Laser-Guided Amnesia: Difference between revisions
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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}}
== Anime
* 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.)
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** 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]]'': Jellal suffers this after he's defeated. He regains his memory in the same arc, however.
* Some of the [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]] ("M.E.") in ''[[Darker than Black]]'' can do this. It's generally used to make people forget about contact with Contractors or to [[Unperson]] them.
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* 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 ==
* 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 remember—or [[Fake Memories|remembers wrongly]].
** 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 ''[[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.}}
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* [[Doctor Strange]] does this on occasion, usually to help people recover their sanity after [[Go Mad from the Revelation|stumbling into something their minds couldn't handle]].
* 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 ==
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* 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.
* ''[[Mistakes]]'' depicts the nation-tans of ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' as unable to disobey a direct order from their human leaders. Thus, {{spoiler|when Japan finds out the horrible things being done to his brothers and his boss tells him to forget about it, not even meaning it entirely literally, Japan ''does''}}.
* 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.
* 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.
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* 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 mystery—it's implied that his love for his wife is genuine, but at the same time, he's also driven to visit Shell Beach, a place everyone's visited but nobody can describe its location. {{spoiler|It doesn't exist, until the end when he makes it exist. He finds his mindwiped wife there, and the movie ends before revealing whether her feelings toward him were genuine or induced.}}
== Literature ==
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** 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 40,000]]'' novel ''[[Blood Angels|Deus Sanguinius]]'', when Sachiel discovers Inquisitor Stele communing with a daemon, they inflict amnesia on him.
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** 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 ==
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** 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, human—and she isn't even human, nor has she ever lived like one. Her amnesia was the side-effect of a ''laser'' beam.
** ''[[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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* [[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|'''Sheldon''': No, one small slip of the hand and I'll [[Fate Worse Than Death|wind up in Enginerring]] making doodads with Wolowitz.}}
== Tabletop Games ==
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** 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
* In ''[[GURPS
* In ''[[Magic: The
==
* 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 ==
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** 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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* ''[[Twokinds]]'' has Type 1. [[Punny Name|Trace Legacy's]] is erased in a mysterious battle, and tries to regain his memories. {{spoiler|He decides to stop trying because of what he finds.}}
* Early in [[The Kingfisher]], Helen is used by Vitus as a one-woman [[Memory-Wiping Crew]], giving Marc Laser-Guided Amnesia.
== Web Original ==
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* [[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 ''[[LIS DEAD]]'' {{spoiler|are all mind-wiped from their parents' memories, from the memories of all their parents' family, and from all the surrounding community and records. From birth.}}
* 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 Lyoko—including the fact she was human, thus believing to be an A.I. {{spoiler|It is revealed at the end of Season 2 that XANA had stolen those memories, and uses them to [[Synchronisation|link Aelita's life]] to the continued working of the Supercomputer.}}
** Also, in Season 1 episode "Amnesia", [[Nanomachines]] created by XANA are causing memory wipes typical for this trope, affecting Ulrich among others.
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* 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 ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Hollywood Psych]]
[[Category:Memory Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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