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"Amnesia, eh? Indeed, there is no better defense."
Children Are Innocent. Amnesiacs have memories as short as children's. Therefore, amnesiacs are innocent — and may have other childlike, or childish, traits to boot.
If there was a Start of Darkness, the amnesia need only roll back to before then to produce this.
As a consequence, Amnesiac Dissonance is more likely to be a good character fearing having been evil than the other way round.
Because they are innocent and not actively good, it may also lead to Criminal Amnesiac, through being too trusting. They may also wreak all kinds of havoc through innocent unawareness.
Examples
Anime and Manga:
- In Death Note, this happens when Light arranges things so that he forgets that he is Kira. Once L is convinced, he is entirely cooperative and wants to help L catch Kira.
- In Code Geass, C. C. loses most of her memory, becoming the sweet, innocent*
I know how to handle corpses! , illiterate, medieval child she was before receiving her geass.
- From the same series, Viletta becomes extremely innocent after she loses her memories, and even winds up in a relationship with Ougi, one of her enemies, who takes her in out of pity when he finds her. Shit hits the fan when she gets her memories back.
- Lucy From Elfen Lied: pre-amnesia, she was basically something between Ax Crazy Yandere and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Post-amnesia, she's The Ingenue and a girl who can barely do the simplest things. When she eventually gets her memories back, things get nastier.
- Nana, who suffers from "extreme amnesia", from Tripeace is extremely innocent, to the point that he doesn't even know what war is. This is in contrast to Fox, whose personality before the amnesia is highly cynical and cold.
- The entire background story to the manga Zennou No Noa: a large group of people lose their memories in what's called a terrorist attack and are basically made to live in a separate city built under Tokyo. They're even called KIDz, and regardless of age a lot of them do pick up fairly childish traits.
- Fujiko Mine in the Lupin III Made-for-TV Movie The Columbus Files turns from her usual Femme Fatale self into a gentle and naive girl who completely trusts Lupin when struck with a bout of amnesia.
- Kirika from Noir possibly deconstructs this, as she's an amnesiac 15 year old girl who's extremely naive — who happens to be one of the deadliest assassins in the world. Her first memories upon waking up are finding a gun in her house and shortly after taking out a squad of Mooks sent to fight her, and much of her character arc revolves around finding out just how she learned these abilities.
- Joshua Christopher from Chrono Crusade has this happen to him in the anime version—despite being 15, the insanity caused by Chrono's horns make him forget most of his backstory, and he even seems unaware that he's grown older and still acts like a child the majority of the time. In the end, he loses the horns and becomes sane again—but forgets even MORE of his past than he did before and becomes even more childlike!
Comic Books
- A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode has Shredder lose his memory. Averted in that he still ends up doing evil deeds, just not in costume.
- Played straight in the story, later invoked by the Daltons in the Lucky Luke story "L'Amnesie des Daltons": on seeing an amnesiac inmate be freed, they decide to pass off as amnesiac themselves in order to leave the prison. Averell becomes genuinely amnesiac after a Tap on the Head, and matters are complicated when the local governor decides to send them back to prison for breaking the law by any means necessary: encouraging them to rob banks and trains.
- An issue of the Transformers comics had Starscream lose his memories in a freak accident once. Optimus considered this as Starscream's chance to start over with a clean slate. But of course Status Quo Is God...
- Mad Man is a pretty innocent and childlike person due to being an amnesiac corpse.
- It really, really looked like this trope would be used to get Iron Man off the hook for his actions in Civil War. Tony ends up having to restore his brain from a backup which he made before the registration crisis. But to his credit, he refuses to use this as an excuse — he may not remember the decisions he made, but he wasn't a different person when he made them.
Literature
- In L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz stories, Ozma takes advantage of this trope by means of the Fountain of Oblivion, a magic fountain that causes those to drink from it to lose their memory. This way, if an invading army attacks Emerald City, all you have to do to render them harmless is to trick them into taking a sip.
- Niniel in The Children of Húrin is initially this, as when she is found sans memories she needs to be taught basic skills such as speech, and her personality is continually compared to that of a child. She learns quickly though.
Live-Action TV
- The Dolls of Dollhouse, having no memory, are purposely programmed to fit this trope until "imprinted". They're naive, innocent, and devoid of sexual desires... so when some of them start exhibiting traits that break these rules, you know something is wrong.
- Babylon 5 episode "Passing Through Gethsemane" deals with this topic when a kind, pious monk is revealed to be a serial killer whose personality was erased and a kinder one with new memories was put in place. The families of his victims did not believe he was innocent and came for revenge.
- Once the vampire Herik was resurrected in Being Human it was as an amnesiac because the ritual wasn't performed by his Familiar who safeguarded his memories. As a result he's completely free of sin, to the point that crosses and stars of David have no effect on him. Of course, being a vampire he has a Horror Hunger all the same, and being an amnesiac he has no context for what's wrong with him.
- When Eric in True Blood loses his memory, he forgets his bloody and violent past and becomes innocent. This is responsible for much of the character development in season three and he even states at one point that he doesn't want to go back to who he used to be.
- In Heroes, this happens to Nathan for a few episodes in Season 4. What's really confusing is that everyone else thinks it's happened to Sylar, whose body currently houses Nathan's mind. *
Details: The body usually looks like Nathan because he's unconsciously using Sylar's shapeshifting power to make it so. But the attack that gave him amnesia also knocked him out, making his body revert to normal. Since he woke up unaware of who he was, he still has Sylar's default appearance. The Carnival believes he has amnesia, the cops suspect he's faking, but everyone thinks he's Sylar. Only the audience can recognize the few memories he recovers as Nathan's. * Even more confusingly, Sylar's memories are still in there even though his mind isn't. One of the carnies uses his power to dig up images of Sylar's victims; this might have triggered something for a real amnesiac Sylar, but naturally it just freaks Nathan out!
- Notably averted in the Grand Finale of Smallville: a resurrected Lex Luthor gets dosed with an amnesia pill erasing his entire life. Despite this, within a decade he becomes President of the United States and the most evil man in the world.
- Ben Chang of Community claims to be suffering from 'Changnesia', presenting himself as the confused and harmless amnesic Kevin
Tabletop Games
- Mummy: the Curse inverts this: your character is at his most monstrous when his Memory is low, and he becomes a better person the more of his memories he recovers.
Video Games
- Terra of Final Fantasy VI has no memories but her name and is a Technical Pacifist and The Ingenue.
- Isabella in Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin.
- Darkrai's memory is erased at the end of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky as a result of being hit by Palkia's attack while escaping through a portal after the heroes and Cresselia foil his evil plans to destroy the Pokemon world. After that, he can be encountered and recruited.
- Knights of the Old Republic. The protagonist is a perfect example of this trope: not only were their memories gone, they were also programmed with a new identity, loyal to the Republic. That is, if you follow the light side path.
- In the fangame Touhou Mother, Porky loses his memories when he lands in Gensokyo. He's actually a decent person during this period, and makes particular friends with Marisa. Then he gets his memories back and almost immediately begins taking over Gensokyo, becoming the game's Big Bad.
- The page quote comes from a scene in XIII, in which the Amnesiac Hero is being interrogated by the FBI, who has photographic evidence that he murdered the president. It is later revealed that the protagonist is posing as the real assassin to stop a plan to overthrow the government, making this a double subversion.
- Planescape: Torment, the protagonist, Nameless One, both plays this trope straight, and inverts it, goes sideways, and wanders all over. Nameless One is an immortal who, each time he dies, suffers some form of memory adjustment. Sometimes the shock of death may recover lost memories, sometimes a particularly brutal or nasty death may result in the complete reset of his entire mind, altering his core behaviour and personality at a fundamental level. One life, he might be a heroic Knight in Shining Armor, the next, he could pass the Moral Event Horizon. Though he may be innocent in terms of knowledge of at the time of reincarnation of previous wrongs done in former lives, there are those who would argue that point. Regardless, he is both innocent, guilty, and everything in between amidst dozens, or possibly hundreds of past lives worth of sins and virtues.
Web Comics
Web Original
- The Trapped Trilogy: The protagonist in the first game, who turns out to be the leader of a crime syndicate.
Western Animation
- In an episode of Superman: The Animated Series, Metallo suffers from amnesia after being caught in an explosion. He ends up befriending a pair of children, and even saves their lives. As soon as his memories return he immediately reverts to evil.
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