Easy Amnesia - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Amnesia? I thought people only got that in movies and soap operas and comic books?"

— Wendy Watson, The Middleman

"Amnesia? Psh, what do you think this is, an episode of Gilligans Island?"

— Jackson Stewart, Hannah Montana

In the real world, amnesia is rare, and recovery from it varies from days to being impossible.

On TV, amnesia is just a plot device for the current episode or movie or whatever. Everything and anything the character knows about him or herself may be lost, or just the last 24 hours may disappear — it's completely dependent on the plot.

If the victim recovers, it usually occurs by the end of the episode, with the character simply bonking their noggin a second time (conveniently ignoring the fact that this is likely to make things worse, not better), or with some Applied Phlebotinum from the resident scientist/physician. On the other hand, if the victim does not recover by the end of the episode, s/he almost certainly never will and those memories will be gone forever.

Note that TV usually uses retrograde amnesia (the inability to recollect memories from before the head bump) but almost never uses anterograde amnesia (the inability to create memories after the bump). While there have been a few examples recently, they have mostly been due to the popularity of the movie Memento. Even when it does appear in a show, what's depicted usually doesn't come close to the actual disorder. For a realistic breakdown, read up on the case of Clive Wearing

Expect a Non Sequitur Thud before being out cold.

Examples:

Anime and Manga

In The Big O, the entire city is suffering from a curious form of amnesia. Almost exactly forty years prior to the events in the series a massive cataclysm nearly destroyed the world and left all survivors with no memories. Although probably not much of a trope as the entire show deals with the nature of memories and what they really are, treating them more as ghosts than anything else.
In Bleach, Nel lost her memory after receiving a blow to the head from Nnoitra.
Dragonball Z's treatment of amnesia seems closer to reality than most: Goku got amnesia as a child when he fell out of his Grandpa's hands and down a steep gorge. He never recovered from it, and whenever a character would refer to it they would almost always mention how Goku nearly died from the fall.
- Another realistic treatment is Piccolo's, or rather, Kami's memories. After arriving on Earth in a spaceship as a child he had absolutely no memories of who he is or what he's doing there - he speculates that he probably hit his head. He also never recovers from it, and unlike Goku he never even finds out what his real name was (no, Piccolo is not his name; read the manga).
Ga-Rei sees Kagura lose much of her memory within a period of time. She eventually recovers it in a matter of chapters.
Ef A Tale Of Memories : One of the stories is about Chihiro, who can't remember anything beyond 13 hours in the past. This leads to one very dramatic scene, when she passes out for a longer period of time and can't remember why she's so much older and lacks one eye.
A number of characters suffer from this in the Dating Sim adaptation Kanon.
- Specifically, Makoto and Yuuichi. Makoto because she's a fox turned into a human, so she had to sacrifice her memories and the remaining years of her life to make the transition and Yuuichi because he blocked out the very traumatic event in his past, and lost all memories of his prior trip to the town, seven years ago.
Subverted in Mahou Sensei Negima, where Yue seems to have this, until we find out that someone accidentally gave her Laser Guided Amnesia about her life, and was too embarrassed to say so, so she just told Yue that she bumped her head.
Supposedly happens to Kaito in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, but it's revealed early on that it wasn't a bump at all.
Midori No Hibi has a slightly more realistic example. A bump on the head eliminates a minor character's knowledge of Seiji's secret – but not only was this unnecessary to resolve the story, it also alters his personality a bit. The brain is a fragile thing.
The twins in Ouran High School Host Club attempt to invoke this on Kasanoda by hitting him on the head with a baseball bat. Kyoya stops them, much to their annoyance.
In an episode of Pokemon, Pikachu gets amnesia after a Team Rocket attack and Meowth convices him to be a part of Team Rocket. Pikachu gets cured after taking a long drop into a river with Ash. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
Ranma 1/2: Chinese Girl Shampoo, in her first story, reveals she has a Pressure Points technique that lets her modify memories; she not only manages to make Akane Tendo forget who Ranma Saotome is, but also puts a kind of block on her mind so she literally cannot form any mental association with him- which leads to her repeatedly asking who Ranma is after he just told her his name a few minutes ago, much to Ranma's annoyance. Fortunately, Akane Tendo is such a Tsundere that the technique gets broken by having Ranma mock her until her sheer rage breaks down the blocks. For added Martial Arts And Crafts appeal, the actual technique looks like the user is performing haircare on their victim; as the points (understandably) are on the head, and certain herbal extracts are needed to bring out the full effect, it's easiest to disguise the manuever as washing hair.
- Shinnosuke, a boy from the forest of Ryugenzawa, is forgetful to a crippling degree. Among the things he's forgotten: his own grandpa, the location of the traps he has set for the animals of the forest, people he's met only minutes ago and the conversations he's had with them, and having saved a young Akane's life ten years ago. When he meets her again (believing it's the first time) he endears himself to her by writing her name all over the house so he won't forget again. Unfortunately, he later forgets having confessed his love to her also, but not the love itself.
Rumbling Hearts: Haruka suffers from anterograde amnesia after being hit by a car. This is on top of the three years she missed while comatose. This could be considered a subversion, as it takes most of the length of the series for her to recover.
To Aru Majutsu No Index: Index remembers very little of her own life due to periodic mind-wipes by her magician caretakers.
- Also, after a particular incident in the anime with certain white fleathers, Touma seems to have lost of all his memory, and just fakes it to everyone. This troper is seriously astounded that no one else realized it—or would be, if it wasn't anime.
- Mikoto finds out about it in Book 14, and in Book 16 she confronts Touma about it. It's also the same book where she realizes she loves him, going so far as to demand him to report any enemy to her so that she could kill them for him.

Comic Books

In Asterix and the Big Fight, Getafix becomes amnesiac (and crazy) after getting accidentally hit by one of Obelix's menhirs. When they take Getafix to another druid to be treated, Obelix demonstrates how it happened by tapping the druid with the menhir, leaving him in the same condition as Getafix. Later, Obelix gets the bright idea of curing Getafix with another tap on the head... just as Getafix manages to cure himself. Fortunately, he's still all right.
Lampshaded in the comic SODA: the main character gets Laser Guided Amnesia after a car accident. When he comes back home, he watches a TV special on the subject which explains that it's incredibly rare and almost never happens - except in fiction written by people who "lack imaginative ideas".
It happens to Calculus in the Tintin story "Destination Moon" after he falls down a ladder. It's hypothesized that a shock may bring his memory back, so Captain Haddock tries to do so, but ends up failing. He finally gets so fed up with it that he mentions that Calculus is "acting the goat" (an expression that previously acted as a Berserk Button for Calculus), which gets Calculus so angry that his memory returns.

Film

Overboard features a Rich Bitch who gets amnesia after she falls over the side of her yacht and almost drowns. A working class man she's insulted tries to enact a little revenge on her (and get her to do a little housework for him) by convincing her that she's his wife. Of course, this being a quirky Romantic Comedy, things don't go as planned...
In Random Harvest (1942), Ronald Colman plays a World War I veteran hospitalized with shell shock and complete retrograde amnesia. He escapes from the hospital, marries Greer Garson, and settles down to a happy small-town life — until he makes a business trip to London, where he is involved in a car accident that causes him to recover his lost memories... but completely forget his entire life since the war, including his marriage.
In Spider-Man 3, Harry Osborn has temporary amnesia after being badly injured during a fight with Peter Parker. It not only results in rather convenient selective memory loss, but also changes Harry's personality substantially. In the comics, similar tactics were used on occasion to make Norman Osborn forget that he was the Green Goblin.
- Then again, the "easy" part of this amnesia is subverted since the injury is enough to kill him! Well, temporarily.
- Might also be a Reset Button, since he acts, well, pretty much like he did in the first movie.
- And the fact that Peter is so ''happy'' about this, and has no plans whatsoever to make it up to him (or even prepare him gently for the inevitable recovery,) constitutes one of the biggest WallBangers in the movie.
In Resident Evil, both Alice and Spence Parks lose their memories of their past lives as a side effect of being rendered unconscious by sleep gas. They regain at least some of their memories by the end of the movie.

Literature

The hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Monster Men suffers from amnesia, allowing him to be taken for a result of the Mad Scientist's experiment.
"Jason Bourne", in Robert Ludlum's BourneTrilogy and the movies loosely based on them, forgets his name and past, but instinctively remembers his superspy/assassin training. It is revealed that the conditioning he received in Project Treadstone made him a psychological accident waiting to happen. In the film, the amnesia is triggered by a crisis of conscience, several gunshot wounds, and nearly drowning; in the novel, it was being shot several times including once in the head and nearly drowning.
Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mists, Soldier of Arete, and Soldier of Sidion features an ancient warrior who, every night, loses his memory of the day before. He also has visions of various gods. Though the characters view him as cursed by the gods, he had suffered a head injury and it is a known form of amnesia.

Live Action TV

A particularly infamous example occurred in the first series of 24 where Teri goes into shock and forgets nearly everything about her life, only to recover suddenly a few hours later. It should be noted that the first series of 24 was much less tightly written than later ones, and the writers have admitted that they just needed a way to keep the character away from the action for a few episodes.
- In a nice nod to realism, though (and the only good quality about that sordid plotline), Teri gets amnesia after she gets out of a car parked on a narrow ledge, tells Kim to stay there while she tries to find help, and watches as the car goes rolling over the edge and explodes. One of the most common causes of retrograde amnesia is sheer brain-rending trauma that the sufferer feels primarily responsible for, so it's nice to see that happen instead of another coconut to the head.
In the Angel episode "Spin the Bottle", all of the heroes lose their memories due to a magical spell.
In an unusual exception, Jaime Sommers of The Bionic Woman suffered substantial amnesia (forgetting most of her life) as a result of the operating table resuscitation that launched her series – and never recovered from it.
In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Tabula Rasa", all of the heroes lose their memories due to a magical spell. Gee, it's almost as if Buffy and Angel were produced by the same company or something.
Jeremy Darling of Dirty Sexy Money fakes a case of this as a way to try to figure out how to get Nola out of a jam, which he is not supposed to know she is in.
Due South did this in its second season closer, and used it as an excuse for a Clip Show as Ray had to "remind" Fraser about their adventures. Gah.
Michelle falls off a horse and gets amnesia in the final episodes of Full House.
Lisa from Green Acres suffers an interesting case where she actually believes she's a different person with a very thorough backstory. She believes Oliver is her butler, expects her fiance to pick her up for a date, and has amazing cooking skills. Since she is normally a Lethal Chef, Oliver is flabbergasted when she cooks muffins so light they drift slowly down to the plate when dropped. Finally, she instantly recognizes their neighbor Mr. Kimball and treats him normally, even though she can't correctly identify anyone else.
Hannah Montana gives Jackson amnesia through what seems like a blow to the head, and Miley uses his memory loss to her advantage, convincing Jackson that he is her idea of the perfect older brother (Happiness In Slavery). Subverted when Jackson's amnesia turns out to be an even more epic Zany Scheme to remind Miley that she would miss her brother if he were any different (given nearly every episode ends with An Aesop of some variety, this is the Disney Channel after all, so this is just par for the course for the show).
The BBC comedy series Ideal featured a call girl who is kidnapped with the intention of ransoming her off. The plan falls through, but during the ruckus she is hit on the head and suffers temporary amnesia. One character takes advantage of this by telling her that he's her boyfriend, and that he'll help her remember things. When her memory starts to return, she runs back to who she thinks is her genuine boyfriend, but he turns out to be her pimp. After being mistreated by him, she runs back to the man who had lied to her, seeking protection.
On Little House on the Prairie, a boy fakes blindness after an accident, and Laura finds out but agrees keep quiet and let him tell his parents. Before he can do that, he falls off a horse and hits his head again, conveniently forgetting everything since the first accident. His parents and Doctor Baker just assume the second blow brought his sight back.
Claire Littleton suffers this kind of amnesia after her mysterious kidnapping and return by the Others on Lost. Lampshaded by Sayid asking Jack if he's ever seen such a convenient case of amnesia in his medical practice, and Jack agreeing that it's unlikely and probably a sign of something more sinister. Season 2 reveals Claire's amnesia is partly due to blocking out trauma, but mostly because the Others kept her heavily drugged the whole time they had her.
- Daniel Faraday apparently had anterograde amnesia before coming to the island.
In one episode of Married With Children, Peggy bumps her head and gets amnesia. Al tricks her into believing that she was a good housewife.
- Thelma does the same to Naomi on Mama's Family.
MacGyver became an amnesiac several times as a result of blows to the head. Given that he's knocked unconscious at least once an episode, he's lucky that's the worst he ever got.
In the second season The Man From UNCLE episode "The Nowhere Affair", Napoleon Solo, facing imminent capture by a pair of THRUSH mooks, takes "Capsule B", a drug which induces "total amnesia" for a period of at least 72 hours.
Illya Kuryakin: Just how effective are these capsules? Total amnesia?
Alexander Waverly: Oh, I daresay he'll still be able to count up to ten in Swahili, or conjugate a few simple Latin verbs, but he'll not be able to remember a thing about U.N.C.L.E., or have the remotest idea who he is, for at least 72 hours, by which time the information will be in our hands... I hope.
Hilariously lampshaded in an episode of the The Middleman, where a guy that the heroine recently met and had become fond of suffers a concussion during one of her missions, and consequently develops amnesia that conveniently causes him to forget the past 2 days.
Ed the horse gets amnesia on Mr Ed, forcing Wilbur to fake having it as well so he can use whatever cure is tried on him on Ed.
The entire plot of Samantha Who.
After a car crash in the S Club Christmas Special, Paul gets amnesia, which is later cured by watching another patient at the hospital crash his wheelchair. Hannah is also left unable to speak correctly for a time due to the crash.
- Isn't their series called "Miami 7"?
Cameron in Sarah Connor Chronicles gets a kind of this in Alison from Palmdale. Her 'amnesia' is caused by a faulty chip however.
Rachel McKenna from Shortland Street lost her memory and underwent a total personality change when she was struck by lightning. After several weeks all it took was a simple electric shock from a lamp to get her memory and her old personality back.Only now she couldn't remember anything that happened when she suffered from the amnesia.
One Story Arc of Smallville doesn't use this trope. Lex Luthor, through his father's machinations, is given permanent amnesia through electroshock at a crooked psych ward, causing him to forget both his father's evil dealings and Clark's secret identity. Also an example of Laser Guided Amnesia, since it's convenient to the plot.
- Smallville is Easy Amnesia: The Series. 90% of the cast, Clark Kent included, ought to be suffering from severe head trauma by now. If someone sees Clark using his powers, especially in the early seasons, you can bet they'll get an instant bonk on the head to forget that. The bludgeoning might not even be needed, but although psychological shock is more likely to trigger something like this, they don't show any other signs of it.
  - There's a vaccine: If you learn Clark's secret and don't forget it immediately, you are henceforth immune to amnesia.
Soap has a classic case of this with Chester forgetting who he was and only slowly recovering. For a while he thought his name was Chester Plate instead of Tate.
An episode of Stargate SG 1 has Vala hooked up to a device meant to probe her memory. When a zat sends a power surge through it, she loses all knowledge of who she is (but apparently gains enough knowledge of Earth customs to pass unnoticed).
Stargate Atlantis has a rare example of both: Everyone in Atlantis except Ronon and Teyla gets not only retrograde amnesia, but also loses their newly formed memories every few minutes. It's caused by a common childhood disease similar to chicken pox that humans never encountered before and therefore aren't immune to.
- There's another episode where team member "Michael" wakes up in the hospital with absolutely no memory of who he is, and the other main characters assure him that it's a temporary amnesia that will probably get better with time... except it won't, because Michael is actually a biological experiment designed to turn Wraith into humans, and he has no memory of his life as a Wraith. He eventually discovers the truth, and the shit hits the fan.
Subverted on Starsky And Hutch; after a car accident, Hutch apparently has amnesia, which is used as an opportunity for a Clip Show as Starsky reminds him of their past. Near the end of the show, it turns out that Hutch is fine; he's just taking revenge on Starsky for his reckless driving.
In Weird Science practically every episode ends with Lisa handing out free Laser Guided Amnesia for all implicated parties except for the main characters of course. Suverted when Lisa couldn't wipe Chett's memory because he developed a brain callous out of the absurd number of times his memory has been edited.
Wonderfalls, in a late-season arc, Subverted it: Heidi Gotts gets bumped on the head and decides to fake amnesia precisely because so many people think it works this way.
Gibbs suffers a two-part amnesia arc after being blown up in the third season finale of NCIS. It's mostly an excuse to drag out the search for the bad guy while still allowing Gibbs to be conscious in many scenes. Also, to make Ziva cry.
In the Fraggle Rock episode Boober Gorg, Boober loses his memory after being hit on the head by a falling rock, and begins thinking he's a Gorg. This being Fraggle Rock, the Gorgs are actually fooled too...
Monk once got temporary amnesia from a blow to the head. In the episode, his therapist did acknowledge that that kind of amnesia is quite rare.

Opera

This trope is central to the plot of Götterdämmerung, by Richard Wagner, making this Older Than Radio.

Video Games

Exception: Super Robot Wars Alpha 2 has Ibis Douglas, who lost her memories due to a jet fighter crash and some severe repression before the story starts. She's a terrible pilot, and some assume she must've been a great pilot before she got amnesia. As later events reveal, she was actually even worse. Since she's a main character though, she later does turn into a great pilot.
In the first case of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All, Phoenix gets clubbed on the head just before the trial, and (naturally) loses his memory. This makes a bit more sense when you realize the level is the tutorial of a sequel.
Justified in Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does A Little Undercover Work, the fourth game in the Leisure Suit Larry series: At the start of the game, Larry, being a character in a computer game, has completely forgotten the events of his previous adventure, Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies, because the villain has stolen the game disks.
- In reality, Leisure Suit Larry 4 never even existed, as the third game's ending didn't lend itself to a sequel and the designers decided to skip straight to the fifth game, letting players come up with their own theories on the events of Leisure Suit Larry 4.
  - There's also the fact that Al Lowe promised there'd never be a fourth game of the series, due to some of the negative reactions garnered by the series. He kept his promise, too...
  - The game was indeed created, but was flushed down a toilet by Roger Wilco in Space Quest IV. This temporal paradox caused the game to never be published.
Double H in Beyond Good And Evil gets Easy Amnesia not from a whack on the head, but from prolonged exposure to alien lightning. It temporarily renders him a Cloud Cuckoolander with what appears to be an action movie hero complex and a tendency to mangle names. He recovers after a boss battle that requires you to use his head as a battering ram several times, which is something of the inverse of how this trope usually works...
In Vandal Hearts, character Eleni has this as a result of having been sent traumatically back in time as a young child; the character recovers her memory after seeing herself sent back.
In the second expansion set for World Of Warcraft, Muradin Bronzebeard is revealed to have been knocked out and given amnesia instead of being killed, which completely destroys the dramatic purposes of his death.
- The strangest part is that there's no discernible reason for this. Yorg Stormheart could have been a completely new character and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to the plot so far, save for some Back Story told to the PC to liven up a long period in one quest in which nothing much happens.
Subverted (kinda) in Shadow Hearts: From the New World, Johnny Does loses his memory and hasn't gotten it back by the start of the game. Subverted in that he got from an accident that killed his entire family. Maybe a Self-Defense Mechanism?
- Or maybe a side affect of being brought back from the dead.
Largely averted in Final Fantasy VI; there are precisely two cases of amnesia, and neither one is easily received or easily fixed. Terra's amnesia is explicitly magical, stemming as it does from years of wearing a Slave Crown. Any memories she gets back after that tend to be hazy and less than useful, and while she does make a full recovery, that too is magical. Rachel suffers a far more mundane case of amnesia, that comes about from a serious fall. The entire affair is hugely tragic, and she doesn't recall anything about who she was or who Locke is until her final moments.
In Flashback, at least part of the plot is about getting your memory back, after having it erased by aliens. Later, you find you uploaded your memory and left it with a friend just in case something like this happened.
One of the sidequest in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door involves hitting someone in the head with a hammer so that they can remember something they forgot earlier. It works, and it's hilarious.
Final Fantasy VIII took the less common "Amnesia for Everyone Route" in which 5 of the 6 playable characters had dude-where's-my-childhood amnesia.
In Cave Story, a pair of Ridiculously Human Robots lose their memories, but it's hardly easy. It's implied that both of them contracted amnesia after getting battered in an epic fight that happened in the backstory; one of them loses the few memories she has left after recovering from nearly drowning. A mushroom restores her memories completely; the other bot only regains a select few of his memories (and even this is arguable) and mostly relies on the word of others for information about his past.

Web Comics

In Sluggy Freelance, Bun-Bun has suffered from this twice. The first time was just temporary, where nearly dying in an explosion caused him to behave like an ordinary, non-talking bunny for several months. The second time, however, Bun-Bun actually met and beat up his past self. This gave past-Bun-Bun a nasty concussion and partial amnesia, leaving him vague about most of the details concerning his life before the start of the series.
In The Law of Purple, Myranian women can memtwist anyone they make skin-to-skin contact with. This allows them to absorb the victim's memories at the same time that they're erasing them. Shi Shi does this to Blue just before the start of the comic.
Ctrl Alt Del uses this in one arc, as Ethan suffers from amnesia after being hit on the head with a computer box.
An entire story arc of Free Fall involves Florence losing newly-formed memories as she tries to figure out what she's doing at Ecosystems Unlimited. This is caused by a remote control used to keep artificial intelligences like herself in check.
Van's sidekick in Van Von Hunter is suffering from amnesia several times over. This is the given reason why nobody knows her name.

Western Animation

Bruce Wayne goes undercover as an unemployed drifter in an episode of Batman The Animated Series. He gets walloped in the head with a 2×4 and forgets both that he's Bruce Wayne and Batman.
- In an episode of The New Adventures of Superman, Clark similarly forgot he was Superman. His family were summoned and told him, but he didn't remember how to use any of his powers either.
Done in an episode of Chaotic, although probably justified, as it was caused by a plant that produces memory-erasing venom.
Kim loses her memory the episode "Clean Slate" of Kim Possible, but her memories quickly begin returning with the exception of the fact that she's dating Ron. Her father uses her amnesia as a slightly ethically dubious way to get her to like his favorite TV show.
As quoted above, Futurama took this to the extreme on the parody soap opera "All My Circuits" in the episode "Bender Should not be Allowed on TV".
Mentioned in The Simpsons - when Homer is about to box Drederic Tatum, Bart tells him to make sure he gets hit an even number of times to avoid amnesia.
In Transformers Animated, it turns out that Ratchet hit Arcee with his EMP and it worked exactly like an Amnesia Ray, wiping her entire memory of everything. Although it explains why Ratchet is with a Space Bridge Repair Team packed with losers and dropouts, it doesn't explain why the guy he was fighting at the time turned out fine.
This is from memory and might be wrong, but this troper recalls an episode of Cow and Chicken involving amnesia being granted by inhaling steam, of all things.
Spoofed in an episode of Stripperella where rival stripper Kat repeatedly discovers Stripperella's Secret Identity, only to constantly lose her memory of the event because she keeps getting hit in the head.
The cartoon Christmas Special Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer features a rare example of anterograde amnesia in the titular grandma, though it's never identified as anything more than "she's lost her memory". Not only does she completely forget who she is, she doesn't seem to form any new memories either: her grandson has to keep reintroducing himself to her, and the villains can laugh over their evil scheme with her standing right there and not registering anything. All of this would seem to imply some serious brain trauma, but it's instantly undone by a bite of her famous fruitcake.

Real Life

See also Troper Tales page.
The recent news story of the disappearance and reappearance of John Darwin is a subversion. He apparently faked his own death as part of an insurance scam, then walked into a police station some years later claiming to have lost all memory of the intervening time. Needless to say, the true story didn't take long to emerge.
A soccer/football player suffered a minor fall, and suffered severe retrograde amnesia.
Very common in dreams. Barring the rare lucid dream, most people have no recollection of their real life circumstances while dreaming and easily accept even the most implausible events as "real."
A girl in New York was found early this October with no memory whatsoever of what happened or who she is. Link is the AP news video.

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