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Laser-Guided Amnesia: Difference between revisions
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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 & Manga ==
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** 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 [[Laser
* {{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.
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** Third, in the OVA series, Tenkou uses [[MacGuffin]] Spheres to systematically erase Taka/Tamahome's memories of his allies.
* Crops up several times in ''[[Mx 0]]'', 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 [[Laser
* [[Double Subversion]] in ''[[Tekkaman Blade (Anime)|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.
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** This sealing also has a tragic twist: {{spoiler|[[The Dragon]] used a minor demon called Houasyou as a basis to 'forge' the seal on Pai, who would enforce the seal and keep the Sanjiyan Unkara dormant. But since Pai has a split personality between a [[Genki Girl]] and [[Tsundere]], the seal has an unexpected side effect - Houasyou ''herself'' lost her memory, and thanks to the [[Masquerade]], ''she'' believes that she's Pai. And when the good guys finally confront [[The Dragon]] to get her memories back, that means Houasyou has to accept that she's actually a demon and [[Tear Jerker|won't be able to be with her love Yakumo]] because he loves the ''real'' Pai, not her.}}
* ''[[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.
* Done to Hisoka in ''[[Yami no Matsuei]]'' by [[Complete Monster|Muraki]] in order to erase the memory of the night that Muraki raped him and marked him with a slowly fatal curse. Muraki later removed the memory block when [[For the Evulz|he thought it would be amusing to make him remember it]].
* ''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 [[Laser
* [[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 loss--with a [[The Promise|few]] [[Morality Pet|crucial]] [[I Will Protect Her|exceptions]].
* Masako Natsume from ''[[Mawaru Penguindrum (Anime)|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.
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== Fan Works ==
* In ''[[Kyon Big Damn Hero (Fanfic)|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 ''[[Silver Resistance (Fanfic)|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.
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** 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
* 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.
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** In ''Memory'', Chief of Imperial Security Simon Illyan's implanted eidetic memory chip breaks down and has to be removed before it will kill him. Though he doesn't suffer any retrograde amnesia, for him to suddenly go from perfect memory to normal memory is treated as something almost as bad, and he does suffer from a period of anterograde amnesia for several weeks as his brain has to "relearn" how to memorize things for itself.
** In ''Shards of Honour'' Bothari is given a brutal drug-aided memory-suppression to remove politically inconvenient memories (mutinying and murdering his commanding officer, who thoroughly deserved it). He manages to hold on to a few memories, however.
*** Elena Visconti, a POW who had been raped and tortured by both Bothari and his CO, had her memories removed because the surgeons felt sorry for her. Of course, when she got home the psych officers promptly removed the blocks. Twenty years later, she's still a bitter, angry wreck. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]].
* In ''[[Artemis Fowl (Literature)|Artemis Fowl]]'', the fairies have mind-wiping technology which can be fine-tuned to suppress only specific memories.
** 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 [[Laser
* 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 [[Laser
* 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 [[Laser
* ''[[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.
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* 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 40000]]'' novel ''[[Blood Angels (Literature)|Deus Sanguinius]]'', when Sachiel discovers Inquisitor Stele communing with a daemon, they inflict amnesia on him.
* In [[John C Wright|John C. Wright]]'s ''[[Chronicles of Chaos (Literature)|The Orphans of Chaos]]'', the five child leads are repeatedly targeted by [[Laser
** Wright's ''[[The Golden Oecumene (Literature)|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.}}
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** 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 memory--though it's not supposed to--and this side-effect is not unusual. Hemingway offed himself after losing so much of his memory he couldn't write anymore. Docs claim newer machines or techniques make this less likely, but the evidence suggests it's a scattershot procedure. It '''is''' supposed to be used only for depression, a fact ignored by more storytellers than I can count.
** Lois and Sheriff Adams see Clark use his powers in "Blank". Luckily, the [[Differently
* The Haitian from ''[[Heroes (TV)|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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** 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 [[Laser
** 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)|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 ''[[
** 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]].
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* 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 (Video Game)|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 [[Laser
* 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 (Video Game)|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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** It should also be mentioned that this is meta in a quite ridiculous degree, given that ''KotOR'' is a role-playing game. It manages to neatly explain how {{spoiler|your apparently adult and very capable soldier/rogue/mage doesn't know how to put on clothes or open doors. While it's just teaching you how to work the game mechanics, it has an in story explanation that [[Fridge Brilliance|your memories have been messed with perhaps a little too well]].}}
* Happens ''three times'' (at least if you're after the good ending) in ''[[Cave Story (Video Game)|Cave Story]]''. To injured robots. The third time, Curly actually forgets everything that happened since the last time she woke up with amnesia.
* In the new thirteenth ending of ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'' DS, {{spoiler|[[Anti
* In ''[[Xenogears (Video Game)|Xenogears]]'', {{spoiler|the Limiter causes an entire planet to forget whatever [[The Chessmaster]] Krelian wants them to forget, from history to the existence of ''entire continents.'' Naturally, the heroes move to undo this.}}
** The protagonist himself has amnesia thanks to multiple personalities having memories of most of his life before he turned fifteen.
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* ''[[Ansem Retort]]'' has [[Kingdom Hearts|Sora]] hit by this so freqeuntly and so heavily that at this point his brain makes pumice look solid.
* ''[[Two Kinds]]'' 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
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== Real Life ==
* Studies of a drug called U0126 suggest that it might actually be able to induce [[Laser
* 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 amnesia -- GHB shares many of the biochemical processes, but is far [more?] rapid in effect, which is why it's such an insidious thing to spike a drink with.
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[[Category:Laser Guided Amnesia]]
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