Fake Memories: Difference between revisions
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Sometimes when [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] won't cut it, the villains, heroes, or [[The Men in Black]] need to radically alter a subject's very ''memories'' to ensure their [[Evil Plan]], [[Epiphany Therapy]] or [[Masquerade|cover-up]] (respectively) works flawlessly.
In these cases they implant
Of course, [[Pygmalion Snapback|this never works as planned.]] Like an itch they can't scratch, the character with tampered memories will notice things aren't as they should be and scratch at the false memories like a scab, questioning their [[Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story|"Past"]] and [[Broken Masquerade|searching for the truth.]] Or go crazy trying. Occasionally, a hero will leave a [[Note to Self:]] or instructions for friends to help. The irony being that the false memories tend to lead the character right back to the people who erased them with enough of an advantage to take them out.
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* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]''. a [[Mind Screw]] series if there ever was one, is largely built around exploring this trope: Lain Iwakura, with the ability to alter humanity's collective memory, is forced to deal with the questions of what reality ''is''. Eventually she {{spoiler|writes herself out of existence by removing all memories of herself from the world.}}
* Used in the first ''[[Ghost in the Shell]]'' movie. The antagonists gets a random garbage man to do some jobs for him by promising to help him getting back his wife and daughter. Which both never existed. Another mook seems to have been completely mind whiped, leaving only the basics of his cover identity with no knowledge about his actual boss. In both cases, it works flawlessly.
* ''[[Code Geass]]'': The second season begins with Lelouch living a quiet, peaceful life. {{spoiler|Only after C.C. makes contact with him does he remember being captured and given
** Not only that, but ''everyone'' in the school is given exactly the same fake memories to make the effect even stronger. They all believe that Lelouch is nothing more and nothing less than a fellow student, and that {{spoiler|Rolo is his brother, whereas Nunally is merely a pretty and kind Britannian princess that later becomes the Viceroy of Area 11.}} And ''then'', {{spoiler|Shirley has her true memories back via [[Anti-Magic|Jeremiah]], but at sme point she happens to mention Nunnally ''while speaking to [[Yandere|Rolo]]''...}}
** Similarly, {{spoiler|[[Action Girl]] Anya Earlstreim has her memories rewritten to cover up how she's the [[Soul Jar]] of Lelouch's mother, Empress Marianne. It ''really'' fucks up with her self-worth, as the poor girl never knows which memories are hers or not.}}
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** At some point she's also ''at the receiving end'' of it, and it's '''much''' uglier. {{spoiler|She's captured [[Heroic BSOD|while at a very low emotional point]], and then Wiseman uses this to make her believe her parents hated her. The [[Mind Rape]] leaves her liable to his manipulations and, after being forcibly infused with Dark Energy, she becomes [[Dark Magical Girl|Black Lady]].}}
* Happens a couple of times in ''[[Darker than Black]]'', where [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]] is responsible for this and [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]].
** Gemini Of The Meteor has {{spoiler|Suou who finds out she is not exactly who she thought and was given
* In ''[[Gundam Seed Destiny]]'',
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'', Yusuke Fujiwara gives everyone fake memories of him being their childhood friend so he can infiltrate the school grounds. Judai Yuki was unaffected and eventually confronts the guy.
* In ''[[Tiger and Bunny]]'' {{spoiler|Albert Maverick, the CEO of [[Show Within a Show|HeroTV,]] has the [[Differently-Powered Individual|NEXT]] ability to implant and alter memories. He uses his powers twice on Barnaby in order to frame a well-known NEXT criminal for the murder of the latter's parents (though it's implied that his manipulation of Barnaby's memories is ''far more extensive'' than what was shown on-screen), and also on a number of other characters to make them [[Unperson|forget Kotetsu's very existence.]]}}
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* Used in the movie [[Push]], by people called [[Department of Redundancy Department|Pushers]]. At one point Kira is made to think that her entire relationship with Nick was a false memory that ''she'' gave ''him'' and she's been pushing his thoughts the entire time they were together. She even believes that ''she made up the existence of Coney Island''. The reality of a photo taken at Coney Island is the key evidence that causes her to realize that this was a fake memory.
** Kira is a very powerful Pusher do and once causes one of the guys guarding her to kill his partner by convincing him his partner killed his little brother in a rather gruesome way. The kicker? He never had a brother.
* In ''[[Blade Runner]]'', the new experimental replicants have literal
* In ''[[Total Recall]]'', the main character has visions of a life on Mars that contradicts his memories of a quiet blue-collar life on Earth. He starts to regain his earlier memories with the help of a [[Note to Self:]], but it turns out ''those'' were fake memories, too, all part of an [[Gambit Roulette|elaborate]] [[Manchurian Agent]] plot. But then, you never really know whether it was [[All Just a Dream]] anyway.
** And in the book it was based on, people could ''buy'' as entertainment, fake memories of being an action hero working for the government. Problems arose when those memories turned out to be real for the protagonist... Or were they?
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** Later in the series, she actually ''meets the woman whose memories they were originally.''
* Everybody in the City of Elua (but Imriel) in ''[[Kushiel's Legacy|Kushiels Legacy]]'', after a great magical working has been done.
* In ''The Traveler in Black'', [[John Brunner]] uses this in one city; an evil magician takes a seat on the city Ruling Council, the better to cause the citizens to make a choice that will increase Chaos in the area. His plan includes implanting
* As a side effect of making the subject [[Ret-Gone]], the [[Sword of Truth|Chainfire]] spell falsifies memories of events that included the subject. Naturally, the characters hanging around with Richard, who was immune to the spell's effects, think ''his'' memories are the fake ones.
* A rare version occurs in ''[[Harry Potter]] [[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince|and the Half-Blood Prince]]'', where Horace Slughorn does this to ''himself'' in order to erase the guilt of having {{spoiler|given the young Voldemort information on horcruxes}}. Fortunately, he does a sloppy job of it, which allows Harry to {{spoiler|procure the memory from him with some help from a luck potion}}.
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** {{spoiler|To sum up: Biolizard is created as an ultimate life form. Shadow is then created as the ultimate life form as well, using extra alien DNA. So, Shadow is a more advanced prototype then Biolizard. Then, Shadow nearly died, got recovered by Eggman with Amnesia. He used Shadow's template to create a bunch of robots. So, Shadow's fake memories are real memories.}}
** At least one of his memories is for sure fake: in Sonic Adventure 2's Last Story, {{spoiler|his [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] was set off by Gerald changing his memory of the promise he made to [[Dead Little Sister|Maria]].}}
* The ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'' games do not reveal anything about the [[Super Soldier|protagonist's]]
* The main character's life before coming to Rapture in ''[[BioShock (series)]]''.
* In ''[[Starcraft]]'', many marines and other low-ranking Terran infantry have their memories altered (usually to remove criminal character traits such as serial killing, cannibalism, etc) using technology; this is called neural resocialization. The technology acts as a [[Restraining Bolt]]. Ghosts underwent a similar treatment, but the newest generation of Ghosts just undergo [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] instead (since that's harder to fix). The main character of one of the novels has been resocialized, and several supporting characters in the book have undergone the same treatment.
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* Paradise by Jon Buck has a bit of an aversion, when characters are TG'd the past is retconned by "Random Omnipotent Being", but they keep their, no longer true, memories... in one story this leads to an oddity. As a woman discovers that she dated someone that in her male life she never actually met.
* The cast of [[Sevenshot Kid]] is lousy with this.
* A mixture of someone else's memories and
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* Incorrect memories can be formed under a number of circumstances, especially periods of high stress or adrenaline. There is a video of a police officer firing a full magazine, reloading, and firing again, in front of a dashboard camera the officer set himself, and then thinking he only fired his gun twice.
* Anton-Babinski syndrome, or Anton's Blindness, is a condition in which an individual is blind to a large degree, but makes up an entirely false imagination, experience, and memory of vision. It's very rare, but interesting enough to be seen in ''[[House (TV series)|House]] MD''.
** Human visual analysis was proved to be error-suppressing. If a little part of the eye's field of vision is partially blocked by something immovable ''relative to the eyeball'', this part is filled with "repaired" texture extrapolated from the rest of the scene. Sorry
** The reverse can also happen. A person can see completely, but is fully convinced they are blind. (It's tested by having people who are actually blind/them go through a room. They either have close to 0% success, or close to 100% success at key tasks, while people who are actually blind have about 50% success.)
* While it's not clear exactly how much of the events fall under this trope, a number of the 1980-1995 accusations of Satanic ritualistic abuse of children in the United States and elsewhere involved testimony that was simply impossible, which the individual did not remember until after being questioned.
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* Experiments have been done on this, though the people conducting them have to be very careful to give the subjects proper therapy after implanting false memories. One example is of a woman who caused a man to believe he had been lost in a mall at the age of five and told her all of the details with startling detail and sureness for a fake memory. He had a difficult time believing it was fake, to say the least.
* Try it sometime. Talking to a friend or family member, start telling them about a news report that never happened. Supply just a few details and they'll start remembering it. You don't need any special expertise to live this trope.
* Contrary to popular belief, your brain does ''not'' record everything that ever happened to you, so attempts to "uncover" stuff you don't remember will lead to
** The notion that your brain records everything is taken from prodigious savants who do have a very high rate of memory recall-Kim Peek, the savant who inspired '[[Rain Man]]'', was able to recall 12,000 books from memory. The difference is savants' brains register ''everything'', at the cost of having autism, another developmental or mental disorder, or brain injuries. Those with brain injuries, however, will only have super accurate memories of events ''after'' the injury, none before.
*** What's interesting is that savant-abilities can be induced with magnetic pulses aimed at certain areas of the brain. These pulses work by ''impairing'' those portions and forcing others to take over-and they appear to bring other abilities with them.
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