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alt title(s): No One Has A Memory Over Two Years Old Nohamotyo is the Ogre of Pop Culture: a monster who uses his magic to cloud the minds of the impressionable, to steal their disposable income. His powers include the ability to make people forget that they've seen something before, and to discourage them from looking up information. He defends his patrons by attacking and devouring those who would seek to educate his victims.
Derives his name from the acronym "No One Has A Memory Over Two Years Old."
Not the same as Older Than They Think; Nohamotyo's influence extends to tropes, plots, lines and gimmicks of more recent vintage, that the viewer can be reasonably expected to have seen — since it
was The Big Cool New Thing just a couple of years ago — and a couple of years before that, and a couple of years before that, and...
Compare Seven Year Rule from Professional Wrestling. Recycled Script is the fallout from this trope. No relation to Hamtaro, whatever the heck that is.
Examples:
- This trope is, actually, a quite reliable rule of thumb considering the Japanese animation industry. Given the simply staggering number of titles released each season, the well-known reluctance of mainstream audiences to admit their interest in anime, and the drive to anything new, the average attention span of one given watcher is exactly about a couple of years. So any series that didn't receive a sequel during this time is very unlikely to receive it ever.
- Averted in, of all things, an episode of Pokemon. An episode that first aired in April of 2008 involved Ash's Pikachu being beaten by a Raichu, being hospitalized, and having to choose whether or not to evolve. Ash revealed that he still had a Thunder Stone from the last time this happened - a Thunder Stone that Ash received in an episode that aired in 1997 (the Vermilion Gym battles) and had never been mentioned since. On top of that Ash's (unsuccessful) tactics in the first battle against Raichu were a direct reference to his winning tactics against the Raichu in 1997. A large chunk of Pokemon's target audience wasn't even born when that episode first aired (and most people who were watching back then probably aren't now).
- Averted once more in "Historical Mystery Tour". Ash and Dawn are shrunk down by a Natu and have to deal with Spearow and Ariados, respectively. Loyal viewers should realize that these are, if Palmer's explanation at the end is correct, memories of how they first became close with their Pokemon (Pikachu and Piplup). Dawn first met Piplup on the first episode of the Diamond and Pearl series, 139 episodes (almost 3 years) ago. That pushes it, but Ash's case is the real kicker. Ash first met Pikachu on the first episode, of course...SIX HUNDRED AND FIVE episodes earlier. That's almost 11 and a half years ago. Most of their target audience is younger than that episode.
- A significant amount of the Bount Arc in Bleach is a Shout Out to - or ripoff of- the Chapter Black saga of Yu Yu Hakusho. The most blatant bit is the beginning, where the heroes confront a trio of new enemies who turn out to be agents of their resident Trickster Mentor who were testing/teaching them for a fight against new opponents. Said trio thereafter joins the heroes in the fight.
- In old-school Silver Age Superman and Superboy comics, plots were reused frequently, and not just in a "this bears a passing resemblance to that other story." More like, Jimmy becomes a werewolf under circumstances that are similar to but completely unrelated to the time it happened three years ago. (Real years, not comic years.) Superboy also became the leader of a wolf pack twice. And Lois or Lana got Supes' powers on enough occasions you may as well consider them reserve superheroes.
- Eventually the writers caved and Lana did become a superhero in her own right - Insect Queen. While this has since been retconned away, there is a current Insect Queen in the DC Universe...with the name of Lonna Leing.
- As of this writing (February 2010), Lana's long-standing "incurable disease" subplot in Supergirl has culminated with her in a giant coccoon. It's pretty obvious what's going to happen some time between March and June (Decompression makes it hard to pin these things down nowadays).
- The writers of Teen Titans have also maintained a consistent attachment to the concept "Raven goes evil because of her demonic father".
- Not just Raven. If it's Wednesday, there's a good chance they'll be fighting a group of evil Titans. Or one of them will die.
- Titans: Paper, Scissors, Stone actually lampshades this last part as an explicit and inseparable part of the Titans mythos, and one that the new group's leader failed to take into account when she set out to recreate the circumstances of the team's forming.
- Two recent Marvel Crisis Crossovers, Secret Invasion and Civil War, were awfully similar to past storylines (Rom Space Knight and many, many old mutant registration acts), and no hero involved noticed.
- The crowning failure of Seltzer And Friedberg - before their movies even release, many of the targets of their "parodies" have already flopped and faded from memory.
- Strangely, the new trailer for Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes only refers to Robert Downey, Jr. as a "Golden Globe nominee", which he received in the Best Supporting Actor category for Tropic Thunder. The thing is, he was also nominated for an Academy Award for the exact same role. Wouldn't an Oscar nomination be more worthy of notice?
- Justified, in that he was nominated for a Golden Globe for Sherlock Holmes.
- Some Star Treks overused their stock plots ad nauseam. The Negative Space Wedgie turning the Holodeck into a death trap is a favorite of Next Generation and Voyager. Just which character is trying to eat them changes... the formula doesn't. Would that it only happened once every two years. And Enterprise basically ate itself this way. Oh, look, more aliens in Nazi uniforms.
- Parodied on (of course) Futurama when Kif shows Amy the HoloShed. He states that nothing in the simulation will hurt her, unless there's a malfunction and everything comes to life again, but that hardly ever happens. Several minutes later, the greatest villains in history (including Evil Lincoln) show up just after a malfunction. They know the drill and start smashing stuff.
- Every iteration of Star Trek does Moby Dick. Plus two movies as well - Khan with Kirk as the whale and in First Contact, Picard has the Borg as his whale. Note that both compare the situation to Moby Dick. Ironically, Stewart actually played Ahab two years later in the Disney version of Moby Dick.
- Voyager and Enterprise were especially bad at this, leading to criticism that both ignored their premises to be "Next Gen lite" and recycle old episodes in the belief no one would recall episodes from any prior series. Hence why many Enterprise episodes features technology and species wildly inappropriate for the time; they were introduced back in 1987, and nobody would remember back that far. Not that they cared.
- Stargate SG-1 self-consciously makes use of this by having similar plotlines (time travel, alternate dimensions) refer to or even depend on previous episodes with similar plots. A Genre Savvy bunch, SG-1.
- Each time they encounter the same phenomena they will always recap the events of the previous mission, and try to figure out if what they learned that time can be useful again. In Stargate Atlantis sometimes the same solution is used again (or the same problem), with a twist.
- What pro wrestling's comparable Seven Year Rule says about the memory of pro wrestling fans vs. the general public is up for grabs, of course...
- While that may be part of the reason, the rule says more about wrestling's inability to hold an audience.
- Power Rangers seems to live on this as it has a target audience turnover rate of two years.
- 106&Park used to have a segment called the "Old School Joint of the Day". Originally they did play videos that were at least a decade or so old with guests even picking some of their favorite songs for the video. As the show went on they began to play younger and younger videos. After people, even A.J. and Free who were hosting at the time, started to complain the segment began to alternate with "The Flashback Joint of the Day" where they could play songs that were only a few years old without drawing the ire of people who knew they weren't really "old school".
- Terrence Dicks, Doctor Who script editor during the early 1970s and writer for a longer time, has expressed this in terms of respect for the audience, recommending as a general role that the audience should never be expected to remember canon details from episodes broadcast more than two years before. Note that this was from an age before VHS or DVD.
- Which is odd, because Doctor Who fans are known for watching old episodes after being introduced to the show by the newer series.
- But they couldn't have done that in the 1970s because oddly enough the series weren't out on DVD (or VHS) then. Being easily able to watch all the old episodes of any popular series you like is quite a new thing.
- This may be the case with all the private broadcasting in Germany, as the programs tend to repeat themselves ridiculously. Seriously, take a tv magazine and slam your head against a wall. Or just take a shot every time you see The Witches Of Eastwick, Dinner For One, Crossing Jordan, Snow White, Species or Alien, to just name a few. Some are repeated four days a week by different programs.
- Dinner for One is broadcast around 17 times on New Year's eve each year. It might be a holdover from before cable and satellite TV, because it's on the nominally regional stations that you can watch everywhere nowadays, but not when the tradition started. Those are public stations, not private, though.
- On Home And Away, Martha recently discovered that her boyfriend was in a marriage of convenience. Surprisingly, this did not remind her of her love affair with Ash nearly three years earlier, which ended because he was married with kids and wasn't about to leave them.
- Hilariously subverted on SNL. John Goodman was hosting, along with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. During his monologue, an audience member stopped him to ask if this was a repeat. John reassured that it wasn't-given that it was a live broadcast and all- but kept getting interrupted by members of the audience who insisted that it was a repeat from a few years ago when John also hosted with Tom Petty as the musical guest. John even brought out Jimmy Fallon, a cast member at that time, who agreed with the audience that this show was, in fact, a repeat and that he remembers it because it was aired when he was in high school.
- Mexican politicians love the abuse of this trope. Since governors and presidents are replaced every 6 years instead of every 4, that means people who can't remember what the previous winner said, and candidates conquering the people with exactly the same demagogic drivel over and over and over again. This is especially bad in the conservative central states, where the conservatives score easy wins after throwing bland, generic speeches about "our Catholic virtues", "good customs" and "moral values".
- To an extent and modified for regional issues, all politicians do this, worldwide.
- All presidential candidates in the United States promise security, better government, economy and moral values. The result is that American government swings back and forth between Republican and Democratic parties every four to sixteen years, and even though these parties eventually get Zero Percent Approval Rating, especially since both of them take their policies to their
logical most extreme. It's a wonder that Americans haven't just thrown up their hands and choose a new major political party. "Hope and Change" and "Reform, Peace, Prosperity" are Older Than You Think.
- The whole thing about them going to the most extreme version is actually an example of the trope, both sides accuse each other of this and then both act in almost exactly the same way (centrist with expanding bureaucracy). A running joke on The Daily Show is to show clips of the most vocal supporters and opponents of a policy, and then show clips from when the other party was in power. The same people are making the same points with the same arguments, but who is making which point is reversed. If they really went to extremes, the first act of either side as soon as it came back to power would be to repeal all the major changes the last one made. American elections use single member districts instead of proportional representation; it actually forces a two-party system, with change only coming if a party collapses.
- After the most recent election, The Daily Show not only lampshaded this... they admitted to doing the same thing themselves, and basically said they don't care if it's hypocritical. When Stewart points out that Obama's inauguration speech (hailed by his supporters as amazing and awesome) was in many ways nearly identical to Bush's incumbent speech in 2004 (derided by his detractors as warmongering and horrible), the other reporter's excuse was "Why is melted cheese so delicious on Italian food, but so disgusting on Chinese food? It just is!"
- FDR ran on a lassez-faire platform(he lied) to contrast himself with Herbert Hoover(who is now remembered for being radically free-market, despite his 1932 nomination acceptance speech including a Take That against such a policy).
- Um, actually, no, FDR never ran on a laissez-faire platform. You must be confusing "laissez-faire" with "vaguely pro-market" (which applies to every American president ever).
- Furthermore, unless I'm mistaken, free-market and laissez-faire are the same thing.
- Irish governments wishing to stay in office ALWAYS promise 2,000 new gardaí (police), with no explanation as to where the money will come from.
- Subverted in the UK - major political parties rarely have any policies at all, instead basing their platforms around making the same criticisms of rival parties every five years.
- Canadian political parties have plenty of policies, but nobody really pays attention to them. Canadians historically vote for the party they hate the least at that moment. This fact is so universally acknowledged that it's quoted in university-level political science textbooks. A really good way to lose the election is to run attack ads, which to Canadians don't just seem desperate but overly American as well - not something you want to do if you want to win.
- "Overly American" is an interesting way of putting it, as that is one of the criticisms Canadian politicians like to sling at each other, and one that seems to be expected. A Canadian political cartoonist pointed out that you don't really see other countries do this sort of thing, and that an American politician who said something like "That policy sounds awfully Mexican to me!" would be ending his career. Although, the recent US health-care debate did have many Conservatives criticizing the reform as bring it too close to the Canadian system.
- Israel's largest Right-Wing party has been receiving the majority of its votes from the working-class, despite each Right-Wing government so far having consistently introduced "financial reforms" that deliberately widen the gap between rich and poor. This is said to be mainly due to working-class support for right-wing hawkish policies regarding the Palestinians, but Right-Wing governments have also ended up making greater concessions in peace process negotiations than Left-Wing governments. To make matters even more bizarre, the Ogre is even in plain sight: This voting pattern has been ridiculed thoroughly on many satirical and extremely popular television shows over the past few decades, but once the elections roll in people seem to forget the lesson anyway. And yeah, I realize this must be the same exact way in most other democratic countries.
- Conspiracy theorists of every flavor rely on this trope. You may or may not have heard them rambling on about how the president is fixin' to declare martial law and put us all in concentration camps any minute now - which is a rehash of exactly what they claimed the last president would do. Likewise, those worked up about an ancient prophecy of doom in 2012 would do well to remember the last time an ancient civilization "predicted" global catastrophe - remember when Planet X was gonna fly by and cause catastrophic devastation in 2003?
- Not to mention all those Ancient Prophecies of Doom that were supposed to kick in on 12.00AM January 1st 2000.
- Corrupt televangelist Peter Popoff
 scammed millions of dollars out of viewers claiming he could cause miracles through prayer for anybody who sent him money, using highly deceptive "demonstrations". He was exposed as a fraud, went bankrupt, then managed to get rich again using the exact same scam a decade later.
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