Amnesiac Dissonance/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An amnesiac character suddenly remembers being of the opposite alignment.

  • Straight: Jason, a police officer, remembers that he was once a criminal and goes into a Heroic BSOD.
  • Exaggerated: Jason, The Messiah and a Messianic Archetype, suddenly recalls being a Complete Monster.
  • Downplayed: Jason, The Messiah, suddenly recalls being an Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain.
  • Justified: Jason was subject to Heel Face Brainwashing.
  • Inverted: Jason was The Atoner, but after suffering a bad blow to the head, forgets his past of doing wrong.
  • Subverted: It turns out that it was All Just a Dream.
  • Double Subverted: ...all just Dreaming the Truth.
  • Parodied: Jason, a strident vegan, is suddenly confronted with his recollection of ... drinking milk.
  • Deconstructed: Laser-Guided Amnesia is very improbable. More likely, Jason's conflict with his past life is small potatoes and can safely be Played for Laughs compared to problems with learning to read and feed himself all over again. If Jason has anterograde amnesia (like in Memento, for example) he may experience Amnesiac Dissonance every day of his life as he maintains a job or pursues goals that conflict with his past self, and has to be constantly reminded of that.
  • Reconstructed: Jason is able to use his memories of his previous behaviour to spur himself to new heights and use them as a reminder of why he changed in the first in place.
  • Zig Zagged: Jason's mind has been manipulated so often that he doesn't even know if he was a villain or not.
  • Averted: Jason's recalled past is consistent with his present personality.
  • Enforced: The book is an Author Tract about the interaction of personality and memory.
  • Lampshaded: "Oh my God I used to be evil! But how, I'm such a good person!"
  • Invoked: Jason suspects he may have done bad things in the past and deliberately hits himself on the head to try and induce these memories.
  • Exploited: Jason's antagonist restores his memory at a key time to distract him.
  • Defied: Jason refuses opportunities to recover his memories on the grounds that it no longer matters who he was.
  • Discussed: "Hey wasn't Jason part of the team last time I was here?" "Yeah but then he got hit and he remembered that he used to be a mob boss. Give him a while to come round"
  • Conversed: "Oh great the amnesiac got hit on the head, ten quid says he remembers doing something heinous in his pa-and there it is, pay up guys".

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