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]]''}}
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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:
'''1.''' With surgical precision, amnesia [[Identity Amnesia|strips you of all information pertaining to personal identity]], leaving just about everything else intact. TV Amnesia is a disorder where you forget where you put your keys, but you do ''not'' forget what a key ''is'' or what it's ''for''. You will forget where you went to school, but not any of the things you ''learned'' in school. As a result, the character will retain all of their
Interestingly, while this would seem to be [[Hollywood Science]] at first glance, this [[Truth in Television|really is how retrograde amnesia works]], some of the time. "Procedural memory," which governs skills that the brain has automated, appears to be separate from "declarative memory", where you store previous facts and events, and in many cases only one of the two is damaged. And then there's [[wikipedia:Muscle memory|muscle memory]], which may or may not be affected by amnesia.
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* 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]] '''[[Captain Obvious|are]]''' [[Captain Obvious|all characters in an anime series]].}}
* ''[[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.
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** 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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ''[[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.
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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.
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== 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 Amnesia, so the act that changed reality and the memories of everyone in the world actually allowed Wolvie to figure out things were messed up.
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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).
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** 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''!
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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
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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.
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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|Deus Sanguinius]]'', when Sachiel discovers Inquisitor Stele communing with a daemon, they inflict amnesia on him.
* 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.}}
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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|"''You don't remember anyone or anything, except when you do, of course. You can't operate the TARDIS any more, except when you can. You don't know what happens in the future, except when you do. Drop the act, it got old years ago.''"}}
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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 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.
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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.
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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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** 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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** 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 ''[[GURPS]]'' Black Ops, the agents of "The Company" have a drug they can slip to someone who has Seen Too Much. They get what seems to be a nasty one-week case of flu, and forget what happened right before getting drugged. The Infinity Patrol from GURPS Time Travel have Eraser, which fits this trope even
* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering|Magic the Gathering]]'', [http://magiccards.info/wwk/en/31.html Jace, the Mind Sculptor]'s ultimate ability wipes its targets' minds clean of all their spells, deleting their decks and blocking access to their hands.
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== 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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* ''[[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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* 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.
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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.
* ''[[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
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* 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 ''[[
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* ''[[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: Princess of Power|She Ra Princess of Power]]'', it's stated that after baby Adora was kidnapped by Hordak and taken away, the Sorceress erased the Eternia people's memories of the missing Princess; only King Randor, Queen Marlenna, Man-At-Arms and the Sorceress herself know the truth. But then, that's Magical Amnesia for you.
* 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.
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== 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.
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