But For Me It Was Tuesday / Literature

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• In Alex Rider novel Stormbreaker, the death of Alex's uncle and last living relative sets in motion the events that lead MI6 to recruit him as a secret agent. When Alex meets Yassen Gregorovich, the assassin who carried out the murder, Gregorovich merely shrugs and says 'I kill a lot of people.' However, he probably wasn't denying it so much as invoking A Million Is a Statistic, and knew exactly who Alex was talking about, both because it happened fairly recently and because in later books, its established he knew Alex's father personally and considered him a friend, and recognized Alex on sight. It's unlikely he didn't know who Alex's uncle was.
• In the Russian sci-fi novel The Amphibian Man (as well as the film based on the novel) Dr Salvetore is rescued from jail by a guard whose child he once healed. Salvetore has no recollection of this act not merely because he saved a lot of people over the course of his life, but also because he's an extreme Knight in Sour Armor who helps humanity out of a sense of obligation \ self-aggrandizement rather than any actual empathy for the specific lives he saves.
• The original title of All Quiet on the Western Front is Im Westen nichts Neues ("Nothing New in the West"). It ends with the last surviving character getting shot by an unseen sniper followed by a Title Drop. For him it was the day he was killed; for the war, it was just an ordinary day with nothing to report.
  • The Jeff Shaara novel "To the Last Man" opens with a similar incident of the same war from the Allied perspective. A new recruit arrives in France, loses his entire squad to an artillery barrage before even reaching the front proper, and barely has time to report in after reaching the trenches when the order comes for a push in their section. The attack goes disastrously, killing the focus character, and then the story changes focus to the local army HQ, which provides the following notice on the day's events to the press: "Minor activity along Ypres front. Engagements of no importance."
• In the second book of The Baroque Cycle, Jack Shaftoe confronts the man who sold Eliza into slavery before killing him, tells him that he is taking revenge for a woman who he enslaved. Since the guy has done this countless times, he is genuinely puzzled for the last few seconds of his life.
• In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Nathaniel doesn't forget his dangerous encounter in the alley with Kitty Jones and the Stanley and Fred of the Resistance in The Amulet of Samarkand and expects Kitty to remember it too in The Golem's Eye when he brings it up to her. Kitty, however, notes that she's had many encounters in alleys and only with some prompting finally faintly remembers the event, only to disagree with Nathaniel's characterization that she had "left him for dead" — Fred and Stanley had wanted her to slit his throat, but she decided to spare him.
• In Battle Royale Kazuo Kiriyama has the same expression while slaughtering his classmates and to him playing an instrument and killing classmates are basically the same. This makes him very creepy indeed.
• The Black Arrow: When Dick wonders who might be the murderer of Nick Appleyard, Sir Daniel's old bowman, his fellow soldier Bennet Hatch replies: "Who knows?". Since both he and Nick have killed a lot of people in Sir Daniel's service, there is no shortage of potential revenge-craving culprits; and he would not be surprised to be the next victim.
• Chakona Space: During the rewritten Tales of the Folly Part 2, Captain Foster pulls an unusual heroic variant of this. Then again, trouble seems to follow him around, and the locals are very aware of this fact.
  Brajet shook her head. "Not even lunchtime and you've already got some of the local cops mad at you. Why do I have the bad feeling that this will be one of your more interesting visits?"
  Neal grinned. "I have no idea what you're talking about; it's just another day in the life for me."
  Looking at his young 'crew', Brajet muttered, "That's what I'm afraid of."
• A Chorus of Dragons: When Tyentso is talking with Gadrith in The Ruin of Kings and mentions a former friend that the latter killed, Gadrith initially has no recollection of him — he's murdered quite a lot of people — and only recalls him after Tyentso describes in considerable detail, after which he does recall the deed... as a trivial experiment in soul-binding with little emotional investment.
• Codex Alera: In the backstory, the late Princeps Septimus, sole heir to throne, was not only a powerful mage comparable to the reigning First Lord, his father, but a genuinely good man. He could not stand by and watch as abuses happened in the lands he would one day rule, from the abuse of the magically-stronger Citizens over the weaker commoners, to slavery, to the idea of marriage for simple political and genetic gains. He fought for the downtrodden, sought to end slavery, and rejects the arranged marriage his father set up with a magically-strong and smart noblewoman in favor of wedding a commoner he has fallen for. His efforts to bring positive change made him so many enemies among those who benefited from the status quo that he can't remember them all. They, however, do remember and enter into a cabal to kill him. It includes not only his spurned fiance, but two powerful High Lords, second in rank and status to the First Lord. They succeed.
• In the Iain Banks novel Inversions, the Lady Perrund becomes courtesan to the King after a rival warlord's soldiers killed her family and raped her. It is only at the end of the book after she has murdered the King that we discover it was actually him and his men that committed the atrocity. The King had never recognised her and had most likely forgotten the incident, allowing her to get her revenge.
• A dark twist on this trope in The Dead Zone. Johnny Smith has been in a coma for four and a half years. When he wakes, everyone else has had years of normal day-to-day living to move on with their lives, but to Johnny, it's as if he had a fantastic date with the woman he loved and was planning to propose to, and then woke up the next day to find she had left him, married another man, and had a baby with him.
• In The Demon Princes cycle by Jack Vance, the hero's targets tend to not remember the outrage that set the hero on his journey. He exploits the trope to get close to his marks.
• Dortmunder: In "The Road to Ruin," Mark and Os's partners don't see why one of them can't impersonate a horse trainer to infiltrate Hall's estate without being recognized, doubting that they'd stand out in Hall's memory from his countless other investors. Mark and Os reply that they would stand out though, as, during their last meeting, Os threw a golf trophy at Hall's head while Mark "wrestled Os to the ground, then wasted two or three minutes apologizing to the bastard." During the kidnapping, Hall does recognize Mark's voice (to the group's terror) but all Hall can remember is that it involved:
  ''Some unpleasant association in the past, but that didn't help much; most of his conversations in the last few years had involved unpleasant associations.
• The Dune Encyclopedia names House Washington (AKA the US) as the first user of atomics in a "provincial war" (AKA World War II), thus giving some idea of how far in the future the story is set, how the twentieth century has faded from memory and how big wars in the future have become.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Heroic example. Harry forgets that in The Chamber of Secrets (three books prior), Ginny spent parts of the year being possessed by Voldemort. For Ginny it's probably the most significant event of her life thus far, but Harry had an encounter with Voldemort three out of his four years at Hogwarts thus far, so he didn't really consider how that particular one had affected someone else. When he says he forgot about it, her reply is "lucky you", but Harry feels sincerely sorry and apologizes.
  • In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire:
    • Harry is woken up in his dorm by a surprise visit from Dobby and screams. His roommates slowly wake up and Seamus just casually asks Harry if he's being attacked again.
    • Monetary example. Harry buys Ron and Hermione expensive gifts, and Ron pays him back, unintentionally using fake money that disappeared later. Ron realizes this towards the end and he tells Harry he shouldn't have bought him something for Christmas, but Harry, who's quite wealthy due inheritance from his parents, has a hard time explaining to Ron that he didn't even notice the money going missing. Harry also gives Fred and George his Triwizard Tournament winnings of 1000 galleons as a business loan, both because he just wants to distance himself from the events of the tournament and because he doesn't really need the money. Of course in both cases it's awkward to explain that the money genuinely doesn't matter to him while he still doesn't want to offend anyone. He does tell Ron and Hermione about it when they start wondering what the twins must have done to get that much money and Ron isn't upset at all, mostly because it means there's no way for his mother to blame him for his brothers running away from school to start a joke shop- since it's Harry's fault.
• The protagonist of Howl's Moving Castle assumes this trope will apply to the witch who cursed her, and therefore that she'll be able to pretend she has no connection to the witch. Unfortunately, she underestimated how much the witch hated her.
• Interesting Times: Near the end of the book, Twoflower is quite aware that Lord Hong has no idea he was the cause of his wife's death, but he insists on fighting him anyway. Twoflower says that the fact that Hong didn't know makes it worse. (Some slight foreshadowing into the mindset is pointed out by Cohen, in comparing Hong to the King in Chess: sits in back, sends others to do the dirty work... Even if he did remember anything it would, indeed, be just another Tuesday to him.)
• I've Got You Under My Skin features a rare heroic example. Leo Farley arrested Blue Eyes decades ago for drink driving when he was a beat cop and Blue Eyes, or rather Rusty Tillman, was a young man trying to get into the army. Leo never even thought of Rusty again and had no idea he was the man who killed his son-in-law and threatened his family, while Rusty attributes this as being the moment that set the rest of his life on a downward spiral.
• In the novelization of Kingdom Come, one scene shows a Kansas refugee who was outside of the radiation zone but went back in (getting sick in the process) to look for her family, finding one of her three children alive, but suffering from lethal radiation exposure...only for the aid worker who treats the mother and son to be incognito superhero The Ray. He heals both mother and son and doesn't even ask their names because he knows he will forget after he's done singlehandedly curing every dying refugee he can reach in time.
• In The Kite Runner, Assef, the main antagonist, recounts the abuse he took at the hands of the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. He says he eventually encountered the Soviet officer who had beaten him in prison: the officer did not remember Assef, but as Assef told the man before killing him, "I do not forget a face."
• The Martian: A direct reference, without an antagonist. By the time astronaut Mark Watney re-establishes contact with Earth, he's injured due to having to deal single-handedly with life-threatening problems.
  Mark: To [NASA], equipment failure is terrifying. To me, it's "Tuesday."
• This is briefly brought up in the Miss Marple mystery The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. Jason uses this explanation when asked about the "previous relationship" between Marina and Heather. He explains that Heather was a fan of his wife's, and as a result, it was a big deal for her to get Marina's autograph. However, Marina has done hundreds of receptions with fans and signed thousands of autographs, so she simply has no memory of the event Heather described of one more autograph seeker among thousands. Subverted, in that while Jason is well aware that while Marina didn't remember Heather specifically, the earlier meeting was even more significant to her than it was to Heather. Zigzagged Trope, as it's initially important for Heather and not for Marina, only to become important for Marina but not for Heather. Heather has been shown to be a bit self absorbed to the suffering of others (which is really bad since she's a nurse) and violated a quarantine of a potentially devastating illness, but it didn't matter since she got to meet her idol! For Marina, this meeting ruined her life!
• Monster Hunter International:
  • In Alpha, Earl tells his old Soviet enemy and rival werewolf Nikolai to be more specific about the person Nikolai claims he's here to kill him in revenge for, replying that "he's killed a mess of folks." When Nikolai reveals it's his wife, Lila, Earl can only get a surprised "I'm drawing a blank" out, which prompts Nikolai to go full-on werewolf mode on him. That's because Earl didn't kill her, the Big Bad did it and planted evidence that suggested it, prompting Nikolai to hunt Earl down while simultaneously sending Earl on the chase after him for his own plans.
  • In Nemesis, this is Franks's reaction when Earl accuses him of killing his Love Interest. Like the above, also subverted; the woman in question was the only one Franks spared during the fight.
  Earl: YOU KILLED HER!
  Franks: Who? Narrow it down for me.
• During the climax of The Narrows. Subverted in that Backus actually didn't kill McCaleb, McCaleb committed suicide when he found out that his transplanted heart was failing and he would die without another surgery, which he could not afford.
  Bosch: You killed my friend...
  Backus: I'm sorry, but I've been kind of busy. Who might your friend be?
• In the Stephen King short story "Dolan's Cadillac", the wife of the protagonist/narrator (Robinson) is killed by a crime lord she was going to testify against (Dolan). For a few years or so, Robinson follows Dolan to learn his habits and routine, all while plotting his revenge. During one harrowing incident, however, Dolan's car breaks down on the road, and Robinson is forced to pass him. He's angered when Dolan doesn't even recognize the man who's wife he had ordered blown to smithereens in her car. Later, however, when he's cooled down he admits that this is actually a good thing for him, as it means Dolan will not be on his guard about any threat Robinson may pose to him. Ultimately subverted when, after Robinson says the first few words of his Best Served Cold speech, Dolan immediately identifies him.
• Carrie Fisher discusses this in her final title, the 2016 The Princess Diarist, in relation to signing autographs and otherwise meeting fans at comic conventions, a practice she refers to as "lap dancing." For the fan, meeting her is something they'll quite possibly remember for the rest of their life. For her, it's Tuesday, or another day on the job working to make some extra money to support herself.
• In the short story "The Procurator of Judea" (published in 1902) by Anatole France, the last line is spoken by a retired Pontius Pilate:

  "Jesus?" he murmured, "Jesus — of Nazareth? I cannot call him to mind.".

• Realm of the Elderlings takes place in a fantasy kingdom composed of six duchies- four coastal, two inland. The royal family is based in a coastal duchy. In one throwaway conversation in the first book, Chade grumbles to Fitz that the people blame the king for everything from "bad weather to fires". In the third book, Fitz travels inland and discovers that, years ago, huge swaths of vital farmland were ravaged by fire and have never recovered, causing widespread hardship and economic depression. Fitz then realises just how out of touch the coast and inland are with each other — for the coast the fire was a minor annoyance, but to the people living there, "it must have seemed like the end of the world"
• Subverted in The Reckoners Trilogy: David remembers every single detail of the day that Steelheart murdered his father. He's shocked to discover that so does Steelheart. The reason he killed David's father was because the man managed to injure him, the first and only time that had ever happened (at least since getting his superpowers). Since Steelheart is otherwise apparently invulnerable, he spent considerable effort ensuring no one left the scene alive to possibly work out his secret weakness, with only David escaping, meaning the event was just as important to him as it was to David.
• Redwall's Lord Brocktree: Bucko Bigbones confronts Karangool, the fox who killed his family and left him for dead, and Karangool has no idea who he is. Bucko corners him and explains before taking his revenge. And then he does remember.
  "Well, let me tell ye a story, aboot a puir young hare who was left fer dead by a wicked ole fox who beat 'im wi' a swordblade..."
  • Usually almost all villains never bother to remember who their slaves/prisoners/murder victims are unless they either "Stand out by how strong they are" or "The slave/prisoner escapes, and the villain leader immediately goes berserk to get said slave/prisoner back" (not because they are personally worth anything to the villain, but simply because they defied the leader)
• Tuesday at the Office has this as a theme; The Professor has to wring more details about the Baron Vogelsang's murder out of Minette because he does that sort of thing a lot and she's being less than generous in explaining the situation.
  The Professor: “Imagine if I walked into your home and started smashing up the furniture while demanding to know why you killed my dog. Even if you did kill the dog, how would you know what dog I was talking about?”
• Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Played with rather oddly in the book Sweet Revenge. Reporter Ted Robinson, who is not quite a hero at that point, asks Rosemary Hershey a question about two people. Rosemary says in a genuinely puzzled tone "Who?" Her soon-to-be ex-husband, Bobby Harcourt, pokes his head into the room and states that those are the two people she killed, along with their young daughter. She killed three people and she is the only one who apparently did not even bother to remember them. However, she ends up remembering the name of the young daughter — Diana. She actually blocked that out and presumably other details of her killing them. Once she remembers, however, she is unable to stop thinking about it!
• Six of Crows: Kaz's entire life has been shaped by the con that gang boss Pekka Rollins pulled on him and his brother that led to his brother dying. A flashback reveals that less than a month after it happened, Rollins didn't even recognize Kaz when he tried to confront him. After this, Kaz is motivated not only by his desire for revenge, but to make sure that when he teaches Rollins a lesson, it's one Rollins never forgets. The result of this is that when Kaz finally gets his revenge, Rollins is shaken in large part because he still doesn't remember that particular con. Which leaves him wondering just how many more forgotten victims could be lying in wait for a chance to avenge themselves?
• SA Novel About The Balkans by Slavenka Drakulic. The protagonist has a recurring nightmare where she sees one of the men who raped her in a Bosnian prison camp. She stabs him, and as he dies she sees the look of incomprehension in his face and realises her revenge is meaningless because he has no idea why she's killed him.
• In Shock Point, Cassie's mother and stepfather send her to Peaceful Cove, an abusive reform school in Mexico. The school hires two goons to kidnap and transport her. A month and a half later, the goons return to the school with another new student. Cassie flinches when she sees them, but they've done this to so many kids they don't recognize her.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • During Oberyn Martell and Ser Gregor Clegane's fight, Oberyn reminds Gregor that he raped and murdered Elia Martell, Oberyn's sister, and killed her children. Gregor replies with "Who?" Thanks to Oberyn's constant, incessant reminders, Gregor eventually does remember, and before he kills Oberyn he acknowledges that he murdered Elia's chldren, then raped her, and then killed her, He wants Oberyn to know the order it happened. It's possible that Gregor just pretended not to remember to taunt Oberyn, as neither Oberyn nor Elia are just random people, this was during the previous monarch being overthrow and Elia was married to Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen and kind of important. Even Dumb Muscle like Gregor would probably remember those events.
  • Tyrion used to have a wife, Tysha who truly loved him. Tywin convinced Tyrion that she was a paid whore only to break his spirit (and because she was a commoner). Not only that, but he made his entire garrison violently gang-rape the poor 13-year-old girl before Tyrion's eyes. And then forced Tyrion to participate as well. When Tyrion finds out the truth, he attacks Tywin, and holding him at crossbow-point, asks him about Tysha. Tywin doesn't remember the name, and when Tyrion tells him who Tysha was, Tywin can't recall what happened to her after the gang rape.
• Inverted (somewhat) in Soon I Will Be Invincible in which the Hero Antagonist doesn't remember the Villain Protagonist or his reasons for seeking vengeance. Then it's Zig-Zagged when it turns out that in the villain's obsession with the hero he himself has completely forgotten about Lily AKA Erica
• Star Wars:
  • Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire: Prince Xizor is attacked by a young man named Hoff, who yells "You Killed My Father" to him, to which Xizor replies, "I'm sorry. Have we met?". It's averted, however, since Xizor remembers the father once Hoff tells him the father's name.
    • Amusingly, Xizor hates Vader because he blames him for the death of his family. Vader is utterly oblivious until one of his spies informs him. Vader likewise remembers when told about it, he simply had no idea that Xizor was related to any of the people he killed that day, and thought Xizor merely coveted his place as the Emperor's right hand man rather than being somebody out for vengeance. Xizor did seek to usurp Vader, but that would've simply been part of the revenge.
  • In one short story a bounty hunter named Gurion Silizzar corners Dr. Evazan and asks him if his family name sounds familiar. The doctor says he may have had a patient or two, to which Silizzar angrily tells him that seven of his family were killed in his experiments.
• The Stormlight Archive: A non-violent, non-villainous example. Adolin has apparently courted (and subsequently offended) just about every eligible woman in the Shattered Plains. At some point he starts having difficulty tracking what he did to upset any one of them in particular.
  Melali gave Adolin a pointed glare. What had he done to annoy her, again? It had been forever since they'd courted.
  Adolin: How's your sister?
  Melali: Off limits.
  Oh, right. That was what he'd done. Honest mistake.
• To Die For: In the novel, Suzanne tries to seduce a network executive to get a job. Years later, the guy says that so many ambitious, unqualified women who want to be on TV come after him that he has absolutely no memory of the specific incident with Suzanne, but can speculate about how it went.
• In Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small Quartet. Kel has a fear of heights due to her brother dangling her over the edge of a tall tower when they were kids. When speaking about it, she says that the worst part was when she spoke to him about it: he didn't remember.
• Used in James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Faith & Fire.
  Vaun: Tell me what I have done to earn such enmity.
  Verity: You...You don't even know? Does killing mean so little to you that you dismiss it from your mind with every murder?
  Vaun: For the most part, yes. Let me see if I can guess. A father? Or a brother, perhaps?
  [...]
  Verity: My sister, Lethe Catena [...] You ended her like some common animal!
  Vaun: Ah. Of course. There's a bit of family resemblance between you, isn't there?
• The Wheel of Time had the Aiel War. When King Laman of Cairhien Cut down the Avendoraldera, the sacred tree that the mysterious, desert-dwelling clans called the Aiel had given his country as an sign of friendship hundreds of year earlier, four of the twelve Aiel Clans crossed the Dragonwall and invaded the "Wetlands", as the Aiel called it. For the Wetlands it was the greatest war they had seen in centuries, uniting many kingdoms and nations under one banner in an attempt to stop the Aiel horde. To the Aiel it was simply the execution of the Oathbreaker King Laman, and once they succeeded in that they turned around, returning to their desert without giving any of the lands they had ravaged during the war a second glance.

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