurdly unconvincing names and backstories, including the infamous Hilda Hilda who lives on the corner of Hilda Street and Hilda Avenue. Brennan eventually introduces Cuspin Clark, an NPC detective to investigate the numerous "missing person" cases these hijinks cause, but a series of bad rolls and player shenanigans result in him completely failing to put it together that Fig is responsible.
- In Mentopolis, numerous characters utilise the alias "Stacy Fakename", as well as "Joanna Fakename" (her "sister") when the first one proves too conspicuous, to the point that the train station has wanted posters up for the former for constant passenger fraud. Subverted with the reveal that Stacy Fakename is not only a real person, but the Anthropomorphic Personification of Elias Hodge's flight reflex.
Western Animation
- In the Beavis and Butt-Head episode "1-900-BEAVIS", the pair call a phone sex hotline. Beavis tells Butt-Head not to use their real names.
Butt-Head: Uhh...I'm Beavis. And he's Butt-Head.
- BoJack Horseman: Suave adult businessman Vincent Adultman is actually a kid named Kevin in a Totem Pole Trench. The name Adultman underlines the obviousness of the impersonation, but nobody notices that Vincent is three kids in a trench coat except for Bojack, who everyone ignores.
- In "The Old Sugarman Place", BoJack tells Eddie his name is 'Hambone Fakenameington', which he later forgets when Eddie calls him that.
- Futurama: In "War Is The H-Word", when Leela goes into the DOOP armed forces to protect Fry and Bender she is forced to engage in crossdressing due to Zapp Brannigan's male chauvinism, and goes by the Sue Donym "Lee Lemon" after awkwardly Verbal Backspace-ing the phrase "Leela-Man". Despite her Paper-Thin Disguise and difficulty staying in character, nobody is the wiser until she reveals her ruse to Zapp.
- Invincible (2021). When Bulletproof joins the Guardians of the Globe, Rex complains about how unimaginative his superhero name is for a Flying Brick. Bulletproof is unmoved, pointing out that a man who calls himself Rex Splode is hardly in a position to criticize.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In the episode "Friendship University", Rarity comes up with some Paper Thin Disguises for her and Twilight to investigate Flim and Flam's academy and includes nicknames for them. Rarity ends up being known as Plainity, and Twilight's alias is Eyepatch since she has an eyepatch.
- Ninjago: Dragons Rising: When the main characters try to infiltrate the Imperium, Lloyd hastily comes up with the name Dyoll Donmagar, while Arin claims he's "Dr. Lampshade Floortile". Amazingly, this isn't what gets them busted; they weren't keeping up with the dress code.
- In The Owl House episode "Elsewhere and Elsewhen", Luz uses the name of her Self-Insert Luzura (which is just a portmanteau of her name and the name of the heroine in her favorite book) during her trip to the Deadwardian Era. Justified, since no one she would encounter would ever meet her again. Or so she thinks, as a combination of this, and Paper-Thin Disguise result in Philip Wittebane (who is actually the past version of the modern day Emperor Belos) remembering her and arranging matters to ensure that she maintains the Stable Time Loop that allowed him to rise to power as Belos and enact his plan for the Day of Unity. In "Hollow Mind", Philip makes sure to rub this in her face after he reveals his identity to her specifically to break her.
- Rick and Morty had a vampire who was sucking blood from victims at Morty and Summer's school and went by the name "Coach Feratu" (real name Balik Alistaine) until he was killed by Tiny Rick, Morty, and Summer. When the vampire leader learns his code name, this exchange happens, which leads to the leader asking if this order makes him a buzzkill or not before sinking his teeth into a woman's neck, deciding it does not:
Vampire Leader: (angrily) Why the fuck would he name himself after a famous vampire movie?! Was he doing a bit?!
Assistant: I do not know, your unholiness.
Vampire Leader: Jesus fucking Christ. From now on, no more of this clever name bullshit! When a vampire's trying to be human, they can just call themselves "Allen Jefferson", or something like that. - The Simpsons:
- The first episode to see production, Some Enchanted Evening had Babysitter Bandit Lucile Botzakowski infiltrate the Simpsons house under he name “Ms. Botz”. This gets used for Five-Second Foreshadowing, as the detective on TV warns she may be using a clever alias, only for Lisa to realise her identity before the picture even appears onscreen.
- In "Fear of Flying", Homer is kicked out of Moe's tavern. His efforts to find a new bar to hang out at end in vain. We then cut to what appears to be Homer in disguise trying to get back into Moe's, with the name of "Guy Incognito". Subverted when it is revealed that Guy is not actually Homer when the real Homer steps in and notices Guy having been thrown out.
- The Running Gag that despite Bart's local infamy as a troublemaker, no one's figured out that he's notorious local graffiti artist "El Barto." One episode sees Principal Skinner describing Bart as his school's second most wanted criminal after El Barto.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In one episode, Spongebob is attempting to get into Pearl's girls-only slumber party. What appears to obviously be SpongeBob dressed as a girl tries to get into the party using the name "Girly Teengirl". Subverted as it is not really him.
Real Life
- Disgraced Boy Band Svengali/blimp entrepreneur Lou Pearlman (of Backstreet Boys fame) went on the lam fleeing fraud charges shortly before he was captured. The name he used? A. Incognito Johnson. This clearly didn't help much, as he was captured shortly thereafter and sentenced to 25 years.
- Interestingly, it can actually be good spycraft to pick names close to your real one, or to go with alternate nicknames - Maggie instead of Marge, for example. It is easier to remember and lets you respond more naturally.