History Main / MissingTime

-->'''Specter:''' ''(panicked)'' How long have I been out?

TruthInTelevision, black outs, that is alcohol-induced amnesia, have let many people hear great stories about themselves after they woke up in completely different places for decades. Also occurs in those that have Dissociative Identity Disorder, waking up to find themselves in different places then they originally were doing something completely different from what they last recall.

* ''Film/{{Annihilation}}''. After entering the Shimmer, the expedition wakes up with no memory of what happened after they went in. They check their supplies and find several days worth of food missing, indicating that they've lost that much time.

Quite simply-- When a character's life seems to 'jump'. They are at work and then suddenly they are at home (or perhaps even right in the middle of some really weird, inexplicable, and/or disturbing event), with no memories of what happened in between and no context for what they currently doing. Sometimes the memories will come back in the form of {{flashback}}s. In essence, this is basically when a JumpCut is treated as [[InUniverse a diegetic event]].

* ''Film/InLikeFlint''. While playing golf with the U.S. President, Z.O.W.I.E. chief Lloyd Cramden uses his stopwatch to time the President's golf swing. When he checks the watch, he finds that the swing took 3 minutes. His investigation of the missing 3 minutes leads to the discovery of a plan to take control of the minds of women all over the world and put a nuclear sword of Damocles in orbit around the Earth.
* In ''Film/{{Inception}}'', this is one of the signs you're in a dream: you can't remember how you got into a particular situation.
** If you're having a [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream lucid dream]] in RealLife, this is actually a valid method to verify you're dreaming.

* This happens to Eddie in ''Film/{{Limitless}}'' when he starts taking too much NZT.

* Suffered by Dave at one point in ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd''.

* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's novella "Literature/TheUnpleasantProfessionOfJonathanHoag": The title character experiences missing time every time he goes to work -- everything between leaving home in the morning and returning in the evening is a blank. He hires a private detective to find out what it is he actually does.

* In ''Series/{{Medium}}'' Alison is possessed by a ghost which causes her to not have any memories while the ghost is in control.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E8FutureImperfect Future Imperfect]]", Riker gets infected by an amnesia-inducing virus and comes to 16 '''years''' later with no memory of the previous decade and a half, during which time he's become captain of the ''Enterprise'', married, and had a son. [[spoiler:Subverted when this turns out to be a FakedRipVanWinkle orchestrated by a lonely alien boy.]]
** Happens a few other times on TNG (at least!). In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms Schisms]]", Riker and others are sedated at night, pulled into an alternate dimension, operated on, and returned before morning, causing them to wonder where the night went, and why they're so tired. Happened to Data as well during the day, which helped the crew realize something was wrong -- as an android, it should be impossible for him to lose track of time.
** Happens ''again'' to the Crew of the Enterprise-D in ''Clues'', they find that a whole day seems to be missing and Data is acting very strangely and disobeying orders.
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise''. The crew rescue Rajiin, an alien being kept as a SexSlave. She tries to [[RescueSex show her gratitude]] to the captain, only for this trope to happen instead. Turns out [[DecoyDamsel she's actually a spy]] who can physically scan a person, then remove memories of her doing this.

* Happens to Fred Ade-Williams in Season 4 of ''Series/{{Tinsel}}''.
* ''Series/{{Treadstone}}''. CIA agent John Bentley is captured by the KGB and subjected to brainwashing, but escapes. He's annoyed to be told that the CIA have told his mother that he's dead, as he was only in KGB hands for a week. His colleague informs him he was captured ''nine months ago''.

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* ''Franchise/{{Danganronpa}}'':
** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'':
*** Both the [[spoiler:serial killer Genocide Jack]] and [[spoiler:their split personality Toko Fukawa]] experience this. Poor kid. This becomes a plot point for the last trial, when Makoto realizes that even if [[spoiler:Toko's memories of what happened to the world are gone, Jack might still know]].
*** This occurred when [[spoiler: Mondo]] killed [[spoiler:Chihiro]], even though they immediately knew what they had done from the body lying on the floor at their feet.
** In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'', 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 Oma eventually reveals during the fourth trial that Gonta murdered Miu.]]
* In ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', ''Heaven's Feel'' route, Shirou starts suffering this after [[spoiler:unsealing Archer's arm]].
[[/folder]]

* ''Webcomic/ExterminatusNow'' ask an important question, [[http://exterminatusnow.comicgenesis.com/d/20040917.html How did we get into space?]]

* [[http://wapsisquare.com/comic/morning-to-night/ this]] strip of ''Webcomic/WapsiSquare'' describes an incident where Shelly lost an entire day due to some strange dolls belonging to her mother.

* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': In Chapter 4, Yuma comes across a phrase called "The Blank Week Mystery" that's related to Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret, where everyone in Kanai Ward woke up one day mysteriously missing a week of time, and several people had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The cause? [[spoiler:Everyone in Kanai Ward was [[KillAndReplace killed and replaced]] by their [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculus]] clone. The homunculi are defective, and go into a berserk frenzy when exposed to sunlight. In this frenzied state, they broke out of the facility where they were created and slaughtered their way across the city until Makoto created the rain cloud machine to block out the sun, restoring their sanity. The homunculi had no memory of their creation or rampage, and only had the memories of their human counterparts up to the point of DNA sampling, which was a week ago. As such, [[TomatoInTheMirror they thought they were the humans they replaced]], and just picked up their lives where they left off, thoroughly confused by how they all seemingly fell asleep for a whole week. The people who "disappeared" were those who refused to participate in the mandatory city-wide "blood test" that was used as a pretext to get everyone's DNA. They were presumably killed along with everyone else, but had no homunculus to replace them]].

* In ''Film/{{Inception}}'', this is one of the signs you're in a dream: you can't remember how you got into a particular situation.
** If you're having a [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream lucid dream]] in RealLife, this is actually a valid method to verify you're dreaming.

* Adam Sandler's ''Film/{{Click}}'' had this happen when the main character used his magic remote to "fast forward" himself past things he didn't like. He got put on autopilot while he did so.

* Aaron Stampler in ''Film/PrimalFear'' mentions that he "loses" time over his childhood. [[spoiler: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]].]]

* This is something that the title character must deal with in the domestic drama ''Film/RegardingHenry'', starring Creator/HarrisonFord. When Henry [[TisOnlyABulletInTheBrain survives a gunshot wound to the head]], the resulting pinched artery affects his memory. Cue the rest of the movie depicting him [[QuestForIdentity coming to terms]] with [[LossOfIdentity not remembering anything]] about his life before the [[TraumaInducedAmnesia shot]].

* ''Film/{{Annihilation}}''. After entering the Shimmer, the expedition wakes up with no memory of what happened after they went in. They check their supplies and find several days worth of food missing, indicating that they've lost that much time.

* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's novella "Literature/TheUnpleasantProfessionOfJonathanHoag": The title character experiences missing time every time he goes to work -- everything between leaving home in the morning and returning in the evening is a blank. He hires a private detective to find out what it is he actually does.
* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', Mat Cauthon stumbles into a town that has been inexplicably cursed with a very specific form of societal breakdown: everyone loses control over himself at sundown, kills other people and is killed, then wakes up in his bed with no memory of what just happened. Every. Single. Night. When people try to leave, or kill themselves, they just wake up in bed the next morning.

* ''Under the Volcano'' is a stream-of-consciousness novel from the point of view of several characters. One of them is a severely sodden alcoholic, and his sections contain much confusion and some unexpected leaps in time.

* One of the first things that clues the protagonists of ''Literature/FalseMemory'' off that something's wrong is small episodes of missing time. Eventually, they figure out [[spoiler:that time was used by their psychiatrist to brainwash them, implanting phobias and using them as toys and tools]].
* ''Literature/BoneDance'' starts the plot with its protagonist, Sparrow, coming up from the latest of several inexplicable episodes of missing time. It eventually develops that [[spoiler: one of a group of legendary {{Body Snatcher}}s known as the Horsemen has been taking Sparrow's body for a ride]].
* William Prior of ''Literature/TheRegenerationTrilogy'' spends part of the second volume suffering from [[ShellShockedVeteran PTSD-induced]] memory loss that's developing into borderline [[SplitPersonality Dissociative Identity Disorder.]] One of the few fictional works to address the fact just how absolutely terrifying this must be from the sufferer's perspective.
* Suffered by Dave at one point in ''Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd''.
* In ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'', Tash once hits her head. Her memory of the past hour or so becomes blurry, so she has some doubt about her real identity.
* ''Fear'', the pulp horror story by Creator/LRonHubbard starts with a professor who realises he's missing both his hat and memories of the past four hours. Despite warnings he investigates; [[GoMadFromTheRevelation it doesn't end well for him]].
* ''Literature/FelineTherapy'' has focal character Izzy transformed into a cat on their birthday, and [[TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody unwilling]] to immediately return to normal. When their humanity is eventually regained, and memories of their transformation are foggy, they are informed that [[spoiler:an entire year]] has passed.
* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'': In the ''Literature/XWingSeries'' novel "The Krytos Trap" Corran Horn finds out he had been in Imperial custody for six standard weeks. Up until he finds out from computer records when the Imperials captured him, Corran is unsure of how much time had passed due to all the drugs, torture, and psychological manipulation Ysanne Isard subjected him to.

* In ''Series/{{Medium}}'' Alison is possessed by a ghost which causes her to not have any memories while the ghost is in control.

* Sometimes happens in association with [=UFOs=] and other phenomena in ''Series/TheXFiles''. In the first episode, Mulder is ecstatic when he and Scully lose nine minutes while investigating alien abductions.
* Happens to Sharon Valerii onboard the ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'', when her Cylon programming kicks in, leading to her sabotage the ship's water tanks without realising it.
* Happens to Dr. Brennan on ''Series/{{Bones}}'', after she gets attacked by a criminal of the week and framed for murder. She believes it's some sort of mental effect naturally, while Booth thinks it's voodoo at work.
* Happens to Fred Ade-Williams in Season 4 of ''Series/{{Tinsel}}''.

* In ''Series/{{Hannibal}}'', Will Grahams starts losing time as his mental health deteriorates. He's even more disturbed to discover that during these periods he acts so much like he normally does that an entire team of experienced FBI workers didn't notice anything wrong the first time. [[spoiler: It turns out the real reason is physical neurological damage due to encephalitis, but Hannibal makes him believe it's purely psychological]].
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}''

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** Happens to Donna in "Forest of the Dead" while she's stuck in a virtual reality. Though in her case, time really DOES jump: she experiences the cuts between different locations, and people just tell her that it's her memory playing tricks.
** Unexplained skips are a frequently clue that a character has suffered memory alteration of some sort. It's particularly noticeable in Season 6 of the new series, when the Doctor and companions face off against the Silents, beings that erase your memory of them the instant you are no longer looking at them. This is played for copious ParanoiaFuel toward the end of the season, with characters abruptly realizing that they've moved, or fought, with no memory of having done so.

* ''Series/OnceUponATime'' does this a few times thanks in part to several castings of the Dark Curse, which are often laced with LaserGuidedAmnesia.
** The second half of Season 3 is built around this premise, with a second Dark Curse cast with the main cast having no idea what happened during the year they were back in the Enchanted Forest. The flashback B-plots often fill in what happened during this missing year before the endgame of the season reveals that [[spoiler:Snow White cast the Dark Curse in order to reach Emma, but the ArcVillain threw in a forgetting potion to ensure they don't try to reach her in 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.
* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S6E11InnerChild Inner Child]]", Anne Marie Reynolds loses several hours whenever the personality of her {{conjoined twin|s}} Marie, who died in the womb and was absorbed into her, takes control of her body. Marie's personality is contained in a second brain growing on her sister's spine.
* ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'': Kyle is so afflicted in Season Two.
** In "Weight of the World", he goes to a fraternity party and has a few beers. The next thing that he knows, he is outside of a store with a broken window several hours later. He is promptly arrested but Tom "plays the NTAC card" and he is released.
** In "Suffer the Children", he experiences another blackout while on campus with Danny and suddenly finds himself in his kitchen pouring a glass of orange juice. He ignores the advice of both Danny and his English professor Wendy Paulson to tell Tom what is happening to him as he does not want to spend any more time in quarantine.
** In "As Fate Would Have It", he attends a concert with Danny. In the middle of it, he has another blackout. He finds himself digging a hole. After yet another blackout, he is in the corridor outside Wendy's apartment. She is unsurprisingly creeped out by his presence. When he tries to explain what happened the next day, Wendy advises him to seek professional help. [[spoiler: In the final scene, Kyle throws a gun into a lake, revealing that he is the assassin of Jordan Collier.]] At the end of "Carrier", Kyle recovers all of his previously missing memories.
* ''Series/{{Taken}}'': Every time that someone is abducted by the aliens, they are returned to Earth hours or even days later with little to no memory of anything that happened in the meantime. However, some of them have vague impressions of what happened to them aboard the ships or have their memories recovered by hypnotherapy. Their stories give rise to all of the urban legends about AlienAbduction.
* ''Series/{{Treadstone}}''. CIA agent John Bentley is captured by the KGB and subjected to brainwashing, but escapes. He's annoyed to be told that the CIA have told his mother that he's dead, as he was only in KGB hands for a week. His colleague informs him he was captured ''nine months ago''.
* ''Series/{{Moon Knight|2022}}'': The first episode makes heavy use of this, as Steven Grant suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, and often loses several minutes - or even hours - when [[SplitPersonalityTakeover Marc Spector takes over]]. Every time Steven 'skips' forward, he's utterly terrified (it probably doesn't help that the skips seen tend to involve him being attacked by [[KnightTemplar Harrow]]'s cultists).
* In ''Series/QuantumLeap'' and its SequelSeries, ''Series/QuantumLeap2022'', this is apparently how leapees feel after they return from when a leaper had taken over. This is only really shown once in the original show, but in the second series it actually becomes a plot point in one episode.

* In the prologue of ''VideoGame/HeavyRain'', Ethan Mars suffers a head injury in a desperate (and unsuccessful) bid to save his son Jason from being hit by a car. This causes him to start having random blackouts that last for several hours at a time. The plot kick-starts when he awakes from one such blackout with an origami figure in his hand, and his other son Shaun nowhere to be found.
* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': In Chapter 4, Yuma comes across a phrase called "The Blank Week Mystery" that's related to Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret, where everyone in Kanai Ward woke up one day mysteriously missing a week of time, and several people had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The cause? [[spoiler:Everyone in Kanai Ward was [[KillAndReplace killed and replaced]] by their [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculus]] clone. The homunculi are defective, and go into a berserk frenzy when exposed to sunlight. In this frenzied state, they broke out of the facility where they were created and slaughtered their way across the city until Makoto created the rain cloud machine to block out the sun, restoring their sanity. The homunculi had no memory of their creation or rampage, and only had the memories of their human counterparts up to the point of DNA sampling, which was a week ago. As such, [[TomatoInTheMirror they thought they were the humans they replaced]], and just picked up their lives where they left off, thoroughly confused by how they all seemingly fell asleep for a whole week. The people who "disappeared" were those who refused to participate in the mandatory city-wide "blood test" that was used as a pretext to get everyone's DNA. They were presumably killed along with everyone else, but had no homunculus to replace them]].
* ''VideoGame/TheLionsSong'': After Franz paints his models, he always blacks out afterwards and reawakens in his studio, late in the night, with no memory of what happened. [[spoiler: After visiting [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Sigmund Freud]], he discovers that he has been painting himself during his blackouts.]]

* ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'''s [[UpliftedAnimal Florence Ambrose]] winds up missing a large chunk of a day's memories thanks to [[LaserGuidedAmnesia a chemical that inhibits the transfer of short term memories to long term storage]], during a trip to Ecosystems Unlimited.
* ''Webcomic/WildeLife'': Oscar 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 a siren]].

* This happens quite frequently to the characters of WebVideo/MarbleHornets when they are exposed to elements of the supernatural. Most notable are Jay, who [[spoiler:loses seven months of his memory after running at the Operator]]; Jessica, who [[spoiler:also loses her memory around the same time as Jay]]; and Tim, who [[spoiler:frequently wakes up in unknown places with huge gaps in his memory as a result of his masked persona taking over]]. The other members of the ''Marble Hornets'' cast also get this, to varying degrees.
* Happens in ''Literature/{{Brennus}}'' to [[spoiler: the main character and his sister]]. Doesn't help that they forget that they've forgotten things, and need someone to talk about what they were doing to even realize they don't remember it.
* In ''Literature/{{Pact}}'', [[spoiler: Duncan Behaim]] uses this on Blake, resulting in a [[PaintingTheMedium "missing" chapter with just a redirect to the next one.]]

* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': In Chapter 4, Yuma comes across a phrase called "The Blank Week Mystery" that's related to Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret, where everyone in Kanai Ward woke up one day mysteriously missing a week of time, and several people had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The cause? [[spoiler:Everyone in Kanai Ward was [[KillAndReplace killed and replaced]] by their [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculus]] clone. The homunculi are defective, and go into a berserk frenzy when exposed to sunlight. In this frenzied state, they broke out of the facility where they were created and slaughtered their way across the city until Makoto created the rain cloud machine to block out the sun, restoring their sanity. The homunculi had no memory of their creation or rampage, and only had the memories of their human counterparts up to the point of DNA sampling, which was a week ago. As such, [[TomatoInTheMirror they thought they were the humans they replaced]], and just picked up their lives where they left off, thoroughly confused by how they all seemingly fell asleep for a whole week. The people who "disappeared" were those who refused to participate in the mandatory city-wide "blood test" that was used as a pretext to get everyone's DNA. They were killed along with everyone else, but had no homunculus to replace them]].

* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': In Chapter 4, Yuma comes across a phrase called "The Blank Week Mystery" that's related to Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret, where everyone in Kanai Ward woke up one day mysteriously missing a week of time, and several people had mysteriously disappeared without a trace. The cause? [[spoiler:Everyone in town was [[KillAndReplace killed and replaced]] by their [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculus]] doppelganger. The homunculi are defective, and go into a berserk frenzy when exposed to sunlight, breaking out of the facility where they were created and slaughtering their way across the city. Makoto then created the raincloud machine to block out the sun, which caused them to snap out of their berserk state. The homunculi had no memory of their creation or rampage, and only had the memories of their human counterparts up to the point of DNA sampling, which was a week ago. [[TomatoInTheMirror Believing themselves to be the originals]], they just picked up their lives where they left off, confused by how they all seemingly fell asleep for a whole week, and deciding to [[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain never speak of it again]]. The people who "disappeared" were those who refused to take part in the mandatory city-wide "blood test". They were killed along with everyone else, but had no homunculus to replace them]].

* ''VideoGame/MasterDetectiveArchivesRainCode'': In Chapter 4, Yuma comes across a phrase called "The Blank Week Mystery" that's related to Kanai Ward's ultimate secret. [[spoiler:Kurumi later explains that everyone in the city had a moment where they woke up and found out a whole week had passed without any recollection, which made it taboo to even discuss. Yuma discovers TheReveal in that everyone in the city was killed and replaced by a [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent homunculus copy]] of themselves during that interval]].

Quite simply-- When a character's life seems to 'jump'. They are at work and then suddenly they are at home, with no memories of what happened in between. Sometimes the memories will come back in the form of {{flashback}}s. In essence, this is basically when a JumpCut is treated as [[InUniverse a diegetic event]].

* In ''Franchise/LupinIII: Sweet Lost Night'',[[note]](Maho no Lamp wa Akumu no Yokan)[[/note]] Lupin loses 12 hours, waking up in the middle of a busy street, with ''[[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Fujiko]]'' complaining that ''he'' betrayed ''her''. Half of the movie deals with Lupin trying to figure out what had happened in these twelve hours, and what to do if it happens again.
* ''Anime/YuGiOh'': It is implied that this happens to Bakura whenever he gets possessed by his dark side. It's very obvious that this is the case when Yami Bakura suddenly relinquishes control during his duel with Yugi in the second season. Poor Bakura is completely bewildered, having suddenly woken up on top of a blimp with a bleeding arm, with apparently no idea how he got there and why. Also, this happened to Yugi during the early volumes of the manga whenever he got possessed by the puzzle.
* In ''Manga/{{Trigun}}'', Vash the Stampede has a bit of a problem with this whenever his more high-level powers get unlocked, until he learns to do it on purpose. Since both this incidents involve psychic powers being used to make him ''blow up a city with his right arm'', which transforms into a {{BFG}} for the purpose, it's unclear whether the cause of these gaps is the psychic trauma, the emotional trauma, or the physiological trauma. Or the combination.

* 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 plans to [[RewritingReality make them come true]].]]
* In the prologue of ''VideoGame/HeavyRain'', Ethan Mars suffers a head injury in a desperate (and unsuccessful) bid to save his son Jason from being hit by a car. This causes him to start having random blackouts that last for several hours at a time. The plot kick-starts when he awakes from one such blackout with an origami figure in his hand, and his other son Shaun nowhere to be found...
* ''{{Franchise/Danganronpa}}'':
** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaTriggerHappyHavoc'':
*** Both the [[spoiler:serial killer Genocide Jack]] and [[spoiler:their split personality Toko Fukawa]] experience this. Poor kid. This becomes a plot point for the last trial, when Makoto realizes that even if [[spoiler:Toko's memories of what happened to the world are gone, Jack might still know]].
*** This occurred when [[spoiler: Mondo]] killed [[spoiler: Chihiro]], even though they immediately knew what they had done from the body lying on the floor at their feet.
** In ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'', 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 Oma eventually reveals during the fourth trial that Gonta murdered Miu.]]
* Portrayed from the perspective of [[GhostIntheMachine Prophet]] in the ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'' interquel novel, ''Escalation''. This novel establishes that [[spoiler: Alcatraz, the PlayerCharacter of ''Crysis 2'' was effectively brain-dead at the end of his game, with the suit's backup of his personality becoming corrupted. Nonetheless, he remained partially in control even after the [[GrandTheftMe suit tried to integrate it's backup of Prophet]], causing Prophet to black out periodically and wake up in places significant to Alcatraz's past.]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* 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, can also be felt when your brain thinks something is essentially too boring or too mundane to remember.

Quite simply-- When a character's life seems to 'jump'. They are at work and then suddenly they are at home, with no memories of what happened in between. Sometimes the memories will come back in the form of {{flashback}}s. In essence, this is basically when a JumpCut is treated as a diegetic event.

Quite simply-- When a character's life seems to 'jump'. They are at work and then suddenly they are at home, with no memories of what happened in between. Sometimes the memories will come back in the form of {{flashback}}s.

* ''LightNovel/FelineTherapy'' has focal character Izzy transformed into a cat on their birthday, and [[TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody unwilling]] to immediately return to normal. When their humanity is eventually regained, and memories of their transformation are foggy, they are informed that [[spoiler:an entire year]] has passed.

* ''Series/{{Once Upon A Time}}'' does this a few times thanks in part to several castings of the Dark Curse, which are often laced with LaserGuidedAmnesia.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'': In "Inner Child", Anne Marie Reynolds loses several hours whenever the personality of her [[ConjoinedTwins Conjoined Twin]] Marie, who died in the womb and was absorbed into her, takes control of her body. Marie's personality is contained in a second brain growing on her sister's spine.

** If you're having a [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream lucid dream]] in RealLife, this is actually a [[AluminumChristmasTrees valid method]] to verify you're dreaming.

** Happens a few other times on TNG (at least!). In the episode "[[StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E5Schisms Schisms]]", Riker and others are sedated at night, pulled into an alternate dimension, operated on, and returned before morning, causing them to wonder where the night went, and why they're so tired. Happened to Data as well during the day, which helped the crew realize something was wrong -- as an android, it should be impossible for him to lose track of time.

** In an episode, Riker gets infected by an amnesia-inducing virus and comes to 16 '''years''' later with no memory of the previous decade and a half, during which time he's become captain of the ''Enterprise'', married, and had a son. [[spoiler:Subverted when this turns out to be a FakedRipVanWinkle orchestrated by a lonely alien boy.]]
** Happens a few other times on TNG (at least!). Once, Riker and others are sedated at night, pulled into an alternate dimension, operated on, and returned before morning, causing them to wonder where the night went, and why they're so tired. Happened to Data as well during the day, which helped the crew realize something was wrong -- as an android, it should be impossible for him to lose track of time.

* It's implied that this happens to Bakura in ''Anime/YuGiOh'' whenever he gets possessed by his dark side. It's very obvious that this is the case when Yami Bakura suddenly relinquishes control during his duel with Yugi in the second season. Poor Bakura is completely bewildered, having suddenly woken up on top of a blimp with a bleeding arm, with apparently no idea how he got there and why. Also, this happened to Yugi during the early volumes of the manga whenever he got possessed by the puzzle.

* In ''Comicbook/AnimalMan'' #19, the title character, as he gradually approaches MediumAwareness, wonders why his life seems so episodic and fragmentary:

* The only evidence of the ComicBook/SecretWars2015 is that everyone is missing [[ArcNumber eight]] months of time.

* In ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'', Tash once hits her head. Her memory of the past hour or so becomes blurry, so she has some doubt about if she's a TomatoInTheMirror.

[[folder:Fan Works]

[[folder:Comics]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* Dave in ''{{Fanfic/Brainbent}}'' experiences this, and in one particularly frightening instance cuts his hand while home alone and then loses time, meaning he could have bled to death and not even known it.

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]