History Main / InfallibleNarrator

->''"It was October 17th at 1:54 pm and fourteen birds were flying by the window..."''
-->-- '''Professor Farnsworth''', ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}''[[note]] He has a Memo-Ray which lets him remember EVERY detail, making his story infallible, unlike the MadScientist Farnsworth normally is.[[/note]]

* This sort of thing's common in HGWells' books, as the narrators of ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' and especially ''First Men in the Moon'' recount every single line of conversation in a dramatic narrative even though they're supposed to be telling the story years later. It reaches the breaking point, though, in ''The Food of the Gods''. The unnamed narrator is clearly meant to be a person, as he describes attending one of the characters' lectures in college, and offers his own speculations about certain mysteries in the story. But then we have the same narrator somehow vividly describing the dreams of the characters, when the characters themselves ''didn't even remember them upon awakening''. As the story goes on, the narrator becomes more and more infallible, until it's impossible to reconcile his knowledge of events with any human perspective.

-->-- '''Gordon Frohman''', ''{{Concerned}}''

-->-- '''Professor Farnsworth''', ''{{Futurama}}''[[note]] He has a Memo-Ray which lets him remember EVERY detail, making his story infallible, unlike the MadScientist Farnsworth normally is.[[/note]]

* Mostly averted in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', as the details in the Red Book could be reasonably have been remembered by different members of the Company as they compared stories. A few parts had no obvious witnesses, however, such as Gollum's near-repentance on Cirith Ungol while Frodo and Sam slept.

* RonHoward's narration on ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' is a hallmark of the series. It is always spot-on accurate, insightful and quick to point out the callous lies told by the entire Bluth family on a daily basis.

* ''{{Moby-Dick}}'': Ishmael may be better at writing than at whaling.

* Mostly averted in TheLordOfTheRings, as the details in the Red Book could be reasonably have been remembered by different members of the Company as they compared stories. A few parts had no obvious witnesses, however, such as Gollum's near-repentance on Cirith Ungol while Frodo and Sam slept.

* NeroWolfe keeps Archie Goodwin on his permanent staff precisely because Archie can be one of these.

* The ''CiaphasCain'' novels have most of the memoirs Cain himself as a straight example, especially given how good his memory must be to remember all the fine details from sorties that happened over a century ago. The chapters taken from the memoirs of Jenith Sulla, meanwhile, [[StylisticSuck are intentional aversions]]. The fact that Cain's 'memoirs' are being critically commented on and (left slightly incomplete to be) augmented by a fictional editor goes some way towards making them seem more real, but it doesn't change the fact that the parts that are wholly his own narration are the way that they are.

-->-- '''Professor Farnsworth''', ''{{Futurama}}''[[hottip:*: He has a Memo-Ray which lets him remember EVERY detail, making his story infallible, unlike the MadScientist Farnsworth normally is.]]

* All the characters, including great philosophers and children, speak with similar intelligence, style and vocabulary in Virginia Woolf's ''To The Lighthouse''.
** But in ''To The Lighthouse'' it's not the voices of the characters themselves, it's Virginia Woolf being an omniscient narrator and telling us what they're thinking. Their thought processes are complicated, but they probably couldn't articulate them as sophisticatedly as Woolf does. When they actually speak out loud it's usually mundane things like "do you think the weather is okay to sail in today?"

* In ''HarryPotter'', characters can remember practically anything with the aid of a [[AWizardDidIt Pensieve]], such as what someone in the same room as them twenty years ago was writing while they weren't even looking. Dumbledore promises Harry at one point that his own memories will be accurate and detailed, but it's hard to imagine how much more accurate and detailed they could be than the other ones we see.

* Lampshaded in ThePrincessDiaries. The narrator remarks on the difficulty of taking a diary to formal occasions (when it won't fit in a purse), and her rampant writing in her diaries is noticed by her friends and family, and the last book recounts, in part, her attempts to get her first novel published.
* {{Hyperion}} has an interesting way of handling this. About half of the book is comprised of multiple backstories told from each person's perspective, and so the tone of each one is different. Some of them are told in the third person, justified as being how The Consul (the primary protagonist) remembers them telling it, without stuttering or pauses. Other times, the story will be told through a series of journal entries. One character, Martin Silenus, is a poet, and so his portion is told from the first-person and is written differently than the others.

* In the medieval ScrapbookStory ''CatherineCalledBirdy'', the narrator/diarist seems far too eloquent for a girl living in TheDungAges who supposedly just learned to read and write (although her style seems to become more "literary" over time, even drifting into PurpleProse once or twice near the end).

* This sort of thing's common in HGWells' books, as the narrators of ''TheWarOfTheWorlds'' and especially ''First Men in the Moon'' recount every single line of conversation in a dramatic narrative even though they're supposed to be telling the story years later. It reaches the breaking point, though, in ''The Food of the Gods''. The unnamed narrator is clearly meant to be a person, as he describes attending one of the characters' lectures in college, and offers his own speculations about certain mysteries in the story. But then we have the same narrator somehow vividly describing the dreams of the characters, when the characters themselves ''didn't even remember them upon awakening''. As the story goes on, the narrator becomes more and more infallible, until it's impossible to reconcile his knowledge of events with any human perspective.

* In ''HarryPotter'', characters can remember practically anything with the aid of a [[AWizardDidIt pensieve]], such as what someone in the same room as them twenty years ago was writing while they weren't even looking.

->''"I think I'll try extra hard to remember today's events and conversations, in case I someday want to recall them verbatim."''
-->-- '''Gordon Frohman''', ''{{Concerned}}''[[http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2006-07-28]]

Essentially the opposite of StylisticSuck. See also LiteraryAgentHypothesis.

---> '''Peter:''' I awoke several ours later in a daze.

* On ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', the professor accomplishes this through use of a memory ray pistol.

*** "KISS HIM! KISS HIM!" "Kids, Barney wasn't saying "kiss""

-->-- '''Professor Farnsworth''', ''{{Futurama}}''[[hottip:*: He has a Memo-Ray which lets him remember EVERY detail, making his story infallible, unlike how Farnsworth normally MadScientist is.]]

* ''SuzumiyaHaruhi'': Kyon all the freaking way.

* While fanfic authors are not always "good", they hardly change the level ofwriting when having a character describe something. So, even characters will describe the MarySue in PurpleProse. Good.

** Possible FridgeBrilliance: at the beginning of the book, her monk brother gives her a book on the lives of saints, which she reads throughout the story. Her shift toward PurpleProse could have come from all that reading.

** FridgeBrilliance: Considering how the flumes, territories, and rings all seem to operate on "when you need it it will be there," he might always either just have a lot of time and it just doesn't seem like it, or [[EpilepticTrees time is being warped around him to let him finish a journal]].

* An episode of ''TheSimpsons'' sees Homer recounting the story of Maggie's birth. Suffice to say he's very graphic about the conception.

* On ''{{Futurama}}'', the professor accomplishes this through use of a memory ray pistol.

--> '''Security Camera:''' My memory's a little fuzzy, but I think it went exactly like this.