Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Difference between revisions

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'''The Player:''' Precedent.
'''Guildenstern:''' You've been here before.
'''The Player:''' And I know which way the wind is blowing.|''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]''}}
|''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]''}}
 
When [[Time Travel]] is used to "rewrite" past events, the main characters will typically retain their memory of the original timeline, i.e. how everything went the "first time around", even though that version of events [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|no longer happened]]. Everyone else will only remember the new reality, but not the main characters. They're special. After all, how can they [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] if they don't know something went wrong?
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Moreover, there are instances where characters who ''didn't'' time travel get Ripple Effect Proof Memory anyway, which may or may not be justified with some [[Applied Phlebotinum]]. However, the only way to really avoid these problems is to set the story in a universe where [[You Already Changed the Past]] and that can be pretty hard to pull off, especially on a regular basis.
 
'''Ripple -Effect -Proof Memory''' may cause a [[Psychic Nosebleed]], when someone whose memory isn't ''completely'' 'proof' gets an 'update' on a new lifetime and the mental stress from trying to contain memories from a large number of timelines actually harms the physical body. This might happen even if memories are the only thing that carry over from shift to shift and ''the time traveler is no longer in his or her original body''. The technical term for this is "the time travel clone memory feedback problem". We're working hard to find a cure.
 
Ripple -Effect -Proof Memory is inherent in any and all [[Groundhog Day Loop]], [[Mental Time Travel]], and [[It's a Wonderful Plot|It's A Wonderful Plots]]s. As we already have pages on them, instances of them shouldn't be included here. Individuals with a '''Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory''' may be the only ones who recognize a [[Ripple Effect Indicator]] for what it is.
 
The name refers to the "[[Delayed Ripple Effect|ripple effect]]" from the ''[[Back to The Future]]'' films.
 
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] &and [[Manga]] ==
 
== Anime & Manga ==
* In ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', Haruhi {{spoiler|accidentally sets the last two weeks of summer to [[Groundhog Day Loop|repeat endlessly]] because she doesn't want it to end}}. Nobody has ripple proof memory and Haruhi has the least ripple proof memory of all. The rest of the Brigade do however, {{spoiler|experience déjà vu}} at an increasing rate. They've gone through {{spoiler|about 15 thousand repetitions, with realizations of what's going on increasing in frequency}}. Yuki, though, apparently {{spoiler|exists partially outside time or something and remembers every... single... time. Yes, she is now subjectively several hundred years older or something close to that}}.
** And in ''Disappearance'', when {{spoiler|Yuki reshapes the world, she makes it so Kyon has a Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory}}. Everyone else does not, however.
* [[Deconstructed]] in ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]''. It's in fact the main source of conflict during the second season.
* Occurs in ''[[xxxHolic×××HOLiC]]'' and its sister series ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' several times due to some major futzing with the time-space continuum, but the most obvious example is {{spoiler|Yuuko}} who is [[Ret-Gone|Ret Goned]] from the memories of all but a few people once {{spoiler|her time starts moving again and she dies as she should have years before}}.
* Pretty much all instances of [[Time Travel]] in ''[[Pokémon]]''. In ''Arceus and the Jewel of Life'', Ash & co. remember events as they happen after [[Olympus Mons|Dialga]] sends them back through time, but they also remember the original history that necessitated the trip to start with. Arceus itself is subject to [[Delayed Ripple Effect]], and nearly blasts them before its memories catch up.
** In the Japanese version of the Celebi movie no one remembered as well. The dubbers felt that it too closely mirrored the first movie {{spoiler|which ends with Mewtwo erasing the movie's events from everyone's memory}}, and elected to change it. They discuss the matter, and an additional scene with {{spoiler|Professor Oak}} reflecting, in the commentary.
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* In ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' episode 11, {{spoiler|Lain's child-like incarnation (I think)}} alters history to remove some rumors around school about Arisu but leaves Arisu's memory intact. After all, memory is just data. Arisu finds the whole experience a bit unnerving.
* In Episode 117 of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]'', it is revealed that Yliaster were able to alter history. When they did so, only the Three Emperors, the Signers and those within their protective fields, and Team Ragnarok (who held the Polar God Cards), were seen to be aware of the changes.
* In the ''[[Clannad (visual novel)|Clannad]]'' anime adaption, {{spoiler|both Nagisa and Tomoya retain the memories of the first timeline when Ushio hits the [[Reset Button]]}}.
* By the end of ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'', no one remembers {{spoiler|the eponymous character save her little brother Tetsuya}} and her [[Romantic Two-Girl Friendship|very best friend]]. On the other hand, since she's now a [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|transcendent law of the universe]], she remembers everything that was, that will be, and even that which can't possibly exist.
** Before that, though, {{spoiler|it still applied to Homura in the different timelines. Every time she returned to the beginning of the [[Groundhog Day Loop]], she was the only character who could remember what happened the last time, though Madoka was [[Dreaming of Times Gone By]]}}.
* Okarin from ''[[Steins;Gate]]'' has one of these. {{spoiler|John Titor wants him to use it to become the Messiah and overthrow the coming new world order. He calls it “Reading Steiner” which doesn't really mean anything but sounds pretty cool.}}
** Played more plausible than most examples since he usually gains no more than a weeks worth of memory at a time and it still disorients him immensely to the point of [[Idiot Ball]].
* When ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' has a reset at the end of the first anime season and manga story arc (which may as well be a change to the timestream), everybody forgets what happened the first time around... except for Luna and Artemis.
 
== [[Comic Books]] ==
 
== Card Games ==
* In ''[[Chrononauts]]'', certain Identities have Ripple Effect Proof Memory, but they come from different timelines. These players win by restoring history to however they remember it. Others try to change history from our (and their) history to one which they prefer—such as Betty, who wins by saving JFK in 1963, and Yuri, who tries to make the USSR win the Cold War.
 
 
== Comics ==
* This was in ''[[The Authority]]'', when The Doctor has to relinquish his powers to one of his predecessors (one who was stripped of them for being a depraved omnicidal maniac). The old Doctor stops in the middle of the fight to point out that he can freely travel through time, threatening them with "imagine fighting someone who could shoot you as you emerged from your mother's womb or hold a pillow over your face in a retirement home." He then adds "worse still, imagine the local doctor, back when you were in high school, giving you a funny feeling you'd carry around for the rest of your natural life". He doesn't go as far as raping The Engineer (or if he does it's off-page, or has been changed in the reprinting) but the comic does take a panel to show him kissing her on the back of the neck. He asks her "Hello again, Miss Angela Spica of class 4B. Remember me?" which starts her crying and whispering "oh my god..."
* In the Marvel Universe, Bishop has occasionally ended up like this, due to doing a bit more time-travel than is really healthy... After the '[[Age of Apocalypse]]' timeline was destroyed, and everything went back to normal, he experienced some occasional 'regression' into memories of the now-defunct timeline—up to and including attacking Beast and Cyclops, who were evil in the other universe.
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* [[Tom Strong]] featured an aversion of this trope. His greatest adversary managed, at one point, to take over the time stream, and used some new technology to open a time gate, pulling versions of himself from all points in his life through the gate and into the timeline. He ended up with the backflow of over three hundred separate memory streams converging on his head all at once- luckily, the [[Clock Roaches|Clock Roach]] guardian he defeated to take over the time stream felt generous enough to send them all back, with the note that the youngest of them will have to go through every single one of the summonings and unsummonings. The mental chaos this event produces drives the villain to madness and probably leads to his downfall.
* In the infamous ''[[One More Day]]'', Spider-Man makes a [[Deal with the Devil|deal with Mephisto]] in order to save Aunt May's life, which rewrites decades of Marvel continuity to create an alternate timeline where he was never married to Mary Jane and he never revealed his secret identity. However, despite this, Spidey is still shown to remember the events of the original timeline. It's even a plot point in certain issues, where characters that knew Spidey's identity beforehand (such as the Fantastic Four) have forgotten, and only by showing his face will their memories be restored. The only people who remember Spidey's identity from the beginning are Mary Jane and his [[Cloning Blues|clone Kaine]], and the recent ''One Moment In Time'' reveals that Mary Jane also remembers the original marriage. Deadpool is also hinted to remember due to the fact that he [[No Fourth Wall|demolished the fourth wall long ago]], but he's never yet used it beyond a [[Take That]].
* In the ''[[Archies Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic The Hedgehog]]'' comics, this comes up during the ''Mobius: X Years Later'' stories. After the timeline [[Cosmic Retcon|gets altered]], some handy [[Applied Phlebotinum]] allows Sonic and several of the other heroes to remember the unaltered reality. The same [[Applied Phlebotinum]] also allows [[The Dragon|Lien-Da]] to remember as well, while [[Big Bad|King]] [[Knight Templar|Shadow]] is able to remember simply because of his Chaos powers, which are themselves a loose form of [[Reality Warping]].
* Done in [[Paperinik New Adventures]] where, after a time rewrite, a select few get occasional flash-backs to how reality was supposed to be. Odin Eidilon then checks his own memory against a backup memory he had kept in a time-proof safe to confirm his suspicions.
* Humorously [[Averted]] in [[Alan Moore]]'s one-off "Doctor Dibworth's Disasppointing Day". The titular scientist invents a [[Time Machine]] and tries to test it by making at first minor, and progressively more drastic, changes to the past. Each time he does, the narrative helpfully informs us that nothing changes, while the artwork shows the results of massive changes to history. Doctor Dibworth does briefly consider that his own memories are altered as a result of changes to the past, but dismisses that idea as unlikely.
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** Also completely averted with the ending, in which the timeline is changed again (to one very similar to the "correct" timeline, but with some differences.) This time, no one remembers the old timeline, including Barry
 
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* [[Time Travel]] stories are rife in the world of ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfiction. One almost univeraluniversal common factor is that no matter how much the timeline changes, [[Cloudcuckoolander|Luna Lovegood]] remembers the old one and has no problem with the idea of multiple timelines existing.
* ''[[Bleach|Ichigo]]'': Ichigo has this {{spoiler|for the most part}} in ''[[Hogyoku Ex Machina]]'' [[Peggy Sue|after time traveling]]. {{spoiler|The exception is he can't remember [[Non-Serial Movie|Senna from the first film]]. [[For Want of a Nail|Since Ichigo spent all of his time after Rukia's rescue in Soul Society instead of going home]], [[Ret-Gone|she never forms in the first place]], and so he doesn't retain the memory. He doesn't know anything about her until some [[Applied Phlebotinum]] shows it}}.
* "Cuteness" (an alternate Chibi-Usa) from the ''[[Harry Potter]]/[[Sailor Moon]]/[[Ranma ½]]'' crossover ''[[The Girl Who Loved]]'' has Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, probably because her father is a wizard, where neither the original/canon Chibi-Usa nor another whose father was Ranma Saotome do. She's aware that she's different from the "original" Chibi-Usa, and in at least some ways how she's different (like her name) and how she's not (like her looks).
 
== Fan Works[[Film]] ==
* [[Time Travel]] stories are rife in the world of ''[[Harry Potter]]'' fanfiction. One almost univeral common factor is that no matter how much the timeline changes, [[Cloudcuckoolander|Luna Lovegood]] remembers the old one and has no problem with the idea of multiple timelines existing.
* [[Bleach|Ichigo]] has this {{spoiler|for the most part}} in ''[[Hogyoku Ex Machina]]'' [[Peggy Sue|after time traveling]]. {{spoiler|The exception is he can't remember [[Non-Serial Movie|Senna from the first film]]. [[For Want of a Nail|Since Ichigo spent all of his time after Rukia's rescue in Soul Society instead of going home]], [[Ret-Gone|she never forms in the first place]], and so he doesn't retain the memory. He doesn't know anything about her until some [[Applied Phlebotinum]] shows it}}.
 
 
== Films -- Animation ==
* In the animated film ''[[Meet the Robinsons]]'', Lewis retains his memory of his entire adventure, even though through the course of the adventure, he takes several steps to prevent the film's villains from ''existing''. Logically, this would mean the entire plot of the film ''never happened'', though not addressed in the film itself. He's a ''really'' good inventor.
 
 
== Films -- Live-Action ==
* Naturally, the ''[[Back to The Future]]'' trilogy. It is a bit strange to note, though, that while ''memory'' is proof against the ripple effect, ontology is ''not'': Marty remembers his own timeline in the first movie, and yet he comes close to ''literally fading out of existence'' as history is pushed off-track. It may be that in ''BTTF'', memory is not proof against the ripple effect ''per se'', just a bit insulated from it, and like Marty's photograph, will [[Delayed Ripple Effect|fade slowly as the timeline diverges]]. Or it's just a big [[Timey-Wimey Ball]].
** Marty almost fades away in the first film because he almost changes the timeline to one where his parents never got together and thus he was never born. The timeline he ends up creating by the end of the movie is one where his parents DID meet but under different circumstances and thus he WAS born, but his parents are happier. If memory and ontology were both immune to the ripple effect, then what would be left to change as a result of time travel?
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* Happened in ''[[Source Code]]''. The protagonist is on a mission to stop a bomb from blowing up a train. He has 8 minutes. Every time he fails (and hence dies), when he is reset, he remembers what happened in the previous run. This is ''Justified'' by the nature of the Source Code. However, there is an interesting twist at the end.
* ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]'' However, it should be mentioned that each time the protagonist changed the past, he received the memories of his own life (in the new timeline) up to the present. However, the memories weren't just there—they arrived as a searing burst of information (being physical written into his brain), and co-existed with his old memories, giving him a [[Psychic Nosebleed]].
:There is one scene where another character has ripple-proofing, despite the fact that they shouldn't; the protagonists goes into the past and impales his hands on some spikes, to give himself Jesus-like markings in the future, so he can prove to his friend he's not lying. To his friend, they seem to have just appeared, which didn't happen to any other character in the film.
 
There is one scene where another character has ripple-proofing, despite the fact that they shouldn't; the protagonists goes into the past and impales his hands on some spikes, to give himself Jesus-like markings in the future, so he can prove to his friend he's not lying. To his friend, they seem to have just appeared, which didn't happen to any other character in the film.
* The movie ''[[Frequency]]'' gives this a [[Hand Wave]]; after the main character inadvertently changes the past, he talks about how he sort of remembers it both ways. Though this is then dropped for the rest of the film, where he only remembers the original timeline after {{spoiler|his mother is killed in the past, and a few other changes happen from his attempts to fix that.}}
* The disadvantages of this are touched on at the end of ''[[Time Cop]]'', where the hero is surprised to learn he now has a wife and son....
* Sandra Bullock's character in ''[[The Lake House]]'' seems to have this. Of course, the film is one big [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]. The film could have been a knotted [[Stable Time Loop]] if there wasn't that one tree and if {{spoiler|the filmmakers hadn't gone for [[Happily Ever After]] in the last reel.}}
* In the Disney film ''[[Minutemen]]'', the time travelers have this, but the people who asked them to change the past don't. Fortunately, they thought of this, and took a video of something that was never going to happen with them to the past. Apparently, even ''inanimate objects'' have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory!
* ''[[Godzilla]] vs. King Ghidorah'', the only Godzilla movie so far to feature time travel, uses this trope. After the timeline has been altered in [[WWII]] so that King Ghidorah attacks Japan for decades instead of Godzilla, the main characters note the difference. Later when it turns out that Godzilla does still exist in this universe except bigger, they note they are the only ones who can identify him and even realize the change in size. The filmmakers seem to have forgotten this when they made ''Godzilla vs. [[Space Godzilla]]'' and everyone acts as if the timeline never changed and Godzilla hasn't been replaced with Ghidorah...yet references to Ghidorah are made and Godzilla is still at the larger scale.
* ''[[Star Trek: First Contact]]''. The Enterprise can see the Borg!Earth timeline, but since they're in the wake of the time disturbance caused by the Borg Sphere, they're unaffected. It's strongly implied that they'd vanish from existance had they not went through the time aperture themselves.
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* Brazilian film ''O Homem do Futuro'' (The Man from the Future) has protagonist Zero accidentally going back 20 years to the prom that ruined his life. So he tries to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]], and vanishes as history is changed, waking up back to the present day... where he became rich, but is a [[Jerkass]] and the love of his life hates him. So he goes back again, and after leading things to go back the original way he vanishes again... returning to 2011 with memories of the entire time travel ordeal.
 
== [[Literature]] ==
 
== Literature ==
* The [[The Dark Tower/The Waste Lands|third book]] in ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' series subverted this. Roland was going insane because he was remembering two timelines, one where {{spoiler|Jake died}}, and one where he didn't. Of course, {{spoiler|Jake was having an even worse time about it.}}
* In [[Ray Bradbury]]'s ''A Sound of Thunder'', several time travelers to the past realize that they have changed history when they return to the future and notice changes that no one else recognizes.
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* John Barnes's short story ''Things Undone'' varies this depending on the size of the changes made. If something small changes, certain antisocial people will only remember the way the world used to be, and everyone else will only remember what it becomes. It turns out a big change {{spoiler|initially leaves those antisocial people with conflicting memories. If they become more social, integrating themselves into the flow of events, they'll wind up with both sets of full memories. If they stay withdrawn, however, the universe will eventually erase ''[[Unperson|them]]''.}}
* In ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]'', time is altered to destroy most of Coleridge's poem "Kublah Khan" (which now ends at the line "And drunk the milk of paradise"), in consequence preventing a murder and the retroactive destruction of humanity, as well as introducing a composer named Johann Sebastian Bach. Only the time-traveling main characters remember the original reality.
* In ''[[Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations]]'', the titular department keeps records protected by phase discriminators, shielding the data from alterations in the timeline. Although the agents themselves will have no knowledge of the previous history, they can research their own files to determine if changes have been made. In the novel ''Watching the Clock'', there's also a subplot that takes two of the protagonists to a [[Place Beyond Time]], leaving their memories of another character intact when she suffers a [[Ret-Gone]].
* In ''[[Johnny and The Bomb]]'' everybody but Johnny forgets their time travel experiences, although Kirsty remembers them again after finding a piece of physical evidence.
* Intentionally invoked in ''[[Discworld/Night Watch (Discworld)|Night Watch]]''. Thanks to [[Theory of Narrative Causality|narrativium]], history is mutable and subject to popular perception, so it doesn't matter if Vimes' memories of the "original" version are different as long as events play out roughly the same.
 
== [[Live-Action TV]] ==
* ''[[Doctor Who]]''
** In "The Time Meddler", the Doctor's companions suppose that, should the Monk succeed in changing history, their own memories would instantly change. While this might seem to exclude the Doctor from this trope, the balance of evidence points the other way, and there's no way for the companions to be doing anything more than guessing. Of course, many fans will angrily tell you that "The Aztecs" conclusively proves that you can't change history at all in the [[Whoniverse]], so the question is moot. Both examples require that you discard the [[Timey-Wimey Ball|overwhelming evidence in the other direction]], of course.
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** Though neither he, not other characters from the series have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory. It ''did'' happen to a kid where the alien spacecraft went through a ''plane'', who could remember the past seven days. Parker on the other hand, if he's not the one piloting the machine, forgets like the rest of them.
* The fourth season of ''[[Fringe]]'' {{spoiler|is largely about exploring the implications of this concept. First with the adult version of Peter recorporealizing in an altered timeline where he died as a child, then with Olivia recovering her memories from the prior timeline at the expense of the ones that correspond with the current version of reality.}}
* ''[[Jin (TV)|Jin]]'': Similarly to ''[[Back to the Future]]'', Jin's memory of the future and his fiancée Miki is constant regardless of the radical changes his actions make in 19th century Edo, but the photograph he has of himself and Miki changes poses and/or location at least [[Once an Episode]], and after he makes the ethical decision to cure her [[Identical Grandson|lookalike ancestor]] of breast cancer it vanishes entirely.
 
== Card[[Tabletop Games]] ==
 
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Feng Shui]]'''s Innerwalkers have this by default. Once someone has been through the Netherworld, they're basically removed from the timestream, and are thus unaffected by whatever changes are wrought by the chi of the world changing hands. They keep all the memories they have of what the world was like before entering the Netherworld, and thus do not have their memories changed like everyone else's when a shift happens. But the thing is, when something like a critical shift happens, the innerwalker can easily find himself as a much different version of himself from the new timeline, complete with a new name, new history, new enemies and the like, and no one who hasn't been through the Netherworld will remember anything but what the current version of the character is like, leading to ''serious'' [[Mind Screw]].
** A pretty good (and amusing) example is given in a supplement of two Innerwalkers who barely knew each other. A critical shift hits, and they find themselves world famous... and ''married''. They're living together now, to keep up the celebrity mega-couple act, and are quite surprised to be slowly falling in love. The shift ''does'' suggest that if they had known each other, they'd get married, and they're sure getting to know each other now.
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* In ''[[Mage: The Ascension]]'' Czar Vargo (a powerful [[Steampunk]] [[Mad Scientist]] mage with a bit of an idealistic bent) attempted to prevent World War One with an unprecedented global display of the power of his technomagic. He pushed reality so far that when it snapped back it erased all memory of him from existence, and to this day the only knowledge of him comes from a tiny handful of eyewitnesses who retained their unedited memories of the event.
* History in ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]'' has been accidentally changed in radical ways a few times despite the best efforts of various groups to preserve the timespace continuum, although neither the general population nor reality itself generally seem to notice. This means that some of the most spectacular world-changing events in the game setting only happened in continuities that no longer exist, and are only remembered by time travellers and a few other scattered people who somehow manage to remember them. As well as a few not so world-changing events, like each and every one of the successful Hitler assassinations.
* The 1980's1980s time travel game "''[[Timemaster"]]'' used a version of this. When history is changed, everyone including the PCs remember the changed version ... but if the PCs make their "Paranormal Memory" roll, they ''also'' remember the original timeline.
* In ''[[Chrononauts]]'', certain Identities have Ripple Effect Proof Memory, but they come from different timelines. These players win by restoring history to however they remember it. Others try to change history from our (and their) history to one which they prefer—such as Betty, who wins by saving JFK in 1963, and Yuri, who tries to make the USSR win the Cold War.
 
== [[Theatre]] ==
* The abovepage quote is from ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]'', in which The Player, unlike the rest of the cast, remembers what's happened in each production of ''[[Hamlet]]'', and thus knows what will happen.
 
== Theatre[[Video Games]] ==
* The above quote is from ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]'', in which The Player, unlike the rest of the cast, remembers what's happened in each production of ''[[Hamlet]]'', and thus knows what will happen.
 
 
== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Achron]]'', you play a general precisely because of your nature as an 'achronal': an entity outside of time and unaffected by changes to the timestream.
* Link (and Tatl) in ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]: Majora's Mask]]''. Possibly the Happy Mask Salesman as well. Probably justified since the Goddess of Time is the one enabling them to travel back in time.
* One of the most interesting ''aversions'' of this trope is the ''[[Journeyman Project]]'' games. The main character is a member of the titular Journeyman Project, a government agency which was created in response to the emergence of time travel technology to keep history from being changed. Changes in time create a temporal distortion that travels only forward in time from the moment of the change. One agent is constantly on duty to monitor for such changes; in the event that one occurs, the agent time-jumps back into the time of dinosaurs, a period of history considered "safe" because any changes would wipe out humanity. A record of all events in human history is kept there and can be referenced against a similar record in the future. The differences allow the agent to pinpoint the focal points and prevent the changes. The only reason this works is because the agent and lithmus record are not actually subjected to the ripple.
** Only the first one, technically, although Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory is generally averted. In the later entries, it becomes possible to detect changes to the timeline without the archive disc. The latter is part of the backstory of ''The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time'', where Gage Blackwood (the first game's unnamed Agent 5) is falsely accused of tampering with history for personal gain; the evidence against him consists of mini-temporal distortions originating from several time periods he visited. In the opening of the third game, Agent 3 tries to get the TSA's attention by leaving her [[Jump Suit]] time machine behind, setting off a massive temporal distortion.
* Anyone in ''[[Time Hollow]]'' for the DS who either owns a Hollow Pen or was pulled through a Hole has this. Used as a bit of a running gag with one character who introduces himself to the main character every time they meet, since the main character meets him about once per chapter, and undoes their meeting at the end along with everything else that went wrong that day.
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* In ''[[Dark Cloud]] 2'', Monica, the time-traveler from the future, naturally retains her memories of what said future ''should'' have been like until Griffon destroyed it from the past. As she and Max work together to restore the future (well, future from Max's perspective, but Monica's ''past'') they run into a small bit of [[Time Travel Tense Trouble]] (for instance, they must create the origin of a factory that Monica remembers as having provided technology to a lab, even though neither the factory nor the lab exists yet.) As they restore these "origin points" and more elements from these locations reappear, inhabitants of restored future villages have no memory of what ''should'' have been there, but they do feel that "something is missing" until the village is completed. In the most notable case, a king from the future is astonished at a change in history ''he'' doesn't remember, but that {{spoiler|Max's mother}} Elena, his contemporary, ''recognizes'' it as an improvement Max and Monica made in [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|the past's future known timeline]] (implying that she is aware of, and remembers, both the original and the improved one.) Meanwhile, their flunkies just roll with it, and presumably their memories were rewritten along with history.
** And it goes without saying: although the [[Big Bad]] is defeated in the present (Max's time,) monumental events threaten the world ( {{spoiler|the Blue Moon turns into the Star of Destruction, and falls from the sky}},) and remains of the battle stay there (such as {{spoiler|the Moon Flower Palace, crashed just outside Palm Brinks}}) the good guys from the future have no knowledge of any this until it actually occurs.
* Averted in ''[[CROSS†CHANNEL]]''. Taichi and Youko often figure out what's going on, but that is because there is one spot that doesn't reset at the end of every week. Records of past Taichis are kept here. {{spoiler|Miki at one point or another also discovered this and began hiding inside it every Sunday in order to avoid the resets.}} However, Nanaka DOES''does'' remember all the past weeks. But, as Taichi notices, she's not really 'there' and isn't exactly looping like the rest.
* This comes with the [[Reality Warper]] abilities of the Star Singers in ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates|Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Ring of Fates]]''. Of course it only applies to the one doing the altering at the time. {{spoiler|The multiplayer mode however demonstrates that powerful entities, even if they have current timeline versions, can leak through. One even returning as a boss in the original [[Crystal Chronicles]], and the current versions may have deja vu (or in one case a relapse) of their previous selves.}}
* Averted in ''[[Legacy of Kain]]: Soul Reaver 2'', where after a subtantialsubstantial [[Time Paradox]] takes place, Kain is seen in clear anguish as new memories flood his mind, realizing that {{spoiler|in changing history, he and Raziel did exactly what the Hylden wanted them to do}}.
** Not exactly averted. Kain still seemed to remember the original timeline, and that's what was causing his anguish and allowed him to give Raziel one last piece of advice to avert the change{{spoiler|, which Raziel didn't heed.}}
* Played straight in ''[[Singularity]]'' as Renko as well as everyone on the island is perfectly aware of what is happening to the timeline. This is what allows Barisov to attempt to fix the timeline.
* ''[[Star Trek Online]]'', being a veritable font of [[Continuity Nods]], naturally ends up featuring this in some way. The most prominent example is likely the "Past Imperfect" storyline, which, as noted above, involves the Guardian of Forever granting Ripple Effect-proof memory to the player's crew due to proximity. There are also some unusual examples, in that {{spoiler|Present!B'Vat doesn't seem to recall his past self's [[Future Me Scares Me]] moment, where he effectively betrays himself.}} It also leads to some fairly amazing [[Tricked-Out Time]], [[Stable Time Loop]], etc. moments.
* The fact that {{spoiler|Tatsuya ''didn't'' give up his memories}} in ''[[Persona 2]]: Innocent Sin'' {{spoiler|sets up the entire story of ''Eternal Punishment'' where [[The End of the World as We Know It|the world may end]] ''[[History Repeats|again]]'' because of his [[I Will Protect Her|desire to protect]] his [[Cool Big Sis]] / [[Love Interest]] Maya.}}
* This is a major character point to Rachel (and by proxy, her butler Valkenhayn) in ''[[Blaz BlueBlazBlue]]'', who {{spoiler|remembers over 17,000 years of looped time.}} It is also shown that {{spoiler|Hazama/Terumi}} shares this ability in the second game.
** It might also be a [[Deconstructed Trope]], as it is heavily implied that Terumi, who has lived through FAR more loops than Rachel, eventually snapped and decided to pay the world back for every single loop he had been forced to relive in it.
* ''[[Main/ptitlefjczDissidia 80Final qe|DissidaFantasy]]'' states that the warriors are kept called for the next cycle of war - the side that lost will have no memories, though, while the winning warriors remember their last battle.
* This happens to anyone Sissel helps in ''[[Ghost Trick]]'' (by way of going back in time and preventing deaths), himself included. Granted, {{spoiler|the end of the game leaves us on a note where the player (with the help of three other ghosts) just prevented the entire game from happening, so no one remembers except Sissel, who is still dead at the very end, and the other ghosts, restored to their natural lives.}}
* Used to chilling effect on ''[[Undertale]]'', as part of its [[Deconstruction Game|deconstruction]] of [[JRPG]] clichés. That your player character remembers its actions after a reset (particularly, that they remember having offed a friendly character) can be weird and unsettling, but when an antagonistic character actually remembers your actions and use it against you it becomes scary as hell. {{Spoiler|People that possess or have possessed the power of SAVE can remember former iterations of the timeline, and both the player character and the villainous Flowey have it. The monsters of the Underworld are unaware of the RESETs, albeit some of them have some sensitivity to your former actions, ranging from how some bosses realize that you listened their speech before, to the bizarre not-quite-remembering-past-loops-but-sensing-something-is-wrong awareness Sans exhibit.}}
 
 
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* Explicitly "[[Hand Wave|explained]]" with the retroactive changes caused by the ''[[Misfile]]'': Ash and Emily can remember their lives before reality was changed because their souls are unavailable to the filing system for updates, so their memories can't be altered by the filing system. The other main character in on the secret, Rumisiel, is an angel, and so is either not included in the filing system or are unaffected by changes to Earth's files.
** Rumisiel may not be ripple proof; he only knew that he'd messed up a couple of files and roughly where to find his victims. His first guess on what he'd done to Ash was that he'd aged her into a teenager.
*** Of course, it's entirely possible that he was [[The Stoner|too high at the time to realize exactly what he'd done]], and only figured it out once he was explicitly ''told''.
* A great deal of the plot of the now-completed webcomicweb comic ''[[Narbonic]]'' is based on the time-travel adventure of Dave Davenport, and on the fact that afterwards {{spoiler|he's the only one who remembers that he used to smoke}}.
** Largely, this is an extremely long-term [[Foreshadowing]] of events involved in the series finale. {{spoiler|It's heavily implied that time travel can never really change history, but the astute reader will know this is untrue because of the smoking thing.}} Which happened ''years'' earlier in real world time.
* This bites Zoe in the ass in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''. She is downright ''pissed'' to discover that, thanks to the changes she made to the past, her history exam now includes an essay question on "The War of the Bug Squishers", a war Zoe helped start by going back in time, and consequently, doesn't know how it ended (or even that it's the same war she helped start).
* Not involving actual time travel, but a teacher at the school ''[[The Good Witch]]'' is immune to the effects of the [[Fake Memories|mass memory-altering spells]] that convince everyone else that the past happened differently.
* Both played straight and [[Subverted Trope|double-subverted]] in ''[[Wapsi Square]]''. Jin remembers every iteration of the [[Stable Time Loop]] the characters are meant to resolve, but isn't talking. Meanwhile, {{spoiler|Brandi}} wrote a book {{spoiler|in a previous iteration}} that explains step by step what to do, which is only accessible due to the existence of the [[Library of Babel|Bibliothiki]]. The main character, however, is left completely in the dark until it's resolved.
* For some unexplained reason, when history began to change in ''[[Ansem Retort]]'', Riku had this. He managed to get Axel and Zexion to remember the proper timeline when he got them to remember that [[Andrew Jackson]] {{spoiler|(who they fuse into)}} is on the twenty dollar bill, and not [[24|Jack Bauer]].
* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', when [[Mad Scientist|Kevyn Andreyasn]] and a miniature version of [[Blob Monster|Sergeant Schlock]] went back in time to prevent the [[Bad Future]], Schlock accidentally merged with Future!Schlock and now has ''both'' sets of memories.
* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', it's literally Dave's role as the Knight of Time to keep everyone from getting killed or losing the game {{spoiler|or preventing John and Jade's untimely demise and manipulate the stock market on LOHAC}} by time traveling and warning his past self in the 'Alpha timeline.' And dooming his own timeline for his inevitable death. {{spoiler|Or turning into a feathery asshole.}} So there logically follows there are many Daves running around at any given hour in time loops. And maybe a couple of dead Daves.
* Played with in ''SAVE ME'', the webcomic that tells the beginning of the [[BTS (band)|BTS]] Universe's plot: after gaining the power of looping back in time, Seokjin doesn't retain memories of the original timeline or the first couple loops until he makes a second deal to obtain that ability. Later in the webcomic (and confirmed in the Notes) it's implied that other characters have "dreams" that are actually memories of previous timelines. Even further, in the novel version of The Notes {{spoiler|this is deconstructed: Seokjin experiences so many loops, he begin to forget events from previous ones, and even events from the ''current'' one he is experiencing (i.e. the accident where he runs over Jungkook after the beach group fight, who he always forgets), to the point that it begins to hinder his mission of saving his friends. The entity that is helping him directs him to find something called "the map of the soul" to help to counteract this}}
 
== [[Web Original]] ==
* [[Zero Punctuation|Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw]]'s short story, ''[http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/features/ttravel.htm Richard and Maureen's Amazing Time Travel Adventure]'' plays with the trope. The main characters of the story are able to invent a time machine and make changes in the timeline merely by speculating about them. As they're doing this, their memories of how things used to be spontaneously vanish.
* At the climax to ''[[Red vs. Blue's the Blood Gulch Chronicles]]'', {{spoiler|Wyoming's time-resetting power resets his foes' memory, with the exception of Tucker, whose alien sword prevents the effect and lets him and Church beat Wyoming.}}
** Has someone at RT read {{spoiler|the ''[[Sword of Truth]]''}}? Just saying...
 
== Web[[Western OriginalAnimation]] ==
* Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's short story, ''[http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/features/ttravel.htm Richard and Maureen's Amazing Time Travel Adventure]'' plays with the trope. The main characters of the story are able to invent a time machine and make changes in the timeline merely by speculating about them. As they're doing this, their memories of how things used to be spontaneously vanish.
* At the climax to Red vs. Blue's Blood Gulch Chronicles, {{spoiler|Wyoming's time-resetting power resets his foes' memory, with the exception of Tucker, whose alien sword prevents the effect and lets him and Church beat Wyoming.}}
** Has someone at RT read {{spoiler|the [[Sword of Truth]]}}? Just saying...
 
 
== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[Code Lyoko]]'', the Return to the Past function doesn't affect the memories of anybody who has been scanned into the Supercomputer (as well as all the Supercomputer's programs—and incidently XANA). However, they only travel to the ''past'' and see it as [[Mental Time Travel]], which avoids some problems (most notably, they always remember ''both'' histories).
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in an episode of ''[[Static Shock]]'': A new metahuman with time travel powers who goes by the name of Timezone appears and teams up with Static and Gear; they, along with Ebon, have a time travelling adventure, at the end of which Timezone goes back in time and prevents herself from ever getting powers. She ends up with no memory of the events, and as Richie explains, their adventure now never happened. When Virgil protests that he and Richie both remember the events, Richie advises him [[MST3K Mantra|not to think too hard about it]].
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* In an episode of the ''[[Men in Black (animation)|Men in Black]]'' animated series, an enemy uses time travel to slowly reduce the MiB to a small backroom operation. Jay is the only one who notices the changes, as he had been previously affected by an alien device that made super-intelligent and immune to the ripple effect.
* In ''[[Danny Phantom]]'', Clockwork sets time back two hours before the Nasty Sauce incident that would trigger the [[Bad Future]] so neither Danny's parents nor his teacher Lancer gained knowledge of their once imminent deaths and Danny's [[Secret Identity]].
**Also, when Sam wished that she and Danny had never met, everything was changed to circumstances where they hadn't met, and Danny and Tucker didn't remember her. However, Sam wishes that everything was back to normal and that only she, Danny, and Tucker remembered everything that happened in the episode. Danny does the same thing in "Reality Trip"; he changes reality so that nobody remembers any of the events that happened except for himself, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz.
* Averted in the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Go God Go XII". Cartman calls his past self, causing several changes to the future world that Cartman apparently doesn't notice.
* In the episode of ''[[The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' where Robotnik, Scratch, Grounder, Sonic and Tails go back to an Ancient Egypt-like era, Scratch and Grounder make it so that two of Sonic's ancestors don't meet, resulting in Sonic not being born. But though Sonic disappears from existence, for plot convenience Tails is still there and remembers him, allowing him to set Sonic's ancestors back up.
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* After [[Johnny Test]] changed Porkbelly's history, he had to take a test about the city's history. He failed it because he remembered the original history and not the new history.
* ''[[Dog City]]'': Baron goes back to the time the pilgrims purchased the new world from the natives and made a better offer: squeak toys. This created a Bad Future where he rules. Somehow, Ace and Eddie had Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory and, after visiting a timeline where Eddie ruled, went back to the past and made an even better offer: a technologically advanced (even for present time standards) fire hydrant the heroes took from the Eddie-ruled timeline.
* In one ''[[Super Friends]]'' story, the Legion of Doom attempts to [[Make Wrong What Once Went Right]] by undoing the origins of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern; they succeed, and none of the other heroes even know what happened, given the altering of the past. But while no human has Ripple Effect Proof Memory here, their ''computer'' does, giving them the info they need to set history right.
 
== [[Real Life]] ==
 
== Real Life ==
* [http://www.vagabondish.com/wp-content/uploads/wanted-time-traveler.jpg This] help wanted ad.
* [[Stephen Hawking]]'s time traveler party, as mentioned in ''Into the Universe''. No one came... or did they? Maybe he's keeping mum.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]
[[Category:Memory Tropes]]
[[Category:Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory]]