But For Me It Was Tuesday / Live-Action Films

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• The Trope Namer is the Street Fighter movie, where Chun-Li tells M. Bison about how he killed her father. The immortal reply can be found at this link. This quote was recycled in the game Street Fighter X Tekken as Bison's taunt. And in Project X Zone 2, Pai Chan uses this quote in post-battle dialogue if she's paired with Chun-Li and Xiaoyu. Notably, Chun-Li's response is that it was a Wednesday; Bison cares so little about it he doesn't even get the day right.
• Bullet Train:
  • The Wolf attacks Ladybug, angrily saying that he will never stop coming for him and that he ruined his life. Ladybug's response is to protest that he doesn't even know the guy. It turns out Ladybug actually was present when The Wolf's wife was killed, but he didn't have anything to do with it.
  • In the past, Lemon shot Ladybug twice during opposing operations. Lemon apparently has no recollection of it, considering he's killed a lot of people. The event was apparently what led Ladybug reassessing his life.
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022): Subverted. Sweet Pete recognizes Cubby when he encounters him at Fan Con, having worked with him on Peter Pan for years until his own departure. He even admits to Cubby of how his life has turned out.
  Sweet Pete: (annoyed that Jimmy caught Cubby by mistake instead of the chipmunks) WHAT?!
  Cubby: (happy at first) Peter, is that really you? (gets disgusted by Sweet Pete's new appearance) You got old.
  Sweet Pete: (sullenly) Yeah, death is coming for us all, kid.
• In the Conan the Barbarian (1982) movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, when Conan tells Thulsa Doom about how he slaughtered Conan's village and had him sold into slavery, Thulsa Doom does not remember at all but recalls that's the sort of thing he used to do in those days.
  Conan: You killed my mother, you killed my father, you killed my people! You TOOK MY FATHER'S SWORD!!
  Thulsa Doom: Ah. It must have been when I was younger. There was a time, boy, when I searched for steel, and steel meant more to me than gold or jewels.
• In Cruella, Estella learns the Baroness was responsible for the death of her mother, Catherine, years before, driving her crusade against her. When the Baroness has her captured, Estella snaps "you murdered my mother." To her shock, the Baroness replies that "you'll have to be more specific." The novelization details how Estella is rocked to realize the Baroness has killed more than one person and that the woman is a monster.
• The Damned United: Revie is honestly taken aback that Clough has been harboring such a grudge for so long, over an incident he himself didn't even notice. The real-life facts are more ambiguous, but the film adaptation plays the trope straight.
• In Do Revenge, Drea is humiliated when her boyfriend spreads a risque video of her. She meets Eleanor, who resents a girl named Carissa for outing her and casting her as a predatory lesbian years before. The pair are soon united in doing each other's revenge. When Drea confronts Carissa about it, Carissa is amazed and asks why Drea didn't say she knew this was false. To her shock, she realizes Drea doesn't remember she's the one who outed Eleanor (back when she was "Nora" with a different nose) five years earlier. Drea then realizes all this time, Eleanor has been using her to get a grand revenge plan. Eleanor lampshades it with how she'd doubted her plan only to relate the entire story and realized Drea "didn't know I was talking about you.".
• A good-guy version occurs at the end of Dredd, where the title character has just survived a prolonged, intense campaign to kill him and his trainee to cover up a massive narcotics ring. Dredd reports to his superior: "Drug bust. Perps were uncooperative", as if it's just another day.
• In Fantasy Island (2020), Sloane doesn't fully remember tormenting Melanie nor does she know her name, even though Melanie accuses Sloane of pushing her to the point that she needed therapy. Sloane's lack of recognition lends credibility to her later insistence that it was mostly harmless and Melanie was blowing it out of proportion, particularly when Melanie's true insanity is revealed.
• Far and Away: When Joseph confronts the landlord's agent about having burned down his house, he responds "I've burnt many houses in my time. How shall I remember yours?"
• The titular hero of Forrest Gump doesn't seem to notice when people laugh and refuse to believe the events of his life because he never recognized how epic and momentous many of them were. This guy inspired Elvis, saw his college get desegregated at gunpoint, was a Vietnam War hero and peace activist (albeit accidentally), tipped people off about Watergate, was an exercise guru and provided seed money for Apple computers...after all that, creating the smiley face really was just a regular day for him.
• Freeway Killer begins with William Bonin talking with the mother of one of his victims. When the mother shows him a picture of her son, Bonin nonchalantly says "So many faces, they all just get so...mixed up".
• In Grosse Pointe Blank, when Debi finds out what Martin does, she calls him a psychopath. He replies that killing people is just his job. He does realize this sounds bad to the average person.
  • His assistant, Marcella, will trade recipes on one phone line, while haggling with arms dealers on another. She switches back and forth like it's nothing.
• The Gunfighter: Jimmy Ringo is accused of having this mentality but denies it. It's really a case of Not Me This Time.
  Jimmy: I never killed any Roy Marlowe, I never even heard of him. You must be out of your mind.
  Jerry Marlowe: You killed him all right, but you don't even remember it.
  Jimmy: You're crazy to think if I killed someone I wouldn't remember it.
• I Care a Lot: Marla thinks nothing of imprisoning the old lady from the beginning in a psychiatric ward and keeping her from her son; it's not even the worst thing she does. Then he shows up and kills her because his mother died without ever seeing him again.
• John Wick: Chapter 2: The Bowery King says back when he was a low level mook, he got into a fight with John Wick that ended with him stabbed in the throat. John spared his life, and after he recovered, he reinvented himself and rose high in the criminal underworld. The Bowery King considered that the defining moment of his life, but acknowledges John wouldn't remember it as it was just another fight to him.
• Killer Angels: Amy finally gets to confront Chico, the triad enforcer who killed her son and nearly killed her 3 years ago. Holding Chico at gunpoint, she demands if he remember shooting the boy. His answer?
  Chico: "I've killed so many people, I don't know what you're talking about!"
• Both parodied and subverted in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist when Betty initially doesn't recognize the Chosen One, but does upon seeing his baby booties.
  "Sorry. I didn't recognize you without crap in your pants."
• Double-subverted in Last Action Hero: the Trapped in TV Land protagonist warns Cowboy Cop Jack Slater (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) not to trust his Big Bad Friend John Practice (played by F. Murray Abraham) because "he killed Mozart," a reference to Abraham's role in Amadeus. When Practice does eventually betray Slater, Slater repeats the accusation to him, mangling it as "you killed Moe Zart." Practice's response? "Hey, I kill a lot of people. I can't remember half of them."
• The Big Bad in The Losers doesn't remember setting up the titular team at the beginning of the movie when reminded of it later, as he does this a lot.
• In The Magnificent Seven (2016), antagonist Bartholomew Bogue doesn't seem to remember his men raping and murdering Chisolm's mother and sisters, and it's unlikely he'd remember killing people in Rose Creek either.
• In The Mask of Zorro, Rafael Montero, the sworn enemy of Zorro/Don Diego de la Vega, had Zorro arrested and sent to prison over two decades before the main events of the film, and claims when he comes face-to-face with Diego again that he hasn't given Diego a second thought since that day, trying to create the impression that he regarded dealing with Diego as just another business deal. However, considering that his first act upon returning to California was to try and confirm that Diego was now dead, coupled with the fear he shows at any sign that Zorro is active once more, it's clear that Rafael is still terrified of his old foe.
• Meg 2: The Trench: Montes seeks revenge against Jonas for previously arresting him. Jonas says that he has defeated so many criminals that he stopped bothering to remember them.
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning opens with Ethan Hunt being given the mission to find a unique key that will provide whoever owns it with the means to control the artificial intelligence known as "the Entity", which would give its master potential power over the whole world. When Ethan meets with his long-time allies Luther Stickwell and Benji Dunn and says that he intends to instead destroy the Entity so that nobody has its power, he observes that this means that basically just having this conversation is tantamount to treason. Given how often the team have gone rogue in the name of the greater good, Benji sums the situation up with the observation that this is "in other words, Monday".
• In Mobsters, one of the driving motivations for "Lucky" Luciano wanting to kill Don Faranzano was the death of Lucky's father years before, something the aged gangster had forgotten as a mundane event.
  Don Salvatore Faranzano: At least tell me what I did 15 years ago.
  Lucky: You destroyed my father!
  Don Salvatore Faranzano: I don't even *remember* your father!
  Lucky: Exactly!
• Money Monster: Kyle accuses Lee of ruining his life while touting Ibis as a unique investment opportunity, and called it safer than a savings account. Lee replies that he uses that same terminology for a different stock on every new show he does, and is honestly surprised when the tapes confirm that he did call the stock that safe.
• In The Monuments Men, when Frank Stokes interrogates Colonel Wegner, who was put in charge by the Nazis to oversee the art they stole from museums and private collections in occupied Europe, Frank also asks him if it's true that he was once in command of a concentration camp, Wegner then tells him that if anything, Frank should be thanking him for not being Jewish. Frank then tells him that back in New York City, he like to frequent a deli, that's heavily implied to have a Jewish owner, and have a cup of coffee and a bagel while reading the newspaper. The following year, long after the war has ended, Frank says he'll go to the deli, order a coffee and a bagel, and in the newspaper he'll read a snippet with Wegner's picture on it, and it'll say how he was executed for committing the crimes that he was accused of, and once Frank finishes his coffee and bagel, he'll get up, throw away the newspaper, and go on with his life.
• Nine Dead: The entire mystery hinges on Sully, a mob-connected Loan Shark, having once loaned five grand to a rookie criminal, who then robbed a convenience store to pay him back and let an innocent man take the blame. When he finally learns this, he's astounded that out of all the bad things he's done in his life (and he's done far worse), some small deal that he never paid any mind to again is the thing that comes back to haunt him.
• Oldboy (2003). Oh Dae-su has long forgotten that he witnessed Lee Woo-jin's incestuous relationship with his sister. Unusually, Woo-jin has no illusions about the scale of the incident from Dae-su's point of view, and doesn't actually expect him to remember it.
• Once Upon a Time in the West: Ruthless killer Frank is being pursued by a mysterious drifter known only as "Harmonica," but Frank has no idea why, nor can he remember who Harmonica is. Harmonica never reveals his own name; whenever asked, he instead gives names of some of the many people Frank has killed over the years. His final clue is sticking his harmonica in Frank's mouth, which factored into the event that Harmonica wants to avenge.
  • Justified in that "Harmonica" was a child when Frank last saw him. Frank remembers the incident but had not recognized the man he meets in the present as the boy he knew then.
• In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, at one point a group of gunman try to take on Billy's gang, led by one in particular who keeps insinuating that he knows Billy, but won't reveal how he knows The Kid. The ensuing shootout is a Curb-Stomp Battle in favor of Billy's gang, and afterward Billy wonders who the men were, concludes that it's far too soon since his latest escape from prison for bounty hunters to be after him, and says, "I guess it really must have been something personal." He thinks about it for another few seconds before he gives up trying to figure out who the guy was and goes back to eating lunch.
• The Princess Bride:
  • When the title character accuses the Dread Pirate Roberts of killing her love, Westley, he replies "It's possible. I kill a lot of people." Then subverted, because after she actually tells him something about her love he says he vaguely remembers someone who might have been him, someone who didn't beg for his life but just asked to be spared, because of a woman he loved. He actually knows exactly who she's talking about because he is Westley.
  • Inigo seems to expect and be prepared for this when it comes to the six-fingered man he's been hunting his whole life. The speech he prepared to say to him when he finds him includes an explanation of who he is and a reminder of how the six-fingered man wronged him. However, when they do finally meet, it turns out the six-fingered man does remember him, if just a little, implicitly because it's not his habit to spare those who've crossed him.
    Count Rugen: "You must be that little Spanish brat I taught a lesson to all those years ago. You've been chasing me your whole life only to fail now? I think that's about the worst thing I've ever heard. How marvelous."
• Prisoners: Holly and her husband have kidnapped and killed so many children that she can't remember the original name Alex, their first victim, had before they abducted him, and she had forgotten about one of her victims who managed to escape until she reads about his suicide in the paper years after his kidnapping.
• Promising Young Woman: Dean Elizabeth Walker, even under duress, cannot remember dismissing a certain rape allegation from about seven years ago, or the alleged victim's subsequent suicide. There have been simply too many other cases she's handled the same way.
• Prom Night (1980): Another protagonist example. None of the kids who killed Robin Hammond have given much thought about her after promising to keep the death a secret, with the exception of Nick. Unfortunately for them, somebody hasn't forgotten the incident and intends to take revenge on them for killing that little girl.
• In The Quick and the Dead, Ellen's entire motivation in entering the Quick Draw competition is to kill Herod, but Herod has no idea who she is. Justified in that he last saw her as a child. When she produces her father's badge, he recognizes it instantly.
• In Rampage: Capital Punishment, Bill is confronted by a young woman who says he killed her twin sister. He remarks that she will have to be bit more specific, as he's killed too many to remember their faces. Turns out it was the waitress at the fast food restaurant from the previous film, whom Bill killed for merely spilling some food on him.
• Romy and Michele's High School Reunion: Near the end, Heather laments that she never had the opportunity to make anyone's life a living hell in high school. Cue Toby Walters, who sheepishly asks Heather to sign her yearbook, asking her not to hurt her feelings. When Heather finds out that she apparently had hurt Toby's feelings "all the time" in high school, she's more than thrilled to sign her yearbook.
• An unusual inversion in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Khan stayed up every night for twenty years dreaming of revenge against Captain James T. Kirk; Kirk likely hadn't thought of Khan at all after he filed his report to Starfleet on the Space Seed incident. The fact that Kirk and Starfleet never checked up on the new colony, essentially abandoning them to die when a natural disaster hit, is a big part of why he's out for revenge. Kirk does know perfectly well who Khan is, but as far as he knows they parted on good terms and if anything Khan owes him a favor.
  • Not just Kirk either. While Chekov clearly knows who Khan is, and realizes how much danger he and Terrell are in once he realizes where they are, even Khan can't help but realize that Chekov didn't think him worth mentioning to Terrell at some point beforehand, even when visiting Khan's new home star system.
• In the Dirty Harry franchise film Sudden Impact the woman protagonist goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to kill the men and a woman who gang raped her and her sister. Many of them she confronts don't remember her or even what they did.
• The Temptress: For most of the movie Elena has been The Vamp or the "temptress" who has sexually manipulated protagonist Robledo and several other men, two of whom get killed. At the end Robledo meets Elena once more, and is startled to find her drinking heavily and looking strung-out and disheveled. He offers to help her but she doesn't even remember him, saying "I meet so many men." Robledo is very upset. It's subverted afterwards, however, when it becomes apparent that Elena has lost her mind (she mistakes a bearded hobo for Jesus).
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022): Sally Hardesty, the only survivor of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), eventually confronts Leatherface and angrily says she's here to get revenge for him killing all her friends. She is shocked when he doesn't acknowledge her and even tries to go around her to go after his original targets.
• The final twist of Unfriended is that Blaire was the one who shot the embarrassing video about her ex-best friend, Laura, which led her to commit suicide. Judging by Blaire's reaction when the truth is revealed, it seems that she genuinely doesn't remember that she was the one who did the deed. Earlier, she describes her and Laura having "drifted apart", only for Laura to ask her if that's how she remembers it.

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