History Main / MissingTime

** Played for BlackComedy when Dean is apparently abducted by a UFO. On his return he's rather annoyed to find Soulless!Sam in bed with a GirlOfTheWeek instead of desperately searching for his missing brother. Sam has to explain that Dean has been gone all night, not just for the past hour as he believes.

* ''Series/{{Once Upon A Time}}'': In the season five premiere "The Dark Swan" the main characters travel to Camelot in order to find Emma in order to free her from the Dark One's power. They find her and promise to save her with Emma, determined not to succumb to the evil inside her, entrusting the Dark One's dagger to Regina in order to allow her to maintain control in case the worst happens. As everyone is led into the castle, [[spoiler:they suddenly wake up back in Storybrooke with no memories from that point on. They find out six weeks have passed and Emma has fully embraced her darkness and regained the dagger, telling everyone else they failed to save her]]. The following episodes show flashbacks detailing what happened during the missing six weeks.

* Oscar of ''Webcomic/WildeLife'' doesn't even realize this has happened to him until somebody [[http://www.wildelifecomic.com/comic/371 points out]] it's not morning any more. It turns out to be [[spoiler:a side effect of exposure to an EnthrallingSiren.]]

* Oscar of Webcomic/WildeLife doesn't even know this has happened to him until somebody points out [[http://www.wildelifecomic.com/comic/371 its not morning any more.]]

* A minor case of this can happen if you walk/travel to school/work and back home every day. While the things you do at school/work and at home are usually not the exact same every day, the walks/travels can easily be extremely similar from day to day. At a point, the walk/travel may be so ingrown of a habit that you some day realize "hey, I thought I only just left my home, but I'm already at work" because you did the travel with pure muscle memory (it is especially likely to happen if it's early morning and you're too tired to pay attention to your surroundings). This is because dissociation, while more commonly understood in the context of trauma, it can also be felt when your brain thinks something is essentially too boring or too mundane to remember.

* This is a common trait of many alleged UFO sightings, with witnesses reporting that several more hours of time passed than they remembered after seeing the object in question. This may lead them to believe that they were possibly [[AlienAbduction captured by the UFO's occupants]] and then [[LaserGuidedAmnesia had their memories of the experience erased]] before being returned to wherever place they found themselves in.
* Missing time can result from much consumption of alcohol, use of drugs, or being under general anesthesia during surgery. The first two probably help explain the point directly above this one.

* A comedic example in ''[[Siren2016 Siren]]'', the group are asked to pay for their [[TheFreakshow night out]] with a memory, they close their eyes, the music swells... and Mr. Nyx cheerfully tells them it's done. Later, it's revealed that they were really out of it for a couple of minutes.

* The title character of ''VideoGame/AlanWake'' loses a week after his wife's apparent death, during which [[spoiler:he wrote the manuscript pages he finds around the gameworld, at the prompting of the BigBad, who planns to [[RewritingReality make them come true]].]]

This can happen for many reasons-- [[LaserGuidedAmnesia memory damage]], [[AlienAbduction aliens]], [[TraumaInducedAmnesia trauma]], [[GrandTheftMe posse]][[DemonicPossession ssion]], or [[SplitPersonality multiple personalities]], just to name a few.

[[folder:Others]]
* This is a common trait of UFO accounts.

*** Both the [[spoiler:serial killer Genocider Syo]] and [[spoiler: Touko Fukawa]] experience this. Why? Because [[spoiler: they're]] really [[spoiler: the same person with Syo a split personality that appears whenever Fukawa sees blood and faints.]] Poor kid. This becomes a point for a trial late in the game when Naegi realizes that even if [[spoiler: Touko's memories of what happened to the world are gone, Syo might still know]].
*** This occurred when [[spoiler: Mondo Oowada]] killed [[spoiler: Chihiro]], even though they immediately knew what they had done from the body lying on the floor at their feet.
** In ''VisualNovel/NewDanganronpaV3'', the fourth chapter had everyone enter a virtual world. [[spoiler: Gonta Gokuhara]] ended up mixing up two wires they had to plug into their headset prior to logging in, and so experienced this when everyone logged out after [[spoiler: Miu Iruma]] was killed, having no memory of anything that happened while in the virtual world. They're very confused afterwards, especially when [[spoiler: Kokichi Ouma eventually reveals during the fourth trial that Gonta was the one who murdered Miu.]]

* In ''VisualNovel/DanganRonpa'' both the [[spoiler:serial killer Genocider Syo]] and [[spoiler: Touko Fukawa]] experience this. Why? Because [[spoiler: they're]] really [[spoiler: the same person with Syo a split personality that appears whenever Fukawa sees blood and faints.]] Poor kid. This becomes a point for a trial late in the game when Naegi realizes that even if [[spoiler: Touko's memories of what happened to the world are gone, Syo might still know]].
** This occurred when [[spoiler: Mondo Oowada]] killed [[spoiler: Chihiro]], even though they immediately knew what they had done from the body lying on the floor at their feet.
* In ''VisualNovel/NewDanganronpaV3'', the fourth chapter had everyone enter a virtual world. [[spoiler: Gonta Gokuhara]] ended up mixing up two wires they had to plug into their headset prior to logging in, and so experienced this when everyone logged out after [[spoiler: Miu Iruma]] was killed, having no memory of anything that happened while in the virtual world. They're very confused afterwards, especially when [[spoiler: Kokichi Ouma eventually reveals during the fourth trial that Gonta was the one who murdered Miu.]]

* A minor case of this can happen if you walk/travel to school/work and back home every day. While the things you do at school/work and at home are usually not the exact same every day, the walks/travels can easily be extremely similar from day to day. At a point, the walk/travel may be so ingrown of a habit that you some day realize "hey, I thought I only just left my home, but I'm already at work" because you did the travel with pure muscle memory (it is especially likely to happen if it's early morning and you're too tired to pay attention to your surroundings).

** This is also a common disadvantage to enjoying hobbies. Once you start focusing on your hobby of choice, you lose your perception of the passing of time. You can't tell if you've been at it for five minutes or five hours until you look at a clock or a window. This is why the user interfaces for a lot of [[=MMORPGs=]] include digital clocks synchronized to your system clock.