Laser-Guided Amnesia: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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{{quote|"... though details remain sketchy due to amnesia inflicted on the hostages, apparently via some sort of hypnosis."
|'''Epilogue-giving reporter'''|''[[The Batman vs. Dracula]]''}}
As [[Easy Amnesia|established elsewhere]], amnesia comes up a lot in TV. Amnesia is a funny thing in the real world and can give you lots of strange symptoms.
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In TV, it's very weird too, but it's much more specific. Amnesia has several basic attributes in TV land:
▲'''2.''' In a series with [[Plausible Deniability]], amnesia typically also erases all knowledge of the [[Masquerade]]. The character will completely forget that aliens, monsters, vampires and such are real, but will remember that normal people don't believe in such things. This can seem especially odd if that's the sort of thing the character never believed in the first place: if you don't remember anything, how do you know that aliens and werewolves are any stranger than the sun coming up in the morning and setting at night? Even more odd if the character is himself an alien or supernatural being and subsequently "defaults to [[Muggle]]" after losing his memory. Occasionally, this is paired with [[Fake Memories]] to create an elaborate deception.
▲'''3.''' With very few exceptions, amnesia is always entirely retrograde: memory loss extends backward from the moment of injury. Anterograde amnesia (the inability to accumulate new memories) has only started to come up in recent years, usually in comedies. Amnesia usually extends back clean to birth. Real amnesia resulting from head trauma or drugs is usually confined to a short period on ''both sides'' (before and after) of the incident.
▲'''4.''' If a tool of the group the protagonists belong to, the likelihood of abuse of this power is almost never addressed. There's little interest, procedure, or group devoted to making sure someone isn't stealing from, raping, killing or committing other crimes against [[Muggles]] and then erasing their memory of it. After all, who cares about [[Muggles]] as long as the [[Masquerade]] is intact?
Very useful in maintaining that things are [[No Big Deal]]. To this end, it's pretty standard for [[The Men in Black]] to use this on anyone who's seen too much, often employing a [[Memory-Wiping Crew]]. Contrast [[Exposition Beam]]. Can cause an [[Amnesiac Hero]] to be born.
{{examples}}
* Masane Amaha in ''[[Witchblade (anime)|Witchblade]]'' plays this straight with #3 (classic trauma induced amnesia), but this is subverted later when she never gets her memories back.▼
▲== Anime & Manga ==
▲* Masane Amaha in [[Witchblade (anime)|Witchblade]] plays this straight with #3 (classic trauma induced amnesia), but this is subverted later when she never gets her memories back.
* ''[[Strawberry Panic!|Strawberry Panic]]'': Amane falls from her horse and forgets that she was going to enter the Etoile election, and her relationship with Hikari. She remembers having been ''asked'' to enter, and the rest of the details of her life. (This is surprisingly similar to the post trauma memory loss that is ''actually'' but ''rarely'' incurred by some people.)
* In ''[[The Big O]]'', a major part of the original plot is that ''everyone'' in Paradigm
** {{spoiler|What do you mean ''implies''? [[Captain Obvious|They
* ''[[A Wind Named Amnesia]]'' deals with the whole world suffering from sudden amnesia and not a pretty type: people were turned down to almost animal behaviour while only the main protagonist was restored to humanity by psionics and training.
* ''[[Bleach]]'' has a similar memory erasing plot device, with the downside that the blank is generally filled in by something random from the person's imagination. It has fun with what the blanks are filled with, such as a [[Cloudcuckoolander|particularly strange]] character who "remembers" that the reason there is a hole in the classroom and a missing student is because an army of monkeys burst into class and dragged him away.
** They later gain an upgraded version without that particular problem, but by this time half the cast has some level of spirit power, and thus the memory modification fails to one degree or another on them.
*** The third movie has villains that can perform a different method that erases entire characters from others' memories. It's surprisingly through to the point where a character who trained like mad to get strong enough to save an erased character forgets his training and thinks he's much weaker than he actually is. It can't erase physical evidence, however, and [[Crazy Prepared]] Urahara immediately notices discrepancies in his notes and memory and figures something's up.
* Kaito of ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' presumably gets a bump on the head that causes him to selectively forget everything about Lucia and mermaids. Of course, this turns out to be an evil plot (and a rather lucky one for Michel at
* Happens to a lot of ''[[Kanon]]'' characters, all for reasons relating to the town's miracles and the tragedy seven years ago.
* In ''[[Ranma ½]]'', Shampoo uses a technique on Akane to erase all memories of Ranma. She remembers every other person and thing, even when not knowing Ranma means she wouldn't know how she became familiar with them. Apparently, Ranma's father is living with her for no discernible reason.
** Shampoo's amnesia technique has the added benefit of preventing the victim from ever relearning the suppressed memory, so every time Ranma was re-introduced to Akane she'd forget the latest introduction as soon as he left her line of sight.
** After accidentally smacking his head with a watermelon in a training accident, Kuno retains the formidable skills he gained through his watermelon training, but forgets his name, his pompous demeanor, and how much money he owes to Nabiki (none, but she's not going to say that). Worst of all, his self-restraint is gone, turning his infatuation with the Pigtailed Girl into a stalker obsession that nearly [[Attempted Rape|ends badly for her]].
** One anime episode goes beyond this into [[Loss of Identity]]; after falling into the pond and hitting his head, Ranma starts thinking of himself as really being a girl. "She" hates violence, wants to give up martial arts, faints at the sight of blood, freaks out and starts crying after being returned to male form, talks about becoming a bride and goes bra shopping with Akane, has to have Akane help her go to the toilet because "she" can't deal with either set of body parts, rebukes Akane for her tomboy ways and, after Akane finally breaks down and [[We Want Our Jerk Back|admits that this isn't Ranma and she wants the real Ranma back]], "she" tells her that it can't happen. Fortunately, as with
* {{spoiler|Asuna}} of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' did this to ''herself'' so [[I Just Want to Be Normal|she could live a normal life]]. Apparently, she didn't notice not having any memory of her past ''or the planet she was living on'', although her [[Older Than They Look|apparent]] age may have allowed her to [[Hand Wave]] the bit about her own past.
** Happens later on {{spoiler|to Yue after the Gateport incident randomly scatters Ala Alba across the Magic World.}} She has the bad luck to land right in front of a magic student on a broomstick, who not only gives her a knock on the head, but accidentally discharges a memory erasure spell, causing her to lose all of her memories except her name.
*** As of chapter 275, {{spoiler|Yue has seemingly recovered her memories, upon seeing the fake!Asuna under attack.}}
*** [[Playing with a Trope|Hmmm...]] As of chapter 337, {{spoiler|Yue [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/mahou_sensei_negima/v37/c337/12.html has still not recovered ALL of her memories.] She ''does'' remember Negi, Nodoka, her classmates and new friends, but can't recall anything that happened in between the school trip and her arrival to the Magical World... which is actually the time period in which she fell in love witrh Negi. This causes her noticeable angst in that chapter, since she thinks she's not worthy of confessing to Negi until she remembers ''how'' she fell for him.}}
** At the start of the series, Negi attempts this on Asuna when she finds out he's a mage. [[Fan Service|It does not go as planned.]] Otherwise, ''Negima'' avoids this by having the [[Masquerade]] instead of removing memories of crazy happenings, just prevent them from noticing all the craziness going on.
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** Lelouch also {{spoiler|does this to himself when Mao holds Nunnally hostage; in order to stop him reading his mind and finding out his plan to save her, he tells Suzaku what to do, then mindwipes himself before heading up to face Mao. It works.}}
*** How have we gone this long without pointing out that this is half of Lelouch's Geass power, and the biggest reason why it's dangerous? Anyone under its effects has no idea that they are.
*** At least, not of the hypnosis event itself. If it's a long-term multi-activate compulsion, some of them figure it
* ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' ''appears'' to do this to Princess Sakura regarding her relationship with Syaoran; the truth is [[Gambit Pileup|much]], [[Mind Screw|much]] [[Send in the Clones|more]] [[Mind Screw|complicated]].
* In ''[[Hana Yori Dango]]'', Tsukasa is afflicted with bizarrely specific amnesia that causes him to retain all of his memories except those specifically related to the series's heroine, his girlfriend Tsukushi.
* In ''[[Interstella 5555]]'', the main characters, an alien music group, are put in a machine that changes their memories to make them believe they are human.
* Done very literally in ''[[Vampire Knight]]'' {{spoiler|Kaname uses his vampire powers to wipe out Yuki's memories of Maria being in fact Hio, the vampire responsible for the slaughtering of Zero's family. It does not last long, though, as the effects are almost immediately canceled by Hio herself.}}
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** In fact, we see this happen at least once, when Misa doesn't recall that she was detained on suspicion of being the second Kira until she's explicitly reminded of it. Mind you, Misa is [[The Ditz]].
*** She's also a clinical psychopath, like Light and possibly L (who may just be in the autistic spectrum, or schizoid), and not nearly as much of an idiot as she makes herself be, though she looks pretty dumb compared to the resident geniuses even at the start, when she's making an effort.
*** ''As'' a clinical psychopath, Light wouldn't necessarily have done anything especially evil if he hadn't gotten the Death Note; he had a self-image as righteous to uphold and lots more to gain by remaining the golden boy, boring as it was, and the laser-guided-amnesia Nice Light is zapped right back to
**** Though still commonly heard in casual contexts, it's been thirty years since the term "psychopath" was clinically accepted, and the usefulness/precision of its successor term, "antisocial personality disorder," remains in dispute.
** The persons affected can't be consciously filling in the holes based on logic, because then Nice Light would ''know'' from looking at the holes in his head that L's theory about amnesia is completely correct, and he doesn't buy it. The magic at work is obviously complicated stuff.
* [[Ridiculously-Human Robots|The Wolkenritter]] of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' appeared to have been programmed to forget [[Omnicidal Maniac|what really happened]] whenever the [[Artifact of Death|Book of Darkness]] filled all [[Number of the Beast|666 pages]]. This gap in their memories greatly disturbed Vita when she realized that she couldn't remember what became of their previous masters.
* In ''[[Nanaka 6/17]]'', the titular Nanaka, after being told off by the Childhood Friend she kept nagging and then taking a header down some stairs, loses all memory of everything that happened to her after the age of six. Nanaka's six year old personality simply assumes a wish she'd made to grow up right away actually worked.
* ''[[Gundam Wing]]'': ({{spoiler|Trowa Barton}} survives a terrible fight against {{spoiler|his best friend Quatre (who was under the effects of the Zero System)}}, but loses his memories. {{spoiler|Don't worry, Quatre helps him get them back. Best friend? Some would say [[Ho Yay]]!}}
* {{spoiler|Watanuki}} from ''[[
* One of the types of mushi in ''[[Mushishi]]'' can cause this, erasing all of your personal memories up to that point. {{spoiler|This is precisely what happened to Ginko as a child, something that also left him unaware of his [[Your Days Are Numbered|other condition]]...}}
* Used regularly in ''[[Fruits Basket]]'', whenever someone learns too much about the Sohma family, thanks to the local doctor and family member Hatori Sohma. Tohru is threatened with this, Momiji's mother chose to forget him because she could not cope with the curse, and Kana had to go through it after being put through [[Mind Rape]].
* Implied in ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' with {{spoiler|Ludwig aka Germany.}} If this is the case, {{spoiler|he probably lost his childhood memories of being the Holy Roman Empire as time passed and he fought in too many wars.}}
* A reoccurring plot point in ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'', first seen when [[Face Heel Turn|Yui]] feeds Tamahome a drug to make him forget who he is and turn evil.
** Second, as {{spoiler|Amiboshi}} turns out to be [[Not Quite Dead]] but doesn't remember his past at all. The amnesia was guided by his new family, who are big fans of this trope and try to "help" Miaka by pointing some amnesia her way, too.
*** Although {{spoiler|Amiboshi}} was largely faking it; he preferred his new family.
** Third, in the OVA series, Tenkou uses [[MacGuffin]] Spheres to systematically erase Taka/Tamahome's memories of his allies.
* Crops up several times in ''[[Mx0]]'', like Taiga's memory of the entrance exam and the [[Lotus Eater Machine]] portion of the exam, in which leaving the 'machine' let you pass but erased your memories (which you kept if you failed).
* In ''[[Red Garden]]'', the [[Four-Girl Ensemble|four main girls]] remember little more than brief, vague flashes of the night they died and certain events connected to this. {{spoiler|This gets resolved later, but it turns out that
* [[Double Subversion]] in ''[[Tekkaman Blade]]'': {{spoiler|D-Boy turns out to have been lying about having amnesia, and remembers everything. Then later, he starts losing his memory for real.}}
* In ''[[Excel Saga (anime)|Excel Saga]]'' {{spoiler|Excel gets amnesia after Il Palazzo shoots her and leaves her for dead}}. In this case, it's unclear if she repressed her memories or lsot her memories because she was hit by a car.
** In [[Excel Saga (manga)|the manga]] {{spoiler|Excel gets this ''twice''. The first time was brief and played for laughs. The second time it lasts a lot longer, and her personality is flipped. It is also suggested this isn't the first times she has lost her memories.}}
* Elie gets this {{spoiler|twice}} in ''[[Rave Master]]''. She doesn't know her name or how to control her magic, but she can remember how to read a language no longer used in the modern world.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Fairy Tail]]''
* Some of the [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]] ("M.E.") in ''[[Darker
* Pai suffers from a supernatural case in [[
** This sealing also has a tragic twist:
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'': After suffering from nightmares for an unknown period of time because of Yubel being in pain after being shot into space, Juudai was given the most advanced treatments to completely block out his memory of her. This also apparently blocked out his memory of the contest he'd won and the Neo-Spacians that he'd created. He didn't remember Yubel at all, however, until he actually saw her in her own true body again.
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', after meeting the [[Our Mermaids Are Different|cute mermaid]] [[Spell My Name with an "S"|Camie/Kaimie/Keymie]], Zoro promptly deletes his memory of having met the [[Gonk|not so cute]] mermaid Kokoro through sheer willpower.
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* ''Milk Crown'' and its sequels. The protagonist, Oto Tachibana, loses her memory at least three times, if I remember right... It's been awhile since I've read the series...
* ''[[Karin]]'': The vampires can hypnotically erase memories of the feeding from the people they bite.
* In the second, 80s series of ''[[Himitsu no Akko-chan]], the titular heroine carelessly outs herself as a [[Magical Girl]] in front of her whole community of friends. While at first her empowering entity [[Disproportionate Retribution|doesn't take it well]], stripping Akko of her powers and her reflected image, later settles for a new, stealthier mirror and free
* [[Playing with Syringes|Necrolyzation]] has this effect on people in ''[[Gungrave]]''. It also usually strips the reanimated person of emotions as well. The protagonist undergoes said process and suffers terrible headaches whenever he recovers a fragment of his memory. Conversely, in the videogame he doesn't get the headaches, and never quite gets over his memory
* Masako Natsume from ''[[Mawaru Penguindrum]]'' plays this trope to a T by using her laser-guided slingshot to have all Kanba's ex-girlfriends to forget about him at all.
== Comic Books ==
== Comics ==▼
* In an early ''[[Incredible Hulk]]'' comic, Betty Ross is kidnapped by baddies and taken to their underground lair. Hulk goes down and rescues her (at the time, the Hulk was intelligent), beats the baddies and proves that he's not evil after all. During the tram back up the mine shaft it's revealed that Betty has forgotten the whole event due to stress. This is while she's still in the same room as the guy who just rescued her.
* Virtually all of [[Wolverine]]'s character and most of his plot arcs are based around his adventuring past which he cannot
** Post-''House of M'' continuity has finally wiped that away, almost as if Marvel themselves had finally had enough of writers using it to introduce new things. Logan himself stated "I can remember ''everything''. Right back to the day I was born." No more amnesia, yay!
*** Also fairly epic in that during the ''House of M'', this was actually a subversion. The Scarlet Witch was using her powers, {{spoiler|under Quicksilver's direction}}, to give everyone laser-guided amnesia by granting them their fondest wish... for Wolverine that was to get rid of his
* In the 1950s, this was used as the basis for a [[Heel Face Turn]] by Catwoman, in the same story that introduced her now-canonical civilian persona of Selina Kyle.
* The [[Backstory]] of the [[Retcon]] hero Sentry says that he erased the ''entire world's'' memory of his existence.
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* In the DC miniseries ''[[Identity Crisis]]'', it is [[Retcon|revealed]] that one of the reasons the JLA has been able to keep their identities secret over the years is by having Zatanna strategically erase the knowledge from the minds of any villains who find out. The story was set into motion years before when they attempted to forcibly reform Dr. Light via this method, and it went horribly wrong.
** Their mindwiping wasn't just limited to villains; {{spoiler|[[Batman]]}} was also mindwiped.
*** Only of the fact that they were mindwiping villains,
**** The meta-reasoning for this was to give Batman a real reason for every [[Batman Gambit]] plan he ever had in mind for his friends.
* Following one of the times his identity was made public, [[Iron Man]] used a villain's mind control powers to wiped the memory of everyone on Earth. This is supposedly ''before'' the [[Dork Age]] of [[Smug Snake]] [[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]] Tony, although it may have been one of the seeds of this (notably, [[Captain America (comics)]] was very unhappy).
* Before ''[[Planetary]]'' recruited him to become the third man, Elijah Snow lived in a shack in the desert with gaps in his century-spanning memory you could "chuck a nuke through". His work with the field team leads him to prod at these gaps and learn that the mysterious Fourth Man behind Planetary is {{spoiler|him, and that [[Big Bad|The Four]] forced him to allow the memory blocks after they captured him and his team.}}
* In [[Don Rosa]]'s ''Uncle Scrooge'' story "Forget It!", Magica uses a wand that causes anyone hit by it to start forgetting things related to words they hear after they hear their name, and uses it on Scrooge and [[Donald Duck]] in her latest effort to steal Scrooge's [[Number One Dime]]. [[Hilarity Ensues]] as Donald and Scrooge forget how to use doors, stairs, and even how to stand up and walk due to Magica's spell.
** In [[Carl Barks]]' "House of Haunts", Scrooge was also given amnesia by the Beagle Boys by a blow to a specific spot on his head. This gave Scrooge the specific amnesia of forgetting everything that happened since last November. Tapping again apparently is a complete cure.
* In ''[[Supergirl]]: Cosmic adventures in the 8th grade'' Belinda flicks a "memory erasure pressure point" on Lena Thorul's head, which makes her forget all about {{spoiler|Supergirl's secret identity}}. Supergirl [[Lampshade Hanging|refuses to believe it worked]]. {{spoiler|The actual amnesia was caused by Streaky the Super-Cat's psychic powers.}}
* [[Mandrake the Magician]] has had parts of his memory erased several times, usually by well-meaning, but condescending aliens and time-travellers who thinks it's too dangerous to let him remember all the fantastic things he has seen. The poor guy's had a lot of amazing adventures that he will never know about.
* Not so long ago{{when}} it happened in ''[[Thunderbolts]]'': {{spoiler|When they have to kill Songbird, Headsman, Ghost and Paladin betrayed and defeated Scourge and Mr. X, and left her escape. Then Ghost removes this even from Scourge's and X's short-time memory}}
* When {{spoiler|Maxwell Lord}} was resurrected in ''[[Blackest Night]]'', the first thing he did was to use his [[Psychic Powers]] to mindwipe ''everyone on Earth'' of all of their memories related to him {{spoiler|except for his old Justice League International teammates and the Blue Beetle scarab}}. He went even further to maintain the illusion by implanting [[Fake Memories]] {{spoiler|such as Ted Kord committing suicide and Ice trying to murder Guy}}.
** Which causes still-unexplained plotholes, as several people implied affected expressly would not be given the storyline. While it's unlikely that, for instance, Kilowog would bring Max up in casual conversation, or that an egomaniac like Manga Khan would give Lord a second thought, {{spoiler|Wonder Woman was expressly described as immune to his powers, which is why she was able to kill him in the first place. She's affected like all the rest.}}
* One issue of ''[[Damage Control]]'' had the company hired to repair damage to [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Xavier's School For Gifted Children]] from a super-battle. After the repairs were completed and the crew paid, Professor Xavier used his telepathic powers to erase their memories of the school's location and students.
* [[Doctor Strange]] does this on occasion, usually to help people recover their sanity after [[Go Mad
* In Fleetway's ''[[Sonic the Comic]]'', when Super Sonic was split off from Sonic, he completely lost all memory of what he was. He forgot that he was an embodiment of pure malevolent evil. He even lost his super-super-speed and world-destroying powers because he forgot he had them and became just a regular kid for a while. Of course, Super Sonic being normal is exactly as interesting as it sounds, especially since he was portrayed as a borderline loser, and it didn't last.
== Fairy Tales ==
* In [https://web.archive.org/web/20130708093355/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/crane/snowfirered.html Snow-White-Fire-Red], [https://web.archive.org/web/20130621050640/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/asbjornsenmoe/mastermaid.html The Mastermaid], and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130814130639/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/186truesweetheart.html The True Sweetheart], the hero forgets the heroine because of magic. It is at least as old as [https://web.archive.org/web/20131129143022/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/pentamerone/16dove1911.html The Dove], a Renaissance work.
== Fan Works ==
* In ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'', {{spoiler|Nagato}} does this to {{spoiler|Kyon, Mikuru, and Kanae}} ''every night'' to stop them remembering [[Year Inside, Hour Outside|years and years of training]]. {{spoiler|It's also hinted she does it to stop Kyon remembering kissing her...}}
* In ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Silver Resistance]]'' Char, the protagonist, has this to the extent that he doesn't even remember his own name(Char being a nickname given by Saura). {{spoiler|Subverted with Saura, who we thought was invoking this trope after being Mind Raped.}}
* In ''Speechless'', a ''Death Note'' fic, this shows up.
* A ''[[Star Wars]]'' fanfic called ''Innocence'' sees Vader suffering brain damage after a crash into Rebel territory. When he learns the facts of [[Complete Monster|his career]], he decides he'd rather start as a new man. {{spoiler|While he's unsuccessful in getting rid of his breathmask, he adopts some less intimidating prosthetics and swaps his [[Dark Is Evil|black cape]] for green coveralls.}} He rediscovers his engineering talent with Han as a mentor/bodyguard, {{spoiler|and after helping the pilots get even with an obnoxious commander, [[Alternate Universe Fic|is ultimately accepted as a comrade]]}}.
* In the [[Mega Crossover]] [[Fanfic|fan]][[Web Comic|comic]][[The Verse|verse]] called the Building-verse both Aziraphale and Crowley (''[[Girls Next Door]]'') and Jareth (''[[Roommates 2007|Roommates]]'') can do this but in different ways (the former two mind wipe you the later manipulates your time perception the effect is quite similar) and success rate (Jareth failed once). Both comics played with and lampshaded the dubious morality of this.
* ''[[
* According to what [[Harry Potter|Albus Dumbledore]] discovered within Douglas Sangnoir's mind in chapter 4 of ''[[Drunkard's Walk]] VIII'', someone who identified herself as [[Sailor Moon|Serenity II of the Moon Kingdom and future queen of Crystal Earth]] (temporarily) blanked Doug's memory of the time he spent with her and her friends.
* Literal example in Pixar's ''Jack-Jack Attack'', and explicitly shown in a cut scene from ''[[The Incredibles]]''. Plays a little like mind rape, since Huph is trying to hold on to the original version of the events.
* Happens on ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' if a reaper tries to prove their identity with stories from their past.▼
▲* Happens on [[Dead Like Me]] if a reaper tries to prove their identity with stories from their past.
* The ''[[Paycheck]]'' film features literally Laser Guided Amnesia (neurons destroyed with lasers), as a method to prevent engineers to trade out top secret technology after finishing their assignment.
** It also appears to work flawlessly. Then they switch to a chemical agent which is supposed to do the same job. It doesn't work quite as well, leaving behind pieces of memories.
* One skillfully executed example is the 2004 film ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'', which concerns a company that can specifically erase your memory of a particular person, used (for example) when a subject wishes to forget a devastating love affair. The explanation of the process is mainly technobabble, but is believable and internally consistent, with some noticeable secondary memory loss.
* ''[[X Men Origins: Wolverine|X Men Origins Wolverine]]'' features quite possibly one of the most painful instances of this trope. An antagonist loads a gun with Adamantium bullets, knowing he can't kill [[Wolverine]] with them, but intends to give him Laser Guided Amnesia (by shooting him in the head). He succeeds, wiping Wolverine's memory with no other side-effects. Maybe tentatively justified by Wolverine's healing
** Possibly because the regenerated brain parts were restored "blank" with no imprinted memories. Still seems like a risky gambit unless the antagonist knew exactly which part of the brain to aim at.
*** He did. And it wasn't so much laser-guided in that he forgot about the Weapon X project; after his brain healed up from ''three adamantium bullets being shot into it'' he had a few cloudy memories of being Canadian, lifelong skills (like how to speak at least English), and a few dribs and drabs here and there. Other than that he's either blank or completely stilted, he doesn't even remember the fact that he has ''claws that pop out of his fists''!
* The Neuralizer from ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]'', also known as the [[Buffy-Speak|"flashy thing"]]. It can be set for a specific length of time and leaves the victim in a brief trance so a cover story can be planted to maintain [[Plausible Deniability]]. Agents are also issued special sunglasses to prevent accidental self-neuralization.
* The entire ''[[The Bourne Series (film)|Bourne]]'' (''Identity'', ''Supremacy'', ''Ultimatum'') series of films have a protagonist who has amnesia induced by a [[Heroic BSOD|psychotic break while on a mission]]. His amnesia could be organic as well as psychological, since it's implied that {{spoiler|he and his fellow assassins are/were taking some sort of medication to supplement their conditioning, and he's obviously not taking it anymore.}} It could be why he can't recover any of his memories, despite his best efforts.
* In ''[[Superman (film)|Superman]] II'', among many other superpowers that [[New Powers as the Plot Demands|pop up]] [[Ass Pull|out of]] [[Deus Ex Machina|nowhere,]] Superman is revealed to have the ability to remove specific memories with a kiss. This becomes a bit more disturbing in ''[[Superman IV]]'', where he comes pretty close to using this power as a date rape drug.
* Notably inverted in ''[[Memento]]'', in which the protagonist has ''anterograde'' amnesia, rendering him unable to form memories. While investigating his wife's murder, he records information by means of photos, notes, and tattoos, but remembers everything prior to his injury quite clearly. [[Shown Their Work|Several prominent neurobiologists praised this portrayal.]]
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* A strange mix of anterograde and retrograde amnesia is played for laughs in ''Clean Slate'', where Dana Carvey's character has forgotten his entire past ''and'' forgets the events of each day as soon as he goes to sleep.
* In ''[[Cypher]]'', [[Applied Phlebotinum]] is used as a brainwashing tool in order to turn employees of a [[Mega Corp]] into unknowing corporate spies. Whilst they don't completely forget about their formers lives, the corp makes their new "fake" lives such a facsimile of the old one that they never notice.
* The central premise of ''[[Dark City]]''. A man wakes up with no memories of his identity, but has lingering emotional resonance with certain people and places. How much of his personality is truly his remains a
== Literature ==
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* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s ''[[Gaunt's Ghosts]]'' novel ''Traitor General'', {{spoiler|Sturm}}'s "mind-lock" prevents him from remembering his life before his capture, though he has formed memories since.
* Subverted in ''[[Foundation|The Currents of Space]]'' by [[Isaac Asimov]].
* Premise of the 1973 spy thriller ''The Tightrope Men''. The protagonist wakes up in a hotel room in Oslo, not only unable to remember who he is, but with an entirely different face and identity. It turns out that {{spoiler|he was kidnapped, brainwashed, and cosmetically altered to cover the abduction of the scientist he resembles. The only thing keeping him sane is that he still ''can'' remember some things, like his name, from his previous life -- the brainwashing was a hastily-done "butcher's job".}} The author Desmond Bagley said he thought up the most terrifying circumstance you could find yourself in and then wrote the novel around it.
** Bagley had previously used the amnesia motif in ''Landslide'' (1967), whose protagonist has forgotten all personal information, ''including'' [[Mistaken Identity|his own name]], in a car accident. That he hasn't forgotten the geology he studied before the accident becomes a minor plot point.
* Subverted in ''The Wrong Reflection'' by Gillian Bradshaw. [[The Hero]] wakes up not knowing his own face or history and not fully able to operate in society. He needs help in figuring out that he has basic human rights and in one example, doesn't know what an 'oak tree' is. He knows science inside and out but the concept of 'muzzling' is a mystery.
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** The process is not perfect, however. Exposure to stimuli regarding the repressed memories can bring them back. Of course, the fairies monitor most subjects of this to ensure that this never happens. And since they run a huge [[Masquerade]], the odds of a fairie-induced amnesiac regaining their relevant memories are extremely low.
* In [[Umberto Eco]]'s ''The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana'', the protagonist suffers from amnesia that leaves him with only his semantic memory, erasing whatever he had made a personal connection with. He's left with memories of the books he's read and of various subconscious procedures (e.g., writing his name on a check), but not of his wife or his childhood.
* In [[Teresa Edgerton]]'s ''[[Celydonn|The Grail and the Ring]]'', Gwenlliant is subjected to
* In [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' universe, a technique called "selective mindwipe" can be employed to surgically remove memories from a person's brain. The Commonwealth itself only uses mindwipe in cases of particularly heinous crimes, as an alternative to execution, but there are insinuations that it's used by less savory groups to prevent people from ratting them out. The most often cited use of mindwipe is on the members of the [[Evilutionary Biologist|Meliorare Society]].
* Sergej Luk'yanenko's ''Геном'' features a progressive mindwipe (from birth to present, keeping the victim aware of the process) as capital punishment in a regicide case. The body is then sold to a willing bidder, although the protagonist rightfully assumes being the [[Unwitting Pawn]]. {{spoiler|A fugitive transhuman female leaves with the mindwiped transhuman male body and the stolen (or liberated) digital male personality of her [[The Chessmaster|creator/lover]]. Now assume that said lover knows how to [[Grand Theft Me|download himself]].}}
* The last three books of the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series hinge on a spell that makes ''the whole world'' forget that one of the main characters ever existed, including fabricating memories to compensate for events she was present for or even ''responsible for''. Because of a contamination in the spell, though, it starts to unravel the world of magic as a whole.
* In Simon Hawke's ''[[Time Wars]]'' series, the 27th Century [[Time Travel|time travellers]] have a
* In [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s ''Puck of Pook's Hill'', Puck gives the children amnesia to prevent their talking about what he told them.
* In Daniel Keys Moran's ''The Last Dancer'' an extremely long-lived (possibly effectively immortal) human from the distant past, future or a different time-stream (in-universe they are not substantially different concepts) arrives on earth several tens of thousands of years ago local time. Because of their long lifetimes, one of the abilities his society has developed is a method of "archiving" your own memories - like ZIP for the brain - so that your brain doesn't fill up over the eons, while still being able to retain older memories. Exceptionally long periods of meditation are required to organize and archive your memories in this way, which can result in a sort of self-imposed amnesia since you can decide what memories will get archived. He then suffers from head trauma that gives him
* ''[[Harry Potter]]'' features the Obliviate Charm, which wipes a person's memories of the last few minutes. The charm can have some nasty side effects, though; when Gilderoy Lockhart tries to use the charm on Harry and Ron while clutching Ron's broken wand, it backfires and wipes pretty much his entire memory. Although this is initially played for laughs, three years later, he's still in an asylum.
** Interestingly, Lockhart's amnesia follows type one to a T, except for the fact that he apparently forgets [[Functional Magic]] is real. Even if he's Muggle-born, he would have presumably lived in the wizarding world long enough that it would be his "everyday" world.
*** Alternatively, the malfunction might've caused the Obliviate effect to do to Lockhart exactly what it's designed to do ''to Muggles'': wipe out all recollection of the wizarding world or its magics. If Lockhart ''isn't'' Muggle-born, this would erase his entire past, which is precisely what happened.
** Half [[Humiliation Conga]], half [[Karmic Death]]. Only "virtual death".
** The Obliviate doesn't seem to be especially tailored for Muggles. It just makes forgetting happen, subject to the will of the caster.
** The Obliviate Charm is played for laughs again in ''[[Harry Potter and
* The more recent ''[[Star Wars]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] novels have Jacen Solo discovering a method of short-term memory erasure, which he uses to hide from his apprentice, and others, memories that would point to his being a {{spoiler|Sith Lord}}. It's called "rubbing".
* In [[James Swallow]]'s ''[[Warhammer
* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[Chronicles of Chaos|The Orphans of Chaos]]'', the five child leads are repeatedly targeted by
** Wright's ''[[The Golden Oecumene|The Golden Age]]'' opens with Phaethon first learning that he did something so disgraceful that he ought to be ashamed to show his face, and being urged by a Neptunian to flee at once to them, so they can repair his damaged memory and personality. Things progress from there until the plot verges on a [[Gambit Pileup]].
* Forget charms in ''[[The Hollows]]'' novels remove specific memories from anyone they are used on. {{spoiler|Rachel has had them used on her ''twice''. The first to remove all memories of the illegal genetic treatment she received as a child. The second was given to her by her ''own partner'' to remove the memory of her boyfriend's murder so she would not go after the vampire who killed him and get killed herself. In the second case though she got better.}}
** {{spoiler|The second use of the charm was notable in that the information removed from Rachel's mind is also removed from ''the book itself''. The narrative skipped over the parts removed from her memory. Readers had to wait until Rachel's memories returned ''two books later'' to see the scene for themselves.}}
* In ''[[Warhammer
* Sharon Farber's chilling short story ''When the Old Man Waves the Banner'' is built on anterograde amnesia, induced with brain surgery; this being the only way the rebels can send an assassin to kill a dictator who can telepathically detect and deflect assassins. The protagonist has all his memories up to the operation, but can no longer recall recent events beyond the past 10 seconds or so. Against expectations, he survives after the assassination, with unfortunate consequences.
* [[Terry Pratchett]] often uses the concept that humans forget events that are too vast to be comprehended in order to remain sane. This often leaves lead characters remembering saving the world only to have everyone else think they've gone off the rocker. Since they're usually wizards, nobody really cares.
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* In Donald E. Westlake's final novel, ''Memory'', the protagonist, Paul Cole, suffers brain damage after sleeping with another man's wife. At first, he's fine, but as the story goes on, he loses most of his memory function. He can remember things, but they leak out of his head. {{spoiler|[[Downer Ending|It does not end well.]]}}
* In ''[[Matched]]'', everyone is required to take around three pills. The red pill wipes your memory of the last 2 days. This is used to keep people from remembering things that are out of the ordinary.
* In ''[[False Memory]]'', Dr. Ahriman does this to damn near everybody around him. He has all his patients and most of his staff conditioned to respond to code words, which allow him to put them into a hypnotic trance and make them do whatever he wants. Sometimes it's practical, but it's often really, really [[
* Happens to the Eighth Doctor in the [[Eighth Doctor Adventures]]. Fitz initially [[Locked Out of the Loop|tries to keep him this way]], as it's also a case of [[Trauma-Induced Amnesia]], following the Doctor's [[Heroic BSOD]] after the ''first'' time he [[Where I Was Born and Razed|destroyed his home planet]], and Fitz is afraid he'll be even worse when he remembers than he was right after he did it. But, after a while, Fitz decides he's [[Discussed Trope|had enough of this trope]] and thinks the Doctor is just faking so he doesn't have to face the [[Awful Truth]]:
{{quote|
* Early in the Jane Lindskold book ''[[Breaking the Wall|Thirteen Orphans]]'', several characters are subjected to the spell that strips them specifically of memories pertaining to their shared heritage of descendants of an emperor and his advisers who were exiled from their homeland. All other memories remain intact, though when one of the antagonists, raised in this knowledge all his life, his hit by the spell he loses ''all'' memory.
* In the 13th century ''[[The Saga of the Volsungs|Volsunga Saga]]'', the evil queen Grimhild serves an oblivion potion to the hero Sigurd that makes him forget his fiancé Brynhild, but nothing else.
* In Confessions of a D-list Supervillian Mechani-Cal used a device to help the world forget their addiction to the Defeated mind-control bugs. Later it is used on his new girlfriend and Superhero Aphrodite by her EX to forget her feelings for Mechani-Cal.
* [[A Certain Magical Index]]:
** Prior to the beginning of the series, the titular Index has her memory erased on a regular basis. This is because she has perfect memory, and her brain would be overloaded by memories otherwise. {{spoiler|This is actually a lie, as the memory wipes are to keep her under control.}}
** Touma stops the above example from needing to happen. However, he gets hit in the head by a spell meant to kill him. While he negates the spell with his [[Anti-Magic|right hand]], it still does enough damage that he loses all his memories instead.
** Misaki, the strongest telepath, is capable of doing this with a great deal of precision. In [[A Certain Scientific Railgun|the spinoff]], she removes all memories of a particular character (but not of anything else) from her friends' minds. {{spoiler|It is eventually revealed that she accidentally did this to Touma, prior to the incident involving Index. He was badly injured and she used her power as a substitute for anesthetic, but his abnormally low blood pressure caused this to have the side effect of retrograde and anterograde amnesia, specific to Misaki.}}
* ''The Status Civilization'' by [[Robert Sheckley]]: Everyone transported to Omega has their prior memories suppressed.
== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': "Tabula Rasa". After a memory spell goes wild, everyone gets amnesia and promptly forgets that they believe in vampires, including [[Mentor Archetype|monster guru Giles]]. Moreover Spike, a 19th-century vampire, starts acting like a 21st-century human.
** They not only forget that, they forget even their names and
** Subverted in the episode "The Pack". Xander, under the influence of a hyena spirit, alienates his friends, devours a pig alive, and tries, ineffectually, to rape Buffy. Afterward, he claims selective amnesia, convincing his friends that he won't have any lasting trauma. When they've gone, however, Giles points out that none of his possession lore mentioned ''anything'' about amnesia. Turns out Xander's been fibbing.
** For a show whose protagonist has a [[Secret Identity]] and which involves a [[Masquerade]], ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer'' uses this trope admirably rarely. This may be because maintaining the pretense of normalcy through shaky excuses and the [[Weirdness Censor|willful delusion of Sunnydale residents]] is funnier.
** Used for serious effect in Season 6 when Willow attempts this on Tara to make her forget Willow's growing addiction to magic. Tara eventually realizes what happened and leaves Willow.
* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' examples:
** ''[[Power Rangers Turbo]]'': Divatox gets amnesia and starts acting like an ordinary, if uncouth,
** ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' has Dillon, whose memory was wiped as one of the [[Big Bad]]'s unwilling test subjects prior to the series.
** ''[[Power Rangers Wild Force]]'': Cole gets amnesia in one episode. He forgets who he is and that he's a Ranger but nothing else.
** ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'': In one episode, Lord Zedd turned a caleidoscope into a monster with memory-erasing powers to make the Rangers forget who they are and how to use their powers. They were saved by Bulk and Skull, who tricked the monster into making the monster hit two prisms with his memory-erasing beam, (by passing a prism, it becomes a memory-restoring beam) and restoring the Rangers' memories. The monster made Bulk and Skull forget their recently-acquired knowledge of the Rangers' identities.
** ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]''; at the end of the crossover episode where [[Time Travel]] leads to a team-up with the [[Power Rangers Dino Thunder|Dino Rangers]], Cruger has to use a device on the latter team to erase their memories of the event, to prevent any time-related inconsistencies. The SPD Rangers are upset about this, saying it isn't fair that their allies aren't allowed to remember what happened; Cruger agrees with this, and then uses the device on them. Finally, once he is certain their craft is programmed for the return trip, he uses it on himself.
* In the [[Super Sentai]] series ''[[Mahou Sentai Magiranger]]'', a [[Monster of the Week]] puts a spell on [[The Chick]], causing her to forget not only the plot she'd stumbled upon, but ''everything'' to happen since she became a Ranger. Every hour, all new memories are erased, too. Thanks to the broad amnesia, nobody suspects that the intent was to erase ''one specific memory''. Still this trope, since the cutoff point for her memories seems pretty precise.
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': Vala loses her memory when a memory-enhancing device malfunctions. Despite the fact that it's mentioned pretty directly at the beginning of the episode that she has very little experience with "normal" Earth-bound human life, her memory loss isn't so severe that she "forgets" how to pass for an earth-born human, or that she ought to have a hard time believing the actual circumstances of her life.
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** In an aversion of #4, it's revealed late in the first series that {{spoiler|Suzie Costello, before she died, had been going to a support group and gushing to one man about everything she needed to get off her chest from her job, then retconning him ''every week, for years.'' Given that [[Retcon]] isn't generally applied more than once to anyone for fear of unknown overdose effects, and the guy is pretty nuts by the time they find him, this is horrifying.}}
* ''[[Smallville]]'' erases the memories of anyone who finds out about Clark's real identity. Really. It doesn't matter how you found out, what you saw, or what he did under the influence of this week's [[Phlebotinum]]. Your memory ''will be wiped'', often without explanation. Amnesia is the Smallville Flu.
** Judging by what happened to Lois's memory after her love potion wore off, the writers seem to think that all drugs erase your memory. Really, a love potion does that? You wake up next to someone with no clue as to what happened? Popping paracetamol must be a risky business in Smallville.
** We've lost count of the number of times a bump on the head has wiped Lana's memory of seeing some super heroics.
** An illegal immigrant gets to find out and doesn't get amnesia by the end of the episode, however.
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** In more recent seasons, nearly every important cast member but Lex is in the know, so there's less need for this. The superhero cameos learn quickly, but keep the secret since they're on the same side.
** In a rare example of plot-central, rather than "convenient", amnesia, Season 3 has Lex undergo a mind-wipe disguised as electroshock therapy for his supposed schizophrenia. [[Did Not Do the Research|The writers apparently didn't know]] that electroshock therapy is an extreme treatment for depression, not schizophrenia, and that it only removes ''minutes'' of memory, not months.
*** ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy) can indeed wipe months or even years of
** Lois and Sheriff Adams see Clark use his powers in "Blank". Luckily, the [[Differently-Powered Individual|metahuman]] he just met can erase the last few moments of someone's memory and he owes Clark a favor.
* The Haitian from ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' has the power to erase temporary memories, and at one point {{spoiler|someone's entire life history}}. There's also a subversion as one character suffers major head injuries as a result of his erasures.
** Also, in the Season 3 finale, {{spoiler|Sylar basically gets his mind rewritten to make him think he's really Nathan Petrelli, after the real Nathan is killed.}} This being ''Heroes'', there is pretty much no way that this doesn't go south.
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*** Although that may have been because he remembers his old life "as a dream", meaning that the usual [[Amnesiac Dissonance]] would have much less impact.
* Laser guided amnesia is basically the entire premise of [[Joss Whedon]]'s new show, ''[[Dollhouse]]''. Actually, Type 4 is the premise: they have the technology to erase memories and then give a person [[Fake Memories]], and the show proceeds to demonstrate most of the conceivable ways of abusing it.
** Controlled amnesia is the driving plot force in the episode "Needs" (1x08), in which the Dollhouse temporarily erase the
** Later, in "Getting Closer" (2x11), {{spoiler|Paul rescues November from another Dollhouse in [[Washington DC]] and takes her back to Los Angeles, but is allowed to keep her there only on condition of restoring her to her imprint of "Mellie" - the woman Paul fell in love with but deserted after learning she was a doll programmed to spy on him. "Mellie" is restored, but all memory of the breakup is excised to make her trust Paul totally.}}
* ''[[Eureka]]'', two episodes: A device that (at first) can erase 20 minutes at a time (hilarity ensues when Carter accidentally shoots Henry and can't remember what happened), and later can erase all memory of an alternate universe.
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* In ''[[Honey I Shrunk the Kids (TV series)|Honey I Shrunk the Kids]]: The TV Show'', a memory reliving device causes Diane to forget everything after she was 16, when a power-outage shuts it down.
* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'':
** Episode "Requiem for Methuselah". Spock uses the Vulcan Mind Meld to remove Kirk's memories of Rayna Kapek to relieve his grief over her death. Spock's gesture (literally) is a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]]. Perhaps because it's one of the rare instances when Kirk seems truly and deeply affected by the loss (and you get the feeling
** See also the episode "The Paradise Syndrome", where Kirk's memory is zapped by an alien device, to later be restored by a mind meld with Spock.
* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'':
** Episode "Conundrum". The ''entire crew'' suffers from
** In a similar episode, "Clues", the entire crew realizes after an unexplained wormhole jump that they are missing one day of memory. Subtle hints suggest that Data knows more about what was going on, but all of the clues lead to a real conspiracy theory. {{spoiler|The ''Enterprise'' had encountered extremely xenophobic aliens who did not want their existence known. To end hostilities, Picard allowed their memories of that day to be wiped. Data, the only one unaffected by the process, was commanded never to reveal what happened.}}
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'':
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** Used with a twist in one episode, in which a woman who wants to kill her husband gets the amnesia treatment after killing a UFO pilot instead - but the amnesia doesn't affect her desire to kill her husband, and SHADO can't interfere without revealing their secrets.
* In ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV series)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'', mortal who are exposed to magic will often be forced to lose all memories of the magic.
* Liz Lemon's brother on ''[[30 Rock|Thirty Rock]]'' averts part three, having suffered a head injury on a skiing trip that stops him from remembering what happened during and after it. His family is careful to pretend that he'll be leaving for it soon. At the end of the episode Liz exasperatedly shouts at him that he's forty, at which point he appears to snap out of it.
** However, given the nature of his injury, it's likely that he would soon forget what she told him.
* On ''[[Bones]]'', Dr. Brennan suffers from amnesia about the events of a single night. It may have been caused either by drugs or a [[A Wizard Did It|voodoo curse]].
* Used in the series finale of ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]''
* Averted in one episode of ''[[Lois and Clark]]'', where a woman uses Jimmy to power her age-reducing machine, and after he manages to run away says that it disrupts short-term
* ''[[Charmed]]'' has several memory-altering and memory-erasing entities in order to maintain the [[Masquerade]] (i.e., the Cleaners and memory dust).
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Journey's End" features a particularly depressing example of
** {{spoiler|Or rather have her head go asplody with an energy discharge that protects her, but knocks everyone else out in a half-mile radius.}}
** In ''The War Games'', Jamie and Zoe are returned to their respective times and have their memories altered so that they don't remember The Doctor as part of his punishment from the Time Lords.
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* In ''[[The Shadow Line]]'', Jonah Gabriel getting shot in the head caused him to lose his memories of the operation that got him shot, and only these memories. A few characters even note that this sounds suspiciously convenient.
* [[Discussed Trope|Discussed]] on ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'' after Sheldon tries to teach a lecture. Amy suggests destroying the part of the brain containing that memory with a laser. Sheldon declines.
{{quote|
== Tabletop Games ==
* Both ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' and ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]'' have a power called The Forgetful Mind as part of the Dominate Discipline. It allows the vampire to go in and literally rewrite a person's memories by telling them what "really" happened. It's usually used to protect the [[Masquerade]]; however, it's made clear that it only really works on more recent memories, and if the account isn't completely comprehensive, cognitive dissonance will ensue.
* In ''[[Shadowrun]]'' there is a drug called laés which erases upwards of a 24 hours worth of memory from the time it's administered. The memories so erased are completely unrecoverable, even by magic.
* ''[[
** Holy slayers (assassins) in ''Al-Qadim'' sometimes use a "Blade of Forgetfulness": everyone seeing it swung in a certain pattern suffers a complete memory lapse regarding everything that just happened and is about to happen (up to 3 rounds before and after). Not too hard to guess what sort of events tend to be forgotten this way, is it? Those attacked with such swords are very likely to shake off this effect, but usually this doesn't matter anymore.
** The Shadow that transports people, things and beings too monstrous to fall under the people category from undefined fantasy worlds to Earth in the ''Urban Arcana'' setting for [[D20 Modern]] as a side-effect also strips their memories of any details of those worlds - in effect, they know ''who'' they are, but not where they come from beyond Standard Fantasy Setting.
** In the 5th Edition of the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' setting, the illithids of Bluetspur will often abduct travelers in their domain to perform horrid mental and surgical experiments. Some die as a result, others are eaten or enslaved, but some are released after the illithids use their psionic powers to purge the victims' memories of their captivity. (Why? With illithids' [[Blue and Orange Morality]], it is impossible to tell.) Such victims might often discover "Dark Gifts" that they didn't have before (a mechanic used in Raveloft which can give the heroes minor powers with a dark theme, like say, darkvision) but occasionally, these memories might slowly return, the victims having nightmares of being held captive in a cell, [[Strapped to An Operating Table]], witnessing the gruesome fate of another prisoner, and so on. Naturally, this is useful as a plot hook for PCs if the campaign has more to do with Bluetspur.
* In ''[[GURPS
* In ''[[Magic: The
▲== Theater ==
* In [[Richard Wagner]]'s ''[[The Ring of the Nibelung|Götterdämmerung]]'', Siegfried is drugged to forget that he ever met Brunnhilde, but remembers killing the dragon Fafner and all his other early deeds (closely following the plot first found in ''[[The Saga of the Volsungs|Volsunga Saga]]''). Later, Siegfried steals the Ring from Brunnhilde, but promptly forgets this.
== Video Games ==
* A perhaps more realistic version appears in ''[[Super Robot Wars]] Advance''. One of the protagonists starts off with almost complete
* In the ''[[Street Fighter]]'' series, Cammy's amnesia erases all memory of her being a doll of Bison, but doesn't erase her fighting skills. This, despite the fact that she wasn't born, but created simply to be a vessel of Bison's soul.
** That's not too hard to figure out. Once a muscle has learned something after doing it enough times, it can become pretty much reflex. And Cammy most definitely used those moves a lot back when she was Killer Bee....
*** Of course, why would she have any memory of a normal life if she never ''lived'' one?
** A similar, more recent ''[[Street Fighter]]'' example of an amnesiac is the French soldier Abel. {{spoiler|Much like Cammy in the previous example, Abel is actually a cloned Shadaloo soldier and potential candidate for an alternate body container for Bison. Also parallel to Cammy, Abel is rescued from Shadaloo by a mercenary team.}}
* ''[[Planescape: Torment]]'' both honors and averts this. At first, the nameless main character can't remember his skills, his identity, or anything about the world he lives in, except the
* People who have recently died in ''[[Ghost Trick]]'' lose their memories, and recover them again with varying degrees of speed and depth. Sissel forgets not only his identity, but the meaning of many basic concepts such as 'prison cells' and 'science', as well as how to read. {{spoiler|Except he hasn't. Sissel can't remember them because he's even forgotten what he originally looked like...a cat, who never understood those concepts in the first place.}}
* In ''[[Chain of Memories]]'', Sora gradually loses some memories and has others rearranged. Recovering them leaves him in a coma for a year, causing him to forget everything that happened while his memories were scrambled. And for some reason, when Sora doesn't have his memories, everyone who knew him doesn't remember ''him'', either! (Although given the way memories seem to work in ''Kingdom Hearts'', this makes a certain degree of sense.) This is clarified in ''[[Kingdom Hearts II]]'', where Kairi is barely able to remember that there was a second boy she hung out with. Selphie cannot even recall that there was ever somebody Kairi hung out with other than Riku.
** Averted in the beginning of the game. When Sora, Donald, and Goofy forget their fighting skills, they have to relearn them all. Convenient, since the player's also learning a new fighting system. However, Sora's basic combo in ''Kingdom Hearts II'' is more precise and polished than in the original game, and according to [[Word of God]] reflects his growing skills as a swordsman, while Donald's magic is visually distinct from Sora's in ''Kingdom Hearts II'', when they shared the same spells in ''[[Kingdom Hearts (video game)|Kingdom Hearts]]''.
* [[Omnicidal Maniac|Gig]] from ''[[Soul Nomad and The World Eaters]]'' has
* Almost all of the townspeople from ''[[Final Fantasy]] Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon'' is afflicted with this, due to the influence of the Bell of Oblivion. Trying to remember even the simplest things becomes painful for them, and it's up to Chocobo to dive into their memories and recover the missing pieces.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', Cloud Strife has a rather severe case of amnesia, due to multiple traumatic events, that led to him {{spoiler|wiping his friend Zack from his mind and replacing Zack with himself. Therefore, Cloud, who had been just a common grunt in Shinra's army who failed to make it into SOLDIER, believes he was a SOLDIER First Class and now is a mercenary in Midgar -- something Zack told him he wanted to do.}} He also can't remember anything that happened after he {{spoiler|(Zack)}} faced Sephiroth in one of Shinra's Mako Reactors.
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* In ''[[Visaul Novel/Fate Stay Night|Fate Stay Night]]'', Heavens Feel route, Shirou gets a form of anterograde amnesia when he {{spoiler|loosens the binding on Archer's arm.}} It becomes more typical retrograde amnesia later on.
* Guillo from ''[[Baten Kaitos]] Origins'' remembers absolutely nothing from before meeting Sagi. {{spoiler|[[Tear Jerker|And everyone, especially Guillo, were much better off that way]].}}
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in ''[[Wild
* Shiki in ''[[Tsukihime]]'' had his previous memories of his life among the Nanaya clan magically erased by Makihasa after his incident with SHIKI. In fact, he doesn't even remember they existed for the most part and initially thinks of himself as SHIKI, the real son of Makihasa Tohno. Later, Akiha informs him that his memories cannot be replaced and that all records of his previous life were destroyed years ago. [[Angst? What Angst?|But he doesn't really care.]]
* [[Troubled but Cute|Neku]] in ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' starts out with mainly Type #1, not remembering anything before him waking up on the Scramble Crossing. {{spoiler|It later turns out that Neku's memories were his entry fee, but even then he still has some missing. This is later explained when Joshua, the resident [[Magnificent Bastard]] reveals that he'd 'held on' to some of Neku's memories -- namely the missing ones, which showed Joshua killing Neku.}}
* In the RPG ''[[Hype the Time Quest]]'', the Titular character is turned into stone and sent 200 years in the past. And when he wakes up, he doesn't even know what button to push to draw his sword!
* In the end of ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]] 5'', {{spoiler|Lord Wily does it to his son Dr. Regal}}. If it weren't for the fact that the former is {{spoiler|the series [[Big Bad]]}}, it was just a [[Shoot the Dog]] scenario, and {{spoiler|an amnesiac Regal}} loses all of his grudge against humanity.
* In the bad ending of ''[[Mega Man X]] 5'', this was inflicted on {{spoiler|the title character by Dr. Light}} so the former will not have any memories of {{spoiler|Maverick Zero}}. Furthermore, {{spoiler|any information regarding Zero will be rejected by the same programming that erased X's memory in the first place}}.
* Played painfully straight in the campaign mode of ''[[Tekken]] 6'', where protagonist Lars Alexandersson has his memory wiped by an explosion in the lab where he found Alisa and it only returns after {{spoiler|he squares off against Heihachi Mishima, his father}}.
* ''[[Phantasy Star]]'': Any CAST that comes back online after the [[The End of the World as We Know It|Great Blank]] exhibits near-total amnesia. Bodies of CASTs that were terminated beforehand are unaffected, as Ogi demonstrates by taking over two separate bodies. As he explains, the head stores the majority of the actual memory and the entire personality of the CAST while the body holds sub-memory the CAST uses. {{spoiler|1=The amnesia is literally laser-guided, as Mother Trinity employed Photon Noise in an attempt to kill the CASTs that fought against her. The memory damage forced the CASTs offline to prevent total system failure. Those on the moon were purged to a "man", since Mother could not use Photon Noise there without damaging herself. [[Demonic Possession|That's not to say she wasn't compromised already]]...}}
* Appears in the endgame of ''[[Nethack]]''. As the adventurer attempts to bring the Amulet of Yendor to the surface the Wizard of Yendor periodically appears and can wipe random parts of the character's memory including any levels which have been mapped. Also the names of items in the inventory will revert to their unknown name state.
* Averted in ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'', where Zero's so-called [[Shout-Out|"hibernation sickness"]] affects [[Bag of Spilling|motor skills]] and speech as well as his memory of his past life. In addition, some characters suspect that he may also suffer from anterograde amnesia.
* ''[[Amnesia: The Dark Descent|Amnesia the Dark Descent]]'' uses type 1 for the setup of the story, combined with [[Quest for Identity]]
* Alex Mercer of ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' [[Waking Up At the Morgue|wakes up on an autopsy table]] after having apparently been shot to death. He has no memory of his own identity or why a black ops organization is trying to kill him. Much of the game revolves around his slowly uncovering the truth, {{spoiler|revealing that the reason he doesn't have any memories is because he's ''not'' Alex Mercer. He's [[The Virus]] with a physical body created from Mercer's corpse}}.
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* Weiss in ''[[Agarest Senki 2]]'' starts off with him killing a servant of a god and a god. He then gets flung out in the middle of nowhere and gets amnesia as a result. He also gets his level reduced from [[Restart At Level One|level 99 all the way back down to level 1.]] {{spoiler|And then in a similar fashion as ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', Weiss isn't really "Weiss" but instead ''Chaos'' aka the god Weiss supposedly killed in the opening! And the real Weiss himself who was the level 99 Weiss actually didn't kill Chaos, but instead got himself killed!}}
* ''[[The Conduit]]'': in the tie-in comic book "Orange Lights", [[The Men in Black]] use specially-designed orange lights to erase [[Conspiracy Theorist|Gordon Well's]] knowledge of the truth behind the Drudge invasion before he can share it to his listeners.
* In ''[[Disgaea: Hour of Darkness]]'', [[Smug Snake|Maderas]] targeted and stole all of Etna's memories related to {{spoiler|King Krichevskoy and her promise to him}} to blackmail her into working for him, while leaving enough information to know they're important to make sure she complies.
** [[Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories]] combines this trope with [[Sealed Evil in a Can]]. {{spoiler|Rozalin is the reincarnation of Overlord Zenon. She can remember this only when the seal holding these memories back is broken}}.
*** Zenon's curse also causes this to every resident of Veldime. They become demons, and start to forget the lives they had before transforming. A couple of the minor characters around town mention the potential [[Fridge Horror]] involved; perhaps it would be better to remain demons than to regain their conscience and have to remember what they did while they were monsters.
* In ''[[Eien no Aselia]]'' before the story started Yuuto made a [[Deal with the Devil]] to save his little sister. The game starts when the devil in question (a sentient weapon) forces him to complete the contract and at the same time restores his memory of having made the deal. {{spoiler|Later, Tokimi wipes his memory again when said sword is destroyed and he is rendered unable to fight.}}
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* The protagonist of ''[[Legend of Kalevala]]'' doesn't remember anything important except that his wolf-like body is an odd piece of work. The main thing he has forgotten is that {{spoiler|it's not his body; he's the [[Brain Uploading]] replica of a human scientist}}.
* In ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn]]'', on the second playthrough, Ike regains a piece of his memory Sephiran erased from him to protect him and Mist. {{spoiler|As a child, he witnessed his father Greil/Gawain kill his mother and went temporarily insane}}.
* ''[[Flashback (video game)|Flashback]]'' starts with the protagonist escaping from a base being chased by soldiers. He ends up crash-landing on Titan. He has no memories before that. He also has a holo-cube containing a message of him telling himself to find a friend of his in an underground city. After finding the friend, he plugs you into a machine that restores your memories (at least, up to the moment when they were recorded). They reveal that your character has discovered [[Aliens Among Us]] and has developed a device that can detect them. As a precaution, he had his memories recorded and gave the recording to a friend. The aliens kidnapped him, wiped his memory, and planned to kill him. The protagonist has managed to escape, starting the events of the game.
* Rodi from the game ''[[Shining the Holy Ark]]'' suffers this after a cave-in knocks him on the head. It's used to explain away the fact he's forgotten all his skills he displayed in the fight where the player must attack him. Eventually his memories and skills come back as you play through the game.
* ''[[Lust Grimm]]'':
** Men drawn into the setting are often missing portions of their memory. Those who {{spoiler|are raped by a succubus transform into a fantasy creature and forget that they were ever human}}.
** This is also a service provided by a particular NPC. If you lose to an enemy, your character will remember being raped and suffer a debuff in future fights against them. The NPC erases your memory of enemies you've lost to (and, apparently, their memory of you as well), removing this debuff.
== Web Comics ==
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* Jigsaw in ''[[Last Res0rt]]'' has a relatively realistic bout of amnesia surrounding how she became a vampire. To complicate matters, she then apparently proceeds to feed in her sleep, allowing her to go for almost three months before {{spoiler|Daisy actually has the presence of mind to just TELL HER she's a vampire.}}
* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', the ''[[Harry Potter]]''-style wizards have the Forgetyoubliviate spell for this. It's used to erase Torg's memories of Hoggelrynth, and one inadvertently erases ''everyone's'' memories of Millard Stoop.
* In ''[[Fleep]]'', the amnesia is so laser-guided that the affected character doesn't even realize he has amnesia (at first). He walks into a phone booth in San Francisco; several years later, he wakes up inside a phone booth on a completely different
* ''[[Mixed Myth]]'' actually came up with ''two'' clever explanations for why the Sphinx Tamit can't remember anything besides her name. Her first explanation is that, since she's immortal, she has to periodically remove her memories with magic to prevent being overwhelmed. It's eventually revealed that this isn't true, and that {{spoiler|she's the [[Anthropomorphic Personification]] of Mystery, so she's cursed to be a mystery to herself--remembering her true identity triggers the magic that causes her to immediately forget everything}}.
* Several varieties of this exist in ''[[Blip]]'': both witch spells and vampire breath are capable of erasing memories. K also has dream amnesia, where she regularly has lucid dreams, but can only remember them as she's dreaming.
* In ''[[Bob and George]]'', this is [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/archives/041208c why some characters don't remember encountering their future selves.]
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'': Petey (the AI of a space battleship) is ordered to "repress and deny" all instances of the "ghost in the plumbing" incident, so that he doesn't {{spoiler|go insane an kill everyone on board}}.
* [[Pibgorn]] and Drusilla [http://www.gocomics.com/pibgorn/2009/06/02/ abruptly don't know each other].
* ''[[Impure Blood]]''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130630094052/http://www.impurebloodwebcomic.com/Pages/Chapter001/ib008.html Why bribe them when you can just take their memories?]
* In ''[[Spacetrawler]]'', one of the ways the underground Mihrgoots hide their existence from outsiders is by erasing the memories of anyone who encounters them.
* ''[[Ansem Retort]]'' has [[Kingdom Hearts|Sora]] hit by this so freqeuntly and so heavily that at this point his brain makes pumice look solid.
* ''[[
* Early in [[The Kingfisher]], Helen is used by Vitus as a one-woman [[Memory-Wiping Crew]], giving Marc
== Web Original ==
* The Alpha AI introduced to viewers in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]: Reconstruction'' deliberately severed its memories from itself some time ago as a coping mechanism for the torture inflicted upon it by Project Freelancer. Those [[Transferable Memory|severed memories]] formed the [[Living Memory|Epsilon AI]], which merely "suppressed" them (after going insane for a period).
* [[The Slender Man Mythos|The Operator]] seems to affect people this way in ''[[Marble Hornets]]''. Sometimes it's a result of meeting him directly, other times it can happen just from being in the same area as him - {{spoiler|Jay had completely forgotten being involved in the student film that started the plot}}. "Part 2" opens with the biggest example yet: {{spoiler|Jay wakes up in a hotel with no memory of anything during the seven-month gap between entries.}}
* The Agents of ''[[
* The [[SCP Foundation]] regularly gives "amnestics" to civilians, drugs of varying degrees of potency, that cause memory loss, in order to suppress memories of SCP sightings.
== Western Animation ==
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** Also played somewhat-straight in "The Why of Fry," when Nibbler wipes Fry's mind clean of the Brainspawn incident.
* ''[[Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law]]'' gave this a [[Lampshade Hanging]]: After getting sprayed with "amnesia gas", Harvey wakes up and immediately comments, "What happened? I don't remember anything from specifically the past couple days."
* In ''[[She-Ra:
* In ''[[Code Lyoko]]'', Aelita has no memories of her life before the Supercomputer was turned back on and she woke up on
** Also, in Season 1 episode "Amnesia", [[Nanomachines]] created by XANA are causing memory wipes typical for this trope, affecting Ulrich among others.
* In an episode of ''[[Gargoyles]]'', an alien uses his advanced technology to induce temporary amnesia in Elisa with the intent of erasing what he believes are her false memories of the Gargoyles as her friends (she is told that her true memories will return in a few days). Elisa is then understandably freaked out by her first post-mindwipe encounter with Goliath. Fortunately, her gun wasn't loaded when she pulled it on him. This in turn is the key for Goliath figuring out that something is wrong with Elisa's memory, as she not only didn't recognize him, but she also didn't know her gun was empty, a condition that had existed for at least a month in-story at the time.
** Also, Puck's first appearance where he eventually reverses the entire city's human/gargoyle status. Everyone thinks their current body is the one they've always had, but all their other memories remain intact and our heroes quickly figure out something is up just by logical reasoning, like the former gargoyles remembering being able to fly and humans-turned-gargoyles insisting they can't despite having wings.
* Captain Hero from ''[[Drawn Together]]'' appears to be able to do this by stripping unconscious bodies and violating them.
{{quote|
* Jorgen Von Strangle of ''[[The Fairly
** As [[The Protagonist|the main character]], Timmy Turner would never lose his fairies, so this is used to erase the memory of his friends and family in every episode that, for some reason, he is forced to reveal his fairies existance (most of the times in an attempt to [[Heroic Sacrifice|save them]] and defeat the [[Big Bad]]).
* Parodied in ''[[Family Guy]]'' when Lois used the neuralizer on Chris when he doesn't stop saying "boobies" after the Griffins visited the nudist family's house.
* Spoofed on an episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]:''
{{quote|
'''Smithers:''' [[Deadly Euphemism|You mean the revolver, sir?]]
'''Burns:''' Precisely. Be sure to wipe your own memory clear when you've finished. }}
** Also invoked by Homer in a newer episode, who wakes up with no memory of only the night before {{spoiler|so he can forget the planning his family was doing to create a surprise party for him}}.
* [[Generator Rex]] has a ''chronic'' variety of this. He's lost his memory several times in the past, for reasons that probably relate to his powers. Why this keeps happening has yet to be explained.
** In "Six Minus Six" Agent Six loses six years of memory saving Rex from a machine that was going to delete Rex's instead (because Rex apparently goes crazy if he resets, and if that happens Six has to kill him). It has so far not been fixed via [[Reset Button]] and might not be. That means not only does he not remember Rex, Holiday or Bob, but he doesn't rememeber White Knight or even the Event that caused the EVOS (heck, he barely knows what an EVO is). He only stayed with Providence and is trying to be the man he used to be because of Rex's unwavering trust him, even as he was six years ago (an unrepentant, mercenary [[Jerkass]]).
* In ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'', Dexter is shown erasing his parents' memories of his lab after enlisting their help in defeating a giant monster in the presumptive [[Grand Finale]]. Later, his pet monkey erases Dexter's memory of monkey's superpowers. In an earlier episode, Dex accidentally says that he has a lab, prompting Dee Dee to respond "Smooth move, Dexter. Now you'll have to erase Mom and Dad's memories...''again!''"
* Happens in the ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'' episode "Bereft", where villain Psimon psychically attacks Miss Martian, erasing her memories for the past six months and also erasing everyone's memories of the past six months too since they were all mentally connected with Miss Martian at the time. This leaves [[Superboy]] a mindless berserker, Artemis and Megan strangers to everyone else and Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad ignorant of the mission.
* In ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'', this is standard procedure for operatives that retire upon turning thirteen years old. (Referred to as "decommissioning".) This is not without justification, seeing as those who have refused the procedure and escaped (such as Numbuh Five's sister Cree) have become some of their worst enemies. {{spoiler|The process can be reversed, however, as demonstrated in Operation: Z.E.R.O.}} Another episode {{spoiler|reveals that not every operative is decommissioned at age thirteen. Some, like Maurice, act as deep-cover agents who are still loyal to the K.N.D. despite not being kids anymore.}}
== Real Life ==
* Studies of a drug called U0126 suggest that it might actually be able to induce
* A common side-effect of the so-called "rape drug" sedatives Rohypnol and GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) is retrograde amnesia, covering the time span the victim was under the drug and usually a short while previous to ingesting it.
** Likewise, imbibing heroic amounts of alcohol can induce retrograde
** All benzodiazepines (i.e. drugs in the Valium family, of which Rohypnol is one) can potentially cause retrograde amnesia, but some more than others. Doctors and dentists sometimes deliberately choose Ativan (lorazepam) for its strong tendency in this direction, which makes it ideal for sedating patients prior to unpleasant procedures. Some things you'd be thankful not to recall in great detail.
* Many severe accident victims lose memory of the accident as a result of the trauma. Memories don't quite form instantly, so if something happens to interrupt your brain's function (such as your head slamming into the pavement) the memory of the event will never have a chance to form in the first place.
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** Daniel Agger of Liverpool got a nasty concussion during the tie with Arsenal this season. He says he doesn't remember the match at all. Which considering Reina's dicking it up at literally the last minute it probably a good thing.
*** Same with the time when John Terry was knocked out after being kicked in the head against Arsenal (who seem to have a thing about causing head injuries) a couple of seasons back, he apparently couldn't remember anything that happened after coming out the tunnel for the second half: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GEB-[[TYL Mm Q]]
* In the wake of the infamous "wilding" outbreak in Central Park in April
* [[Stephen King]] wrote ''[[Cujo]]'' during his [[The Alcoholic|drinking days]]. He vaguely remembers writing the book, but only the [[Broad Strokes]] of the process. He can't remember the specifics or how he came up with what he feels were the best parts of the story.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Hollywood Psych]]
[[Category:Memory Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
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