No Infantile Amnesia: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:ughitoldyouiwantedagirltryagai.jpg|link=Star Trek V: The Final Frontier|frame|A childhood memory lurking in Spock's brain.]]

{{quote|''"I remember stuff from when I was an infant, now! I know we got a 'C' in Psychology, but it's not normal to remember stuff vividly from before the age of four, is it?"''|'''Ellen''', ''[[El Goonish Shive]]''}}

Can be [[Truth in Television]] - certain memories ''can'' stay in one's brain.

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Dragonball Z]]'': The first Broly movie. The titular villain has a deep, sadistic, personal hatred for Goku, because [[Disproportionate Retribution|Goku's crying bothered him when they were newborns]]. For about one day maximum. Possibly [[Justified Trope|justified]] in that this is an [[Bizarre Alien Biology|alien]] we're talking about, here. The only other time a Saiyan's infant memories are mentioned in the Anime/Manga is when Raditz asks if Goku received any head injuries when he was young. They way he talked, you'd almost expect that a Saiyan can recall their entire lives.

* ''[[Dennou Coil]]'': Yasako and Isako, the main characters, have gaps in their memory from a specific incident when they were around seven years old. There is some implied memory manipulation or repression involved, but the characters generally react as if they're simply remembering something that they had forgotten.

* ''[[20th Century Boys]]'': Kanna can remember being held as a baby. She had ESP.

== Comic Books ==

* In ''[[Camelot 3000]]'', Morgan le Fay causes Mordred's reincarnation to remember his previous incarnation's having almost been drowned by King Arthur as an infant.

* [[Downplayed]] in the ''[[The Legend of Korra|Legend of Korra]]'' work ''[http://avatar-dacia.tumblr.com/post/95488074469/ Better Off Not Knowing]'': Hakini's neonatal memory seems to be limited to the "bone-crushing cold" {{spoiler|of [[The Brute|her biological mother's]] [[Tailor-Made Prison]] at the North Pole}}.

* ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'': Princess Leia remembers her "real mother", giving her a description of "very beautiful, kind, but sad." Padmé fell to [[Death by Childbirth]] in ''[[Revenge of the Sith]]'', making it this trope retroactively. That, or Leia had a succession of three mothers, including Padme.

* Briefly mentioned near the beginning of ''[[Ladyhawke]]'', where "the Mouse", in an aside, compares his escape from [[The Alcatraz]] to leaving his mother's womb--"God, what a memory!"

{{quote|'''Sarek:''' So human.}}

** Perhaps it wasn't a literal memory, but more a symbolic manifestation of Spock's [[Half-Human Hybrid]] angst.

* ''[[Blade]]'': A flashback shows his dying mother bleeding from the neck reaching out to him after he was born. It moves Blade to help the doctor who is in a similar plight.

* Averted in ''[[Baby Geniuses]]'', where it is revealed that babies before the age of 2 are ridiculously smart (thanks to the experiences of their past life). Around the age of 2, they "cross over" and forget everything that happened before, becoming normal children. The main characters' adopted father actually manages to teach himself to understand infants' "speech".

== Literature ==

** All of the ''[[Dune]]'' novels toy with this trope. In the sequels more characters are introduced who, like Alia, are infants but already have adult-level intelligence and memories from past lives.

* In ''[[Ender's Game|Ender's Shadow]]'', we learn that Bean is able to remember a fair amount of his own infancy, and was lucid enough to hide just before the "clean room" where he has been cared for is raided. This is justified by his eidetic memory. And his genetically-enhanced, ultra-powerful intellect; he was not just remembering it, he was fully conscious, although almost totally non-socialised.

* In ''[[The Belgariad]]'s'' 'autobiography' of Polgara, she starts the story off describing her time in the womb. Her earliest memory is apparently when she and her twin sister split from one embryo to two. Needless to say, she also recalls her babyhood. Polgara is ''weird'': the daughter of an immortal sorceror and his shapeshifting wife.

* Justified in the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Eighth Doctor Adventures]] novel ''EarthWorld''. A device is used to read Fitz's mind, causing him to remember his entire life in reverse:

* Although ''[[Sir Apropos of Nothing]]'' relays the story of his mother's conception of him via rape and his birth, he very explicitly states that the stories were told to him by his mother and the owner of the inn where he worked.

* In Barbara Kingsolver's ''Animal Dreams'', protagonist Codi has a recurring nightmare of a "[[Hell Is That Noise|shattering pop]]" and a [[Blinded by the Light|blinding flash]]. {{spoiler|Turns out that it's from the flashbulb on her father's camera when he took a picture of her as a newborn.}}

== Live-Action TV ==

* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', River Song remembers the Doctor's cot, despite only having been in it for a few moments as a baby. (Then again, the fact that she's {{spoiler|part Time Lord}} could explain her having such an excellent memory).

* [[Played for Laughs]] in a throwaway comment on [[Boy Meets World]]: Eric's one memory of his birth was "that cute nurse who slapped me on the tushie."

== Newspaper Comics ==

* Averted in ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''. Six-year old Calvin gives up writing his autobiography because he can't remember the whole first half of his life.

** In a later comic where Calvin struggles to remember his past, even wondering if someone had erased to keep secrets hidden, Hobbes comments that he remembers Calvin spending a lot of time burping up. If you take the view that Hobbes is a creation of Calvin's mind, then it's possible that Calvin still has his earliest memories but can't consciously access them. If you consider Hobbes a separate entity, however, it's a subtle retcon of how the two met as it implies he was always around from the start of Calvin's life in one way or another.

== Video Games ==

** Similarly, its implied that Raiden has some memories of his birth in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', as he mentions that he was "born on a rainy day." As his parents were murdered by Solidus while he was still very young, its unlikely that they would have told him.

* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'': [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] when the implanting of the memories of an alternate-universe self gives Ellen near perfect recall of infancy. [http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2004-09-29 Ellen and Elliot discuss] the fact that No Infantile Amnesia is not normal.

** It's also not mentioned whether or not those particular memories began to fade when she gained new implanted memories, farther along her alternate-self's life.

*** However, Ellen did mention remembering the memories from the alternate-self more than that of Elliot's. However, this may simply be because she experienced them the night before, rather than eleven years ago.

* In ''[[Dragon Tails]]'', Goldy's oldest memories are from ''within his own egg!'' Bluey's comments suggest he remembers that event, too.

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'': [[Invoked]] with Dr. Doofenschmirtz, who claims that his parents somehow missed witnessing his birth date, even though logically his mom should've been present.

* [[Played for Laughs]] in ''[[Super Secret Secret Squirrel]]'' when Morocco Mole asks his [[Evil Twin]] Scirocco [[Cain and Abel|why he hates him so much]]. This segues into flashbacks within flashbacks, from when they were children, when they were infants, when they were ''embryos''...Secret stops this lunacy before Embryo!Scirroco can explain how the circumstances of their parents meeting led to his hatred of Morocco.

== Real Life ==

* This trope is quite far from [[Truth in Television]]: not only do people not really remember their infancy, most people don't remember their childhood as well as they think they do and can be easily tricked into remembering things that never happened (as demonstrated by, among others, [[wikipedia:Elizabeth Loftus|Elizabeth Loftus]]).

* [[Ray Bradbury]] [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/books/chapters/0724-1st-weller.html claimed] he can remember being born.

* In ''Finding Ben'' by Barbara LaSalle, she states that her high-functioning autistic son Benjamin Levinson remembers the color of the walls of his first bedroom, which he moved out of at 11 months of age.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Babies Babies Everywhere]]