Line #38 Main/InfallibleNarrator


1	->'''Rizzo:''' How do you know what Scrooge is doing? We're down here, and he's up there.\
2	'''Gonzo:''' I keep telling you—storytellers are omniscient. I know everything.\
3	'''Rizzo:''' Hoity-toity Mr. Godlike Smartypants.\
4	'''Gonzo''' (''facing the camera''): To conduct a proper search, Scrooge was forced to light the lamps.\
5	''[the window lights up from the lamps]''\
6	'''Rizzo:''' How does he do that?
7	-->-- ''Film/TheMuppetChristmasCarol''
8
9	A FramingDevice is set up in which the hero recounts his adventures in vivid detail. Very vivid detail. So vivid, in fact, that once the story is over and FridgeLogic has set in the question arises: how are they remembering all these details, while fighting off {{Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot}}s [[RecycledInSpace in Space]]?
10
11	This trope is especially common in the EpistolaryNovel, where action scenes and lengthy discussions are minutely reproduced afterwards in the form of journal entries or letters, which is assumed to be exactly what happened/was said.
12
13	Obviously more common in literature due to the need to describe everything, but a variant can appear in television when details that would be insignificant or assumed knowledge are commented on by characters from the framing device, implying that the speaker really was describing everything the viewer sees on screen.
14
15	Essentially the opposite of UnreliableNarrator. See also DirectLineToTheAuthor, LiteraryAgentHypothesis, AllFirstPersonNarratorsWriteLikeNovelists.
16	----
17	!!Examples:
18	[[foldercontrol]]
19
20	[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
21	* The WholeEpisodeFlashback in ''Manga/BlackCat'' to Saya's death has Train telling Eve and Sven as a FramingDevice, but shows events only Saya or Creed were present for. The author's comments in the volume version acknowledges he had to give the reader's an omniscient perspective, and the version Train was telling had some gaps where he had to speculate what happened.
22	[[/folder]]
23
24	[[folder:Comic Books]]
25	* The ComicBook/RedSkull remembered the details and experience of his own birth, as well as the personalities of both his parents despite his mother dying in childbirth and his father commiting suicide the next day. He lampshaded and justified both by claiming a "remarkable memory". One could, of course, take it to mean that his entire life story was [[BlatantLies embellished]], especially given that he was telling the tale to his ArchEnemy ComicBook/CaptainAmerica.
26	[[/folder]]
27
28	[[folder:Fanfiction]]
29	* TheStoryteller in ''Fanfic/TheLegendOfTotalDramaIsland'' recalls long-past events with inhuman precision, although it is implied that she does [[UnreliableNarrator embellish certain details]].
30	[[/folder]]
31
32	[[folder:Literature]]
33	* ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'' is told by Marlow, a ferry boat captain with the descriptive powers of Joseph Conrad.
34	* All the characters, including great philosophers and children, speak with similar intelligence, style and vocabulary in Virginia Woolf's ''Literature/ToTheLighthouse''.
35	* ''Literature/TheScarletLetter'' is somewhat disturbing, since the [[CreepyChild small child of Hester]] (only about seven years old by the end of the book) speaks as eloquently (and with the same level of vocabulary) as the adults, who all happen to share the linguistic grace of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
36	* Averted by Creator/PGWodehouse. As an omniscient narrator, he wrote in his own unique and awesome style, but when writing in the capacity of [[Literature/JeevesAndWooster Bertie Wooster]], he had a whole different set of quirks. Bertie would often use an odd word and then question if it was indeed the word he wanted -- or forget the word entirely (save its first letter), explain what he meant by anecdote, and then suddenly remember the word a paragraph later.
37	* ''Literature/MobyDick'': Ishmael may be better at writing than at whaling. This is probably intentional: he's a writer and occasional "marchant" seaman, only entitled to the Pequod's 777th lay.
38	* Averted, often [[UnreliableNarrator quite painfully]], by just about anything written by William Faulkner.
39	* In the medieval ScrapbookStory ''Literature/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).
40	** Cushman does however give a nod to the UnreliableNarrator when Catherine talks about how her uncle, who's been on Crusade, tells them about the wonderful animals he's seen: unicorns, and griffons, and so on -- but when he gets to describing elephants, "a splendid big beast with a tail at both ends", she thinks he's making it up.
41	** Kevin Crossley-Holland's King Arthur trilogy has a similar problem where the books are supposedly the day-to-day writings of a teenage boy during the Crusades, but are just way too wordy and literary-minded for that to be plausible, especially considering all the emphasis on how laborious the process of writing was at that time. There's rarely any mention of Arthur ''reading'' anything, but his verbal education seems to be complete to the point that he never lacks for the right word to describe something.
42	* Literature/NeroWolfe keeps Archie Goodwin on his permanent staff precisely because Archie can be one of these.
43	* Bobby Pendragon, of ''Literature/ThePendragonAdventure''. Made especially glaring because writing the story down was one of the major plot points, and we're supposed to believe that in many cases he had hand-written a well planned out eloquent narrative in a single night. Later insight into the nature of Travelers explains this to a degree. In the last book, he notes that [[RequiredSecondaryPowers he has perfect recall of every moment of his life]].
44	* In many of the Literature/SherlockHolmes short stories, the famous detective would spend (usually) the first half of the tale interviewing the client, who would effortlessly provide step-by-step, word-for-word descriptions of the events that brought them to seek Holmes out. This can sometimes reach a few weeks back.
45	** The same happens in a lot of similar mystery stories by any number of authors, but is averted in one Creator/IsaacAsimov ''Literature/BlackWidowers'' story -- [[spoiler:in "The Next Day", the solution is obscured because the guest ''didn't'' have this sort of memory and paraphrased what people said rather than using ExactWords]]. It was played straight in most of the other Black Widowers tales, though.
46	* This sort of thing's common in Creator/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.
47	* In ''Literature/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.
48	%%* The Gulliver at the beginning of ''Literature/GulliversTravels'' is [[HeroicBSOD rather different]] to the Gulliver at the end, telling the story.
49	* ''Literature/TheNameOfTheWind'' features a protagonist who has since birth been trained to be a professional storyteller, so the author raises the stakes by having him orate the entire novel in real-time to a scribe, talking for an entire day with very few breaks, presumably ad-libbing the entire thing. There are a couple points when he stops to collect his thoughts, and one where Bast takes issue with his story (he describes his love interest as flawless, and Bast corrects that her nose was a bit crooked. He also takes the opportunity to point out that Kvothe tends to describe every woman he meets as beautiful, something those reading may have noticed by that point).
50	* ''Greener Than You Think'' unintentionally draws attention to this when the narrator writes an in-story news article. In accordance with his ego and his tendency to overplay things, he rapidly reaches the heights of PurpleProse, then makes accusations of jealousy against those who criticize his writing. The narration itself, however, is in a plain, unadorned style.
51	* Lampshaded in ''Literature/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.
52	* The first book in the ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' 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.
53	** A few chapters into ''Endymion'', the narrator lampshades the fact that he's giving detailed descriptions of events he did not witness, and promises [[JustifiedTrope it will make sense]] by the end of the story.
54	* This often happens when characters are recalling something that happened offscreen in stories; it's disturbing how they sound like professional storytellers when they definitely aren't. For example, Warren does this in The ''Literature/{{Fablehaven}}'' novel ''Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary'', Luke does it in ''Literature/{{City of Bones\|2007}}''...
55	* Justified in C.S. Lewis' ''Literature/TheHorseAndHisBoy''. Aravis recounts her entire backstory like this, and Bree explains that Calormenes are taught story-telling in school. She isn't entirely infallible, either; as per the standards of her culture, she colours her narrative with painful amounts of PurpleProse, even when recounting what another character, who is present, said - causing said character to comment that they didn't actually say it in nearly as fancy words.
56	* The ''Literature/CiaphasCain'' [[note]]HERO OF THE IMPERIUM![[/note]] 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.
57	* Creator/HPLovecraft:
58	** In "Literature/TheWhispererInDarkness", the narrator's account includes verbatim reproductions of documents several pages long, entirely from memory, as the documents themselves have been destroyed along with the rest of the evidence. He remarks at one point that he's quite proud of his ability to recall details, and so he should be.
59	** Interestingly averted in "Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu", where the narrator is not the one who experienced the events himself but rather a compiler of them. Of the journal and eyewitness account that forms the final and most important narrative he writes that he "cannot attempt to transcribe it verbatim in all its cloudiness and redundance" and instead paraphrases it. This gives the description of the final encounter with the ultimate horror a curious mix of immediacy and distance, but certainly justifies the level of detail given and the way it's written.
60	* The novel ''Literature/ChildOfTheNorthernSpring'' follows the story of King Arthur from Guinevere's perspective. Gwen turns out to be amazingly accurate in her narration - so much so that she (somehow) manages to recount events even though she claims to have forgotten about them.
61	* ''Literature/WutheringHeights'' provides a double example: Nelly Dean is able to perfectly recall all the events of the book - over more than 20 years, to boot - and recount them to Lockwood (Handwaved as due to her good memory). Lockwood himself is able to later write her whole tale, including other characters' individual recantations to Nelly, down in his diary from memory.
62	* Played with in the Literature/GotrekAndFelix series. The opening of each chapter is a page from felix's own publishing of their journeys (felix having joined up to write Gotrek's story and co-incidentally taking [[TookALevelInBadass several hundred levels of Badass]] to become on the worlds greatest heroes along the way), before it then switches into the main part of the chapter, where it's narrated at real time.
63	* Mostly averted in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', as the details in the Red Book could 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.
64	* Subverted in the 7th ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' book, "The Woman Who Died A Lot" which reveals that recurring character Jack Schitt didn't really have that name, it was a nasty pseudonym bestowed on him by Thursday.
65	* The ''Literature/BekaCooper'' books are presented as the diaries of its protagonist. Since she writes them as a memory aid for her reports, the level of detail isn't surprising (and they are usually written on the same day as events) and there are a few {{One Paragraph Chapter}}s where she's too exhausted, sick, or upset to write a proper entry. However, there are occasions when she's writing days or ''weeks'' later, after harrowing and traumatic events, still with perfect recall and grammar. The final book, ''Mastiff'', gives this a HandWave of her "[[PhotographicMemory memory palace]]".
66	* Fitz from ''Literature/RealmOfTheElderlings'' writes down detailed events of what happens years after the fact, although his good memory is probably justified because of the Skill. [[spoiler: His daughter takes it a step further by remembering what happens while she was in her mother's womb.]]
67	[[/folder]]
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69	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
70	* ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' may be an example of this. Ted has a very clear recollection of several years of his life. Although it is sometimes averted or played with as he does have moments he doesn't remember and stuff. There's still some FridgeLogic as to the degree of detail he seems to use to describe his sex life to his own kids...
71	[[/folder]]
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73	[[folder:Music]]
74	* Parodied in ''Music/TheLonelyIsland'''s "Like a Boss", a song in which a businessman in middle management undergoes a performance review and walks his reviewer through a day in the life of "the boss". It starts out with fairly standard tasks, such as corresponding with upper management, sorting and signing documents, and giving presentations, but gradually escalates into more ridiculous events such as defecating on an employee's desk, [[SuperWindowJump self-defenestration]], and fellating strangers in the street. By the end of this description of an "average day" for him, he has castrated himself and flown into the sun, burning to death in the process, yet he is still alive to describe these events that supposedly occur on a daily basis for him. The music video lampshades this by having the reviewer question the legitimacy of these claims.
75	-->'''Reviewer:''' So that's an average day for you, then?\
76	'''Andy Samberg:''' No doubt.\
77	'''Reviewer:''' You chop your balls off and die.\
78	'''Andy Samberg:''' Hell yeah.
79	[[/folder]]
80
81	[[folder:Video Games]]
82	* ''VideoGame/BorderlandsThePreSequel'' is framed as Athena recounting the events of the game to the Crimson Raiders, with commentary by both Athena and her audience scattered throughout. During [[NewGamePlus True Vault Hunter Mode]], Tiny Tina questions whether Athena's memories are really accurate and challenges her to recite the seventeenth thing Jack says in the story; Athena proceeds to quote it flawlessly, implying that she's been relaying everyone's dialog word for word the entire time.
83	* Largely played straight in ''VideoGame/FullThrottle'', with Ben somehow able to narrate scenes where he's not present and sometimes even unconscious, but it is defied in a tongue-and-cheek manner at one point. There is one puzzle toward the end of the game that Ben can die if he takes too long to solve, but since he's the one telling the story, it simply cuts to black as he says, "Let me try that again." and, indeed, the player is sent back to the beginning of said puzzle.
84	* ''VideoGame/Persona5'' is for the first 3/4ths of the game or so, Joker recounting the details of all the events that led up to that point in the story (roughly 6 months worth of time) to Sae in a police interrogation room. This has led to him being at least memetically performing this trope, as fans speculate that he's really telling her about all the times he went to the various shops, watched movies, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick slept with Sae's sister...]]
85	[[/folder]]
86
87	[[folder:Web Original]]
88	* ''WebVideo/DragonBallZAbridged'': When Frieza recounts the day he wiped out the Saiyans, Vegeta [[LampshadeHanging lampshades this]].
89	-->'''Vegeta''': How did you know about the parts you weren't there for?
90	[[/folder]]
91	[[folder:Western Animation]]
92	* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' sees Homer recounting the story of Maggie's birth. Suffice to say he's very graphic about the conception.
93	** At one point in that episode the audience sees Homer's head explode during the re-telling. This in then revealed to be Bart interfering. Homer then needs to be reminded that he "had a head" as he re-takes the reins of the story.
94	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', the professor accomplishes this through use of a memory ray pistol.
95	** Justified on another occasion because it was a robotic security camera replaying what it recorded.
96	--->'''Security Camera:''' My memory's a little fuzzy, but I think it went exactly like this.
97	** Parodied and averted at another point, where Zoidberg can be seen with a full head of hair in Farnsworth's flashback, something Farnsworth wouldn't have bothered to mention. When the others comment on it, he reveals that he never mentioned hair, and that if they assumed he had hair that's their problem not his.
98	* {{Parodied}} in the early seasons of ''WesternAnimation/{{Family Guy}}''. Peter narrates his own life out loud and some descriptive insults about Lois' looks lead to her knocking him out, only to awake hours later.
99	--->'''Peter:''' I awoke several hours later in a daze.
100	[[/folder]]

Context Main / InfallibleNarrator