Lake Silencio and the War Doctor, Regeneration Issues...

[The Wormhole]

I don't see how it was to any disadvantage, since the whole point was that he was in denial of the War Doctor's existence. He was "the man who forgets"...and does it deliberately.

Does he though? Everything we saw the War Doctor do are things the Doctor openly talked about doing anyway, the Time War, the supposed mutual genocide of the Daleks and the Time Lords, the Fall of Arcadia. He continues to talk about everything the War Doctor did while supposedly denying the existence of the War Doctor.

In a way it makes sense that this was the first incarnation to make any show of his number as part of his identity, since it helped facilitate that dissociation.

Thing is, none of that was the intent. How could it? Moffat didn't even create the War Doctor until after he knew he couldn't get Eccleston for Day of the Doctor.

The 11th was on a propaganda campaign. The Doctor lies.

That doesn't work for everything. The hotel room being room 11 in The God Complex is meant to be the hotel revealing a hidden truth about the Doctor, yet it allows him to maintain the lie of his numerical designation? Then again, the confession dial was also about the Doctor's hidden truths and still identifies Capaldi as the Twelfth, so who knows.

 

[Ithekro]

On Gallifrey it seems they called the John Hurt version the "Doctor of War".

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Does he though? Everything we saw the War Doctor do are things the Doctor openly talked about doing anyway, the Time War, the supposed mutual genocide of the Daleks and the Time Lords, the Fall of Arcadia. He continues to talk about everything the War Doctor did while supposedly denying the existence of the War Doctor.

Thing is, none of that was the intent. How could it? Moffat didn't even create the War Doctor until after he knew he couldn't get Eccleston for Day of the Doctor.

That it wasn't the intent originally doesn't alter that it makes sense in retrospect. Moffat came up with the idea of the War Doctor later, obviously, but in doing so he didn't fail to consider how that would affect what he'd written previously, and made sure to come up with a reason why he wasn't mentioned before and include that rationale in the narrative.

CLARA: But I never saw that one. I saw all of you, eleven faces, all of them you. You're the eleventh Doctor.
DOCTOR: I said he was me. I never said he was the Doctor.
CLARA: I don't understand.
DOCTOR: Look, my name—my real name—that is not the point. The name you choose, it's like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise...he is my secret.
WAR DOCTOR: What I did, I did without choice...in the name of peace and sanity.
DOCTOR: I know...but not in the name of the Doctor.

DOCTOR (TENNANT): All those years, burying you in my memory...
DOCTOR (SMITH): Pretending you didn't exist, keeping you a secret even from myself...
DOCTOR (TENNANT): Pretending you weren't the Doctor, when you were the Doctor more than anybody else.

Dissociation is a real phenomenon that actually happens to people as a psychological defense mechanism. It sometimes does even take the form of being able to remember things you did while being in denial that it was "you" who did them. Apart from those moments at and following the climax of "The Day Of The Doctor," which he can't retain his memories of thanks to the timelines being out of sync, he acknowledges that he did those things, but he refuses to acknowledge that he was the Doctor while doing them. Thus, in his own mind, Smith is the eleventh Doctor.