History Main / TheFogOfAges

* ''TabletopGame/MummyTheCurse'' averts this: it's not time that induces the fog for a mummy, but various events that have eroded their identity. By discovering evidence of who they used to be, and recognising other people as more than a means to an end, a mummy can regain their identity and memory, until eventually at the highest levels they remember all of their many lives.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'':
** This is shown to be a problem for some Chaos Marines (the oldest of them being over 10,000 years old). The marine uses a special mental ritual to sort through and 'store' any memories from the past year he wants to keep (it turns out [[EvilFeelsGood the only thing he feels worth keeping is killing a Space Marine]]).
** Averted in case of Loyalist Dreadnoughts. Old ones tend to remember the past very well, while they don't have a firm grasp on the present acting somewhat senile.
*** This is because they are only awoken to fight when they're needed. When they're not needed, they get put into a deep coma and sleep for hundreds of years at a time. Thus, they may have "lived" for thousands of years, but they've only been awake for a few years of that time.
* The 'World on Fire' campaign setting from ''Spycraft'' has the Immortals as one faction. They succumb to this--at least, the ones who don't die from 'live fast, die old'.
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''
** In the classic version, the oldest of Immortals don't recall having ever lived as mortal beings. It's implied that they simply can't ''remember'' their mortal lives; Korotiku, for example, speculates that he might have been a planar spider. Note that one of the Immortals who recalls his mortality quite clearly happens to have begun his life as a '''dinosaur''', so the ones who've forgotten must be considerably older than that.
** Some splatbooks say this also happens for Liches. A Lich may be so focused on his eternal pursuit of magical knowledge that it forgets its own mortal life. Sometimes the key to defeating one is learning its mortal name.
** In the TabletopGame/{{Eberron}} setting, the [[MechanicalLifeforms Warforged]] are immortal constructs with souls. They must get their minds periodically wiped so that they do not go insane from an overload of memories. They can, however, vaguely recall their memories in a pinch, such that they can always make an untrained Knowledge roll for the off chance that they dig up information on a subject learned in a "previous life."
* The Sindar (elves) of Hârn suffer from an extreme form of this to the point where they will completely forget friends after a long absence. Often an elf will remember songs and tales of events he took part in but have no memory of the actual events.
* The Soulless in ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Fantasy II''. All of them have been alive for some twenty millennia, but can only clearly remember a small fraction of that, and most don't remember ''anything'' from their earliest times. They even have a name for [[WistfulAmnesia one of the side effects of this]]: ''pytrakzhyjzh'' is "that uncomfortable feeling when you can tell you have some significant past history with another person, but have no idea what ''kind'' of history".
* This is a major game mechanic in ''Thousand-Year-Old Vampre''. The vampire can only hold five Memories, each divided into three Experiences. When the vampire needs to record a sixth Memory, one of the previous five must be struck out, forgotten permanently (unless future events say otherwise). The vampire can get around this by creating a Diary, which can hold up to four Memories... but those Memories are struck from the vampire's mind, and they must trust what is written in the Diary as absolute truth, which it may very well not be. The Diary itself is treated as a Resource, which means it can be lost, stolen, or destroyed, taking its stored Memories with it.

* The earliest known example of this in a video game is ''VideoGame/GloryOfHeraclesIII'', for the [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem Super Famicom]], where the protagonist of the game is an immortal [[AmnesiacHero who suffers from amnesia]]. This plot element is used again in one of the sequels, ''''VideoGame/GloryOfHeraclesDS'', where the protagonist is also an amnesiac immortal.

* The earliest known example of this in a video game is ''VideoGame/GloryOfHeraclesIII'', for the [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem Super Famicom]], where the protagonist of the game is an immortal [[AmnesiacHero who suffers from amnesia]]. This plot element is used again in one of the sequels, ''Glory of Heracles'' for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, where the protagonist is also an amnesiac immortal.

* The earliest known example of this in a video game is ''[[VideoGame/GloryOfHeracles Glory of Heracles III]]'', for the [[UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem Super Famicom]], where the protagonist of the game is an immortal [[AmnesiacHero who suffers from amnesia]]. This plot element is used again in one of the sequels, ''Glory of Heracles'' for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS, where the protagonist is also an amnesiac immortal.

-->"He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it: how to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to."

* ''Film/TheOldGuard'': Andy is so old that she can't remember her own age, or what the members of her family looked like. Even her "real" name, Andromache the Scythian, reflects this. She was already thousands of years old by the time the Scythians entered the historical record in the 8th century [=BC=]. The Scythian era is just the furthest back she can remember.

* ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'': the Nonmen accepted immortality from the Inchoroi, but did not realize that their mortal brains would not be able to handle it. Thousands of years later, they all have a certain level of amnesia. Some of their number, called Erratics, have learned that they can only lock painful memories in their minds, so they go about murdering everyone they hold dear just so they can remember that the people existed at all.
* ''Literature/{{Belgariad}}'': Belgarath the Sorcerer has lived for 7,000 years. He can remember sensations of his mother, but not her face. Nor does he remember exactly which God's peoples he belonged to. This has less to do with his age than the fact that his mother died when he was very young, and he was a callous youth with no interest in his village or their religious practices. Nevertheless, in his biography, he skips over centuries at a time with only a vague description of what he was doing, and of what he does put down in detail his wife and daughter claim [[RashomonStyle he got a lot of it wrong]].
* ''Literature/TheMadnessSeason'' by C.S. Friedman has an [[EnergyBeings energy-based species]] of creatures which are virtually immortal with this problem, and which therefore prefer to live in [[TheSymbiote symbiotic relationship with physically bound creatures]].

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': very old wizards like Dumbledore avoid this by storing important memories in an enchanted chalice called a Pensieve. Which is useful in other ways as well, such as making it possible to [[ExpositionBeam pass those memories on to other people as needed]].

* Creator/TerryPratchett:
** ''Literature/{{Strata}}'': Age appears infinitely extendable, and "memory surgery" prevents brain overload.
** ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
*** In ''Literature/{{Pyramids}}'', the high priest Dios prevented himself from dying by reversing time by sleeping in a pyramid but mentions that the process doesn't preserve memory. Instead, he refers to the written history of the kingdom as his memory. As a result, [[spoiler:he can't escape a millennia-long StableTimeLoop. By the time it comes around again it's a surprise.]]
*** A downplayed example in the Wizards series: It's suggested a couple of times that the reason the seventy-something Dean of Unseen University occasionally acts like a rebellous teenager is because he doesn't remember being a teenager the first time, and vaguely suspects he may have missed out on it altogether.

* ''Literature/{{Accelerando}}'': A point of ''Glasshouse''. Immortality means that humans need to periodically erase their memories to make things more interesting. The protagonist has just done this when the book begins.

* ''Literature/ObservationOnTheSpot'': Explicitly ''averted''. Ectocs have a photographic memory and can easily remember anything that happened centuries ago, with them being made of {{Nanomachines}}. But that's just another reason why [[WhoWantsToLiveForever there's just]] ''[[WhoWantsToLiveForever six]]'' [[WhoWantsToLiveForever of them left]].

* ''Literature/AFireUponTheDeep''. Peregrine Wrickwrackrum, a storyteller among the Tines (a pack of dog-like aliens who form a group mind) claims to have memories from his ancestors going back to the beginning of time but admits that after you go beyond a few hundred years you can't tell the difference between legend and memory.

* Many of the beings from the far future in the novella ''Starplex'' suffer from this. A species known as the Ibs suffers from a related problem--their natural cause of death by old age is that their memories began to overwrite their ''autonomic routines''. In this they are unlike most other sapients, who have problems with their cellular structure such as telomere shortening; the Ibs are noncellular. In fact, the protagonist meets [[spoiler: himself from eons in the future]], who has forgotten [[spoiler: his own middle name]].
* The eponymous character of ''The Vampire Tapestry'' loses his memory each time he passes into hibernation, and speculates that this is a defense mechanism against this trope. [[spoiler: At the end of the book, he realizes it's more likely to be a defense against his becoming emotionally attached to the humans he has to prey upon.]]

* In Creator/AlastairReynolds's ''Literature/HouseOfSuns'', the long-lived protagonists who've lived through ''six million years'' (though, admittedly, only a couple tens of thousands of those conscious) routinely re-arrange their memory. It's implied that they ''could'' hold all of their memories at once, if they wanted to, but having that many memories would affect your personality so drastically that most choose not to. Most of the long-lived characters tend to hold a rough cliff-notes version of their memories in their heads, but not any of the details; the main character intentionally prioritizes "recent" memories, which in part drives the main plot.
* Also by Creator/AlastairReynolds, "Literature/ZimaBlue" focuses in part on Arthur Zima's quest to find out where his obsession with a particular shade of aquamarine comes from.

* Vampires in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' have PhotographicMemory; the catch is that this only applies to memories they form ''after'' becoming vampires. Memories of their human lives are subject to fading. Alice, notably, cannot remember ''anything'' from back when she was human.
* Addressed in the ''Literature/CommonwealthSaga'' by Creator/PeterFHamilton, where rejuv (restores youth) and quick-grown clones (in the event the body actually dies) together make humans functionally immortal. Everyone has a computer core in their brain that among other things records their memories. This core is regularly backed up to a municipal database.
* In the ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' novels, Archmage Eternal Jodah deliberately inflicts a version of this on himself every hundred years or so--storing his memory in a magical mirror, wiping his brain clean, then "reloading" himself. This allows him to keep the memories without the deep emotional attachments--which would cause him to lock up mentally.

* Discussed in Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/LineOfDelirium''. [[TheEmperor Emperor Grey]] wonders how many memories his brain can store. He wonders if anyone ever told him and then supposes it's possible they did and he simply forgot. Since ResurrectiveImmortality is possible for the richest few percent in this world, all memories are recorded (via an implanted SubspaceAnsible) and stored in massive databanks to download into the mind of a newly-cloned body whenever the previous one dies. Grey is one of the early adopters of [=aTan=] (number 89, actually). By the time the novels take place, he is over 200 years old.

* Averted in Creator/FrederikPohl's ''Literature/TheWorldAtTheEndOfTime'', as Wan-To can remember ''all'' its past life [[spoiler:near the end of the book it's its unique pastime living inside a dead star in a moribund Universe. Later, in order to leave that star corpse, must destroy most of its memories as there's no energy to carry all of them]]

* In [[Creator/CarltonMellickIII Carlton Mellick III's]] ''Neverday'', most of humanity is stuck in a GroundhogDayLoop, making memories and knowledge the only thing that's possible to assemble. The protagonist glumly notes that actually, even ''that'' is fleeting, since while you retain your memories between each reset, they all eventually fade over time.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/TheBicentennialMan": The [[ProtagonistTitle main character]] used to be an NDR-model robot, but he doesn't remember which model number. This forgetfulness was deliberate, as he could have remembered, but he was built two centuries ago and he prefers his InSeriesNickname, Andrew Martin.

* ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends'':
** Played straight with Leia - the loss of her homeworld, family, and so many friends is painful decades after the destruction of Alderaan but it's a slowly fading ache. However, it's averted in the case of her friend Winter, who remembers everything that she has learned or experienced over the years. It was said that for Winter the pain of Alderaan's destruction was a fresh wound even decades after the destruction as she remembered every detail of her home and family back on Alderaan.

* ''Wolf Who Rules'', the second book in the ''Literature/{{Tinker}}'' series, makes note that "Elves may live forever, but their memories do not." They have a special ritual they perform where they reflect on particularly important memories - good or bad - to keep them fresh through the ages.

* ''[[Series/{{Highlander}} Highlander: The Series]]'':

* In ''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'', Saito's trusty talking sword Derflinger has existed for over 6,000 years. He's very wise, but he has a lot of gaps in his memory.

* In the ''Manga/{{Bleach}}''[=/=]''LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero'' crossover ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7263810/1/The-Left-Hand-of-the-Death-God The Left Hand of the Death God]]'', Ichigo Kurosaki was betrayed by Soul Society and thrown into a dungeon to rot. By the time Louise inadvertently frees him by summoning him as her familiar, he doesn't remember how long he's been in there (he speculates he could have been imprisoned for decades or even centuries). He cannot remember his friends and loved ones' names, but he remembers their faces and what they were like, referring to Uryu as the Archer, Chad as the Giant, Orihime as the Healer, and Rukia as the Dancer.

* In the second episode of Urban Gothic, vampire Rex (played by Keith-Lee Castle) admits that he can't remember how he became a vampire.

* The Abh touch upon this in ''LightNovel/CrestOfTheStars'' and its sequels. They live for between 200 and 250 years and their genetic engineering technology is such that they can live ''much'' longer. It's not enough to stop The Fog Of Ages setting in though, so their bodies are designed to shut down while their mental faculties are more or less intact.

** In the last episode, Angel asks Harmony if she remembers what it was like being human because he no longer remembers himself.

* In ''Series/TheXFiles'' episode "Tithonus," Scully and Mulder meet a man who became immortal many years ago by accident -- when the Reaper came for him, he managed to look away and the nurse at his bedside was taken instead. He spends his time tailing people he knows are about to die and taking their picture right as they're taken so maybe he can look at the Reaper and finally die himself. When Scully expresses confusion as to why he would want to die when he has infinite time to see the world and gain every piece of knowledge, he tells her that forty years ago he went to the city's public records office to try to find his dead wife's file -- he couldn't remember her name.

** In the episode "World War III" it's a plot point that Nine's memory is so crowded and cluttered he needs help to remember the species the Slitheen come from and their WeaksauceWeakness.
** Also explicitly mentioned in "Silence in the Library" when it takes the Doctor a while to recognize the Vashta Narada.

** At least they remember the important things. In the short "Good Night," Eleven has this to say when Amy comments that his companions are such tiny parts of his life that he must hardly notice them:

** In the Twelfth Doctor's debut episode, he's reminded of the SS ''Madame Du Pompadour'' which was seen way back in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E4TheGirlInTheFireplace The Girl in the Fireplace]]'' where the Doctor met and had a love affair with the real Madame Du Pompadour and had his heart broken by it... except that now 1100 years later, he only remembers the name as something slightly familiar.
** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS35E5TheGirlWhoDied The Girl who Died]]'', the Doctor suddenly pierces through the fog of his fading memories and remembers where he got his face from--[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E2TheFiresOfPompeii a man whose family he once saved 1100 years ago]].

** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E4KnockKnock Knock Knock]]'', the Doctor encounters a woman who was made immortal 60 years ago by her father with the help of extraterrestrial termites. Things quickly don't add up when her elderly father is still alive and not affected with the same condition as her. [[spoiler:It turns that he's actually her son who told her he was her father to explain his age because she could not retain her memory over the years.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries:'' In "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", Ruk is an android who's spent 50,000 years on his own, and has forgotten what happened to the civilization that made him and his kind. A little prodding from Kirk gets him to remember; the androids turned on their creators in self-defense.

* In the ''VideoGame/GalaxyAngel'' gameverse, Moon Goddess Shatoyan has kept herself alive for over six hundred years [[BodyBackupDrive through a complicated cloning process]]. As a result, she has forgotten many of the secrets of the White Moon, including its true purpose in merging with the Black Moon and the existence of the Valfask race.

* An {{immortal|ity}} from ''Anime/GhostSweeperMikami'' who has forgotten [[ImmortalityInducer the formula that made him immortal]], [[RobotGirl how he made his near-invincible robot companion]], and lots of other information simply because of this trope. And no, Dr Chaos, [[PlayedForLaughs 2 + 2 does not equal 5]]...

* According to the fan favourite episode [[MusicalEpisode "Brigadoom"]], the Brunnen-G of ''{{Series/Lexx}}'' suffered pretty heavily from this trope, after retreating behind a nigh-impregnable shield on Brunnis II and cracking the immortality problem. It's implied this contributed to their insular behaviour and eventual downfall.

* Det. Christian Walker, the main character of ''ComicBook/{{Powers}}'', is actually an [[{{Immortality}} immortal]] who's been around since caveman days. He just doesn't remember anything before the early 20th century. His ArchNemesis[=/=]EvilCounterpart who has been around just as long, on the other hand, seems to remember most of it. However, at the final tragic confrontation between the two, Walker demands to know why the nemesis has done the things he's done, and why the two have been fighting all this time. His enemy pauses then admits that he can't remember anymore.

* In ''Videogame/DarkSoulsII'', this is one of the symptoms of the Undead Curse. The longer a person is Undead, the more their memories and sanity fade away. Human Effigies can temporarily halt this, but it still seems inevitable.

** Angels suffer a different version of this from their ResurrectiveImmortality. Each time an angel dies its soul crystallizes in TheVoidBetweenTheWorlds until it is ready to be reborn, a process that lasts for about as long as the angel's last lifetime (as angels are TheAgeless, this means a dead angel can spend a ''long'' time between lives). Each death and rebirth costs an angel about nine tenths or so of their memories and experiences, meaning that by the time an angel has died ten times any memories left of their first life is probably extremely spotty at best. Angels like [[TheLancer 82 White Chain]] remember practically nothing of their origins, though their core personalty remains the same between incarnations.

* ''Film/PalmSprings'': Niles has been stuck in a GroundHogDayLoop for ''years'', possibly decades, and thus is functionally immortal. He honestly has no idea how old he is, having long since given up trying to keep track. When Sarah meets him, he's forgotten certain things about his life before the loop, such as what he did for a living.

** The main character is an amnesiac immortal who's lived for a thousand years; most of his memories are recalled through dreams as the game progresses. It's not a natural side effect of the immortality, though, but rather a case of LaserGuidedAmnesia that makes him more easy to manipulate. According to Creator/ChrisAvellone, Ravel's apparent senility actually stems from the fact that due to her nature and having all of her "branches" (including Mebbeth, Marta and Ei-Veine), she sees across many planes and time periods all at once and she sometimes has trouble distinguishing exactly where or when she is (hence some of the strange dialog--it was meant to be spoken by another one of Ravel's "selves").

* In ''VideoGame/PlanescapeTorment'', this is implied to have happened to Ravel Puzzlewell -- she's certainly not 'all there' when you meet her. As for The Nameless One himself, he is immune to this trope: He ''does'' suffer heavily from memory loss, but it's caused by him repeatedly dying and coming back instead of from living too long.

* So far averted with ''Series/{{Forever}}''. Both Henry and "Adam" seem to still remember everything in their very long lives.

Unless, of course, the immortal character in question records everything in a diary/volume of books or something, but how often does this happen?[[note]]And how long would it take them to reread it all? What if they forgot it again before they finished? What if they forgot that they have a diary in the first place?[[/note]]

* In an early ComicBook/PostCrisis story, [[Characters/DCComicsVandalSavage Vandal Savage]] laments how much advanced medical knowledge (from forgotten civilizations he used to rule) he has lost over the ages. When a modern geneticist hesitates in assisting him with some human testing, he bellows that he has 'forgotten more than you'll ever learn!'

* ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}, although some of this is due to LaserGuidedAmnesia; other explanations have been simply that he can't remember more than a lifetime of stuff he's done, or that it's an unfortunate side effect of his HealingFactor.
* This seems to be affecting the pygmies in ''ComicBook/PocketGod''. When Klik asks Teela when she made her gadgets, she says that she remembers making them, but not when. Kilk admits he's been experiencing similar memory loss as well and thinks it's a side effect of their ResurrectiveImmortality.

* Bernadette of ''ComicBook/DeathVigil'', being thousands of years old, says she doesn't remember her life before the Vigil. She remembers every single one of her friends, however, and cries after their ([[ResurrectedForAJob second]]) death.
* ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'': In ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' Annual #7, Wildfire can remember his exploits with the original Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th Century after 4,500 years. However, with the passage of time, he has forgotten his real name, Drake Burroughs, and most other details of his life. The Legionnaire Membrain helps him to recover his memory through sensory deprivation.
* Comes up tragically in ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989''. The never-dying Hob Gadling is practically the poster child for LivingForeverIsAwesome, but even he acknowledges that his immortality has its drawbacks. Not only does he regularly outlive his spouses and children, but after enough time passes he forgets their habits, their faces, and even their ''names.''
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'': This is an admitted issue for Olympians and other such long lived individuals in volumes [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 1]], [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 2]], [[ComicBook/WonderWoman2006 3]], [[ComicBook/WonderWomanRebirth 5]] and ''ComicBook/WonderWomanOdyssey'', with Mars/Ares and Venus/Aphrodite being mostly nonchalant about it and the fact that they have drastically changed over time and Zeus violently refusing to acknowledge it even when he's lost track of his aspects.

* ComicBook/VandalSavage: In an early post-crisis story, he laments how much advanced medical knowledge (from forgotten civilizations he used to rule) he has lost over the ages. When a modern geneticist hesitates in assisting him with some human testing, he bellows that he has 'forgotten more than you'll ever learn!'

* Comes up tragically in ''ComicBook/TheSandman.'' The never-dying Hob Gadling is practically the poster child for LivingForeverIsAwesome, but even he acknowledges that his immortality has its drawbacks. Not only does he regularly outlive his spouses and children, but after enough time passes he forgets their habits, their faces, and even their ''names.''
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'': This is an admitted issue for Olympians and other such long lived individuals in volumes [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 1]], [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1987 2]], [[ComicBook/WonderWoman2006 3]], [[ComicBook/WonderWomanRebirth 5]] and ''ComicBook/WonderWomanOdyssey'', with Mars/Ares and Venus/Aphrodite being mostly nonchalant about it and the fact that they have drastically changed over time and Zeus violently refusing to acknowledge it even when he's lost track of his aspects.