But For Me It Was Tuesday / Video Games

He should, this trope was named after that death.

Safalaan Hallow: You murdered my parents!
Lowerniel Drakan: I have killed many parents, boy. Many children too. I don't remember them; I won't remember you.

— Runescape^note Though upon being told said boy's true identity, he does actually remember his parents.

---

• Ace Attorney:
  • Manfred von Karma apparently has so little regard for his opponents that he doesn't even recognize Phoenix when he sees him outside of court, though it’s possible that he was just saying that to be a dick.
    von Karma: I beg your pardon, you see, I rarely remember defense attorneys. They are like bugs to me. Needless things, to be crushed.
  • The same game contains an actual positive example of this as well: Phoenix was set on his path to becoming a lawyer when Edgeworth rose to his defense in a class trial. To Phoenix, who was feeling abandoned and bullied by his classmates and even the teacher, it made a huge impression and changed the course of his life — but the end of the game reveals that years down the road, Edgeworth barely remembers that it happened.
  • Played for Laughs in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. The series' long-suffering prosecutor Butt-Monkey, Winston Payne, evidently considers himself something of a mentor to Edgeworth and waxes philosophical about all the knowledge he's shared; Edgeworth has no idea who he is. When he speaks to Payne in a hallway of the prosecutor's office, Edgeworth doesn't recognize him and, later, when Gumshoe brings up Payne by name, Edgeworth mistakenly assumes he's the building's janitor.
  • The protagonists' interactions with Winston Payne and his brother Gaspen in general can be seen as this. For instance, Winston apparently sees Phoenix as his "long-standing rival", and Gaspen tries to get Phoenix executed as revenge for losing to him. Phoenix thinks very little of them and often forgets their names.
• Towards the beginning of Arc the Lad, the title character has the following exchange with the villain:
  Arc: You're the one that killed my father!
  Ark Ghoul: I have killed many, and your father may have been among them. But if I did slay him, his death was so unremarkable that I have no memory of it.
• In Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Bautista has an interesting way of saying this.
  Bautista: Let me guess. I killed your father, yes? Well I feel just terrible.
  Fiona: You know what you did!
  Bautista: Your mother, then. Would it help if I assured you, she died with a smile on her face?
  Fiona: You know what you did! You took me!
  Bautista: Ah yes, now that sounds like something I would do... I have killed many fathers and mothers. Taken many children. Faced down many little girls and little boys with guns pointing at me, screaming for revenge. And I tell each and every one of them the same thing: I. Don't. Remember. You.
• In Arknights the Diabolic Crisis is the defining event in the backstory for Silence, Ifrit, and Saria, and the project and its failure was such a big deal that it involved cover-ups and government conspiracies on multiple levels. It also resulted in Saria resigning her position as Director of Defense at Rhine Labs, the company she co-founded with Kirsten Wright, her childhood friend who she spent her entire life working with and protecting, going so far as physically attacking her to try to make her point that the experiment was far past the ethical horizon. When Saria actually confronts Kirsten in the Dorothy’s Vision event, however, accusing her of turning a blind eye towards her company's unethical experiments like she did all those years ago, Kirsten genuinely does not remember what experiment she is referencing.
  • The Records of Originium - Rhine Lab manhua shows the details of the Diabolic Crisis and answers the question of how Silence managed to smuggle Ifrit out of Rhine Labs. She simply went to Kirsten and requested permission – Kirsten had so little interest that she signed the papers before Silence got more than a sentence into her explanation so she could get back to her personal experiments. It’s implied that she is rubberstamping every request that get to her desk from the various departments in Rhine Lab.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Perhaps unintentionally, Assassin's Creed implies that this is Altaïr's attitude toward killing Templars. The synch bar increases as Desmond grows closer to Altaïr by doing things that Altaïr remembers doing. However, it does not increase if he kills a Templar, nor even if he kills all sixty of them. In other words, Altaïr may have killed every single Templar in the Holy Land, and he doesn't even remember it. Just another day at the office.
  • In a more traditional example, during Assassin's Creed III, Charles Lee sees Connor several times before realising he's the young Mohawk boy whose village he attacked a decade before.
  • Berenike AKA The Crocodile from Assassin's Creed Origins drowned dozens of people and doesn't even remember how many or even bothers remembering their names. Bayek calls her out for it after she kills the daughter of one of his allies.
• Prosecutor Severin Cocorico of Aviary Attorney used to be laser-focused on punishing criminals before undergoing Character Development and softening, becoming more concerned with justice than with punishment or "winning". But he had been harsh for years. Confronted by the daughter of a homeless man who'd stolen food to feed her and then died in prison, he cannot remember her father or that case at all.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • A heroic subversion occurs in Baldur's Gate II when Jaheira is confronted by a former slaver who was exposed and imprisoned as a result of her actions. He gets more and more angry when she seems not to remember who he was, but it's actually just an act on her part as she wanted everybody around him to hear his "confession."
  • In Baldur's Gate III, when Barbarian Hero Karlach confronts her Smug Snake Arch-Enemy Lord Gortash, he greets her as an old friend and completely ignores the fact that he betrayed her and ruined her life a decade ago. When she angrily calls him out for this, he has the gall to act taken aback and claims he did her a favor, even going so far as to call her a Spoiled Brat when she lashes out at him.
• Bang Shishigami is the universal Butt-Monkey among the whole cast in BlazBlue. Nobody takes him seriously except for his friends, and even then it's not his combat prowess that gets recognized. Bang has a serious grudge against Jin Kisaragi for killing his mentor in the last war. Jin gives him this treatment because he was just carrying out orders, and because... well... it's Bang Shishigami...
• Zelos from Blazing Souls has a huge curriculum as a hitman. He doesn't make any habit of keeping his targets' names or appearance, being only focused on his job. It never occurred to him that any of his targets might have a family, or even that one of their relatives would want to get even on him. Such is Adelle's case, whose parents were killed by him in an open marketplace over ten years earlier.
• Bug Fables: The Wasp King is so obsessed with being seen as an almighty ruler who is far above the "lowly" inhabitants of Bugaria that he does this preemptively. When Team Snakemouth confront him during his invasion of the Ant Kingdom, the first thing he does is demand that they not bother telling him their names as "I'll forget soon after I get rid of you."
• C14 Dating: Hendrik, the summer class' youngest teacher, and Kyler, one of the students, don't get along well. Choosing the right options during the game will reveal that this is because of a four year old incident caused by Hendrik not sharing information with a third party, resulting in Hendrik's uncle, who also had Hendrik on a trial period at the time, getting the idea that Kyler was ignorantly assuming a fact that Hendrik had already confirmed. The uncle's response was to give Kyler an angry public lecture, while Hendrik didn't step in because he knew his uncle doesn't like being proven wrong in the middle of a lecture and he really wanted the job he was trying out for. Because of the latter, Hendrik couldn't set things straight during the incident itself. This trope is what kept Hendrik from setting things straight later. For the uncle, giving such lectures is so routine that by the time the reason Hendrik didn't step in during the incident itself went away, he knew the third party had probably forgotten it had even happened.
• In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate, Trevor Belmont vows to slay Dracula to avenge his mother's murder. Dracula taunts Trevor, declaring that he's killed many people, and that he doesn't know Trevor's mother. What Dracula doesn't know is that Trevor is actually his and Marie's son. Dracula only learns the truth from the Mirror of Fate after he has already fatally impaled Trevor with his own Combat Cross.
• Chocobo's Dungeon 2 inverted this trope. A Guz is a common enemy in the first dungeon and one of the weakest types of enemy in the game. At the very end of the first dungeon, the character Mog shoos a Guz away from a crystal that Mog wanted as treasure without a second thought. It is revealed late in the game that the main antagonist is actually this Guz. It was so upset always being bullied by all the stronger monsters, and then by Mog, that it wished to the crystal to be strong enough that it'll no longer be bullied by anyone again.
• In Crash Twinsanity, when confronted by Aku Aku and Uka Uka about why the Evil Twins are destroying the island and seem to have a personal vendetta against him, Cortex replies "I've ruined the lives of so many, I can't be expected to remember them all."
• Towards the end of Custom Robo Arena, Eddy confronts Dr. Mars/Scythe in a You Killed My Father moment. Scythe doesn't remember, saying he can't possibly remember all of Greybaum's operations.
• An implied heroic example in Devil May Cry 4 regarding Dante. While the protagonist Nero is struggling and fighting for his life against the religion he fought for, struggling with his humanity, forced to fight his adopted brother who later dies trying (and failing) to save him, and having the city he lives in destroyed by demons, for Dante nothing really happens, it's just another job. The only real significance the event has for him is that he meets his nephew, Nero, and gives him the Yamato. He's just there to get paid and have a good time.
• The Demifiend, protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, appears as a Superboss in Digital Devil Saga. Canonically, the Demifiend is one of the most powerful characters ever to appear in an Atlus game ^note In one possible ending of the game, he defeats some of the most powerful demons in Hell and a high-ranking angel, then destroys an avatar of God, breaks the cycle of creation and destruction that governs the multiverse and is implied to take Lucifer's place as the leader of the demon armies of Hell, and the difficulty of the fight reflects that; you'll get curb-stomped unless you have very high level characters, and a well thought out strategy, and even then your victory isn't certain. The battle music for this epic clash? The 'Random Encounter' theme from Nocturne. He's treating your party of high level characters struggling for survival as though they're just another random encounter. He also only uses powers that in Nocturne were mid-tier at best, further supporting that you're just another random encounter for him. In fact, you have to invoke this trope as part of beating him — if you do anything that makes you look like a real threat, such as having any elemental immunities, he'll pull out a nuke spell that one-shots your whole team.
• Dragon Age II:
  • Tallis and Aggressive-personality-Hawke's exchange from the Mark of the Assassin DLC:
  • Snarky!Hawke has this exchange with a guard after wiping out some bandits.
    Lieutenant Jalen: You're the one who took out Fell Orden and his men?
    Hawke: That does ring a bell. Hard to say. I've killed so many things.
• Dreamfall Chapters features a heroic example: Anna remembers Kian for saving her life, but Kian actually thought it was normal for him.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • This can easily happen to the player in Morrowind. The game is filled with caves, mines, ruins and the like, many of which contain a few hostile, generic-looking NPC enemies that can be killed for loot. The game also has many factions with associated quests, some of which involve hunting down and assassinating specific characters. Since the game world is huge and mostly free of plot locked doors it is entirely possible that the assassination target was already killed by the player days or even weeks ago. Luckily the player character has an excellent memory and is able to tell the quest giver that Bandit Leader #246 is already dead, but many players' memories of the event are likely lost amidst their vast and growing body count.
  • Mazoga the Orc in Oblivion swore to become a knight and do heroic deeds after seeing her friend Ra'Vindra murdered by Mogens Wind-Shifter. When you help her track down Mogens and take revenge for her friend, he doesn't have a clue who she is.
  • The Last Dragonborn in Skyrim pulls this on dragonslaying of all things. Throughout the game, dragons become such common encounters that they're more of a nuisance than a threat. Miraak eventually calls you out on it.
    Miraak: Do you ever wonder if it hurts? To have one's soul ripped out like that?
• Subverted in Ensemble Stars!. In Tanabata when Nazuna boasts to Keito that he will avenge their humiliation from the Main Story, Keito at first claims not to remember what he's talking about, before admitting that Nazuna is an extremely talented idol and that it would be stupid not to take Ra*bits seriously.
• One of the nicknames listed for the Thompson Submachine Gun in Enter the Gungeon — and the only one that wasn't a real term for it in Real Life — is the "Teetotaler's Thursday", implying this about its owners... or its victims, perhaps.
• Fallout: New Vegas:
  • Forms part of the motivation for the antagonist in the DLC Lonesome Road. For the courier, it was an ordinary package like any they'd normally deliver. For Ulysses, it was the package that detonated the nukes stored beneath the Divide, destroying the place he saw as his home, teaching him the power of a single person to reshape the world and sparking off a dangerous obsession. And, if you want, the dialog options allow you to play out this trope entirely when speaking with Ulysses.
  • If you take the job to guard the Silver Rush, one of the potential customers turn out to be a suicide bomber who turns hostile if you don't let him in. Judging from the note you find on his remains, the Van Graffs did something truly terrible against his family, although it doesn't say what. Your fellow guard however will just say "Wonder what that was about?" with no interest at all.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Francis Drake has had so many amazing adventures that she barely remembers the time she beat Poseidon in a fight and stole his Holy Grail.
  • For Waver Velvet, the time Iskandar befriended him and helped him gain self-confidence in Fate/Zero was the greatest moment of his life. The thing is, Iskandar befriended and helped people all the time, so that moment wasn't really special to him and he barely recognizes or acknowledges Waver when they meet again.
  • When the party learns the amnesiac Bartholomew Roberts' true identity, Moriarty comments that if they had Blackbeard with them, he could have identified Bart right away since they knew each other. Tristan points out that wouldn't have worked; since Blackbeard only cares about women, he never bothers to remember men's faces.
  • Vivian, The Lady of the Lake, imprisoned Merlin in a tower in Avalon as punishment for cheating on her and being a womanizer in general. However, he's slept with so many women that he barely remembers her and in his mind, was imprisoned for no reason, as he can't think of a possible motive for someone to move against him. Particularly notable since Vivian in the Nasuverse is also a Split Personality of Morgan le Fay, one of Artoria's greatest adversaries and someone with multiple bones to pick with Merlin even outside of the cheating, such as Merlin having a hand in Morgan getting passed over to rule Britain in the first place.
  • In the third Lostbelt, set in China, Jing Ke gets a second chance to assassinate Qin Shi Huang. However, in this Lostbelt, Qin has achieved immortality through transhumanism and been ruling over China for the past two thousand years. When Jing Ke confronts him, he points out to her that many people have tried to assassinate him over the centuries and he can't be bothered to remember them all. However, after she makes her move and infects Qin's artificial body with a computer virus that threatens to shut the whole thing down, he remembers her as she was the only one to make him legitimately fear for his life — something she had just replicated. In the end, Jing Ke fails because Qin had a backup body prepared, but Qin deems her a Worthy Opponent and gives her a respectful sendoff.
• Final Fantasy has had several in its many titles and spin-offs;
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud gets annoyed when President Shinra doesn't recognize him despite previously working for him as a member of SOLDIER. Shinra dismissively says he saw the graduation of every member of SOLDIER, and unless they were really exceptional like Sephiroth, he can't be bothered to remember them. In reality, Cloud has Fake Memories and was never a member of SOLDIER in the first place.
    • When Cloud first encounters Sephiroth again on the cargo ship departing from Junon, he reminds him about having burned down his hometown. Sephiroth's response is a confused "Who are you?" A subversion is that, according to creation materials like the Reunion Files, Sephiroth never got over Cloud killing him years earlier and wants to Mind Rape him in revenge, so claiming to not know who he is was a part of that.
    • Professor Hojo treats Aerith like another of his many experiments, showing how little he cares for the lives of others. When the group confront him at Costa Del Sol, he can't even be bothered to remember her name.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, even though he doesn't reveal it to Zidane directly, Amarant and Zidane met once before the events of the game: Amarant was working as a security guard in Treno when he interrupted Zidane carrying out a heist, and Zidane managed to frame Amarant for the crime as he made his escape, leaving Amarant a wanted criminal. Zidane never acknowledges their shared past, and seems completely oblivious to the impact his actions had on Amarant's life.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, Evil Twin Gabranth impersonated his brother Basch while murdering the king. He also happened to kill Vaan's brother Reks during the incident. Two years later, when Gabranth confronts the party, everyone is outraged to see the king's murderer while Vaan calls Gabranth out on killing Reks. Gabranth doesn't even appear to hear him.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • Asahi sas Brutus has been fanatically devoted to (and in love with) Zenos yae Galvus ever since the latter saved his life. Shadowbringers shows that the feeling is not mutual: Zenos has no idea who Asahi is, and he reacts with complete indifference upon learning that his mysterious new ally is an Ascian possessing Asahi's corpse.
    • The Warrior of Light is a heroic and zig-zagging example: They do remember all the soldiers or other mortal enemies they killed during their adventures and this weighs heavily on their mind^note as the Dark Knight quests show. However, when it comes to all the people they helped during these adventures, things unfold one of two ways: they are mildly surprised if one of these people mentions their good deeds, or a dialogue tree appears with at least one option for the player to say so themselves. They also have a poor recollection of all the Primals^note God-like beings made of pure aether they slayed.
    • An interesting subversion of the Warrior of Light's situation occurs during the post-Heavensward, pre-Stormblood main scenario. When confronting the body double of "the Griffin", a radical leader campaigning for Ala Mhigan revolution against Garlemald, he tells the Warrior of Light that they made had medicine for him in Quarrymill (during the events of A Realm Reborn). Of course, the Griffin can only have a body double by wearing an all-consuming outfit with a mask (and the ARR quest in question did not have voice acting); as such, the Griffin admits he doesn't expect the Warrior to remember him. However, the Dark Knight quests for Stormblood reveal that the man whom the Warrior saved in ARR isn't the Griffin's body double. The man the Warrior saved had given up his medicine for his friend's sake, and the Warrior never met the friend in person before he became the Griffin's body double.
  • Heroic example in Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Ghi Yelghi has idolized Frimelda as a Worthy Opponent ever since she saved his town from destruction. For her, that was just one more adventuring exploit.
  • This happens in Gilgamesh's point of view in Dissidia 012. Throughout the series he had been travelling the Final Fantasy multiverse for a rematch against Bartz (his self-proclaimed arch-nemesis), and Bartz doesn't even remember him. He then runs into Squall, Zidane, and Vann (three other characters that met him in their respective games) who also don't remember him. While he assumes this trope is to blame, the truth is actually that they all had most of their memories wiped prior to the endless war. Gilgamesh retained all his memories because he was never officially summoned there, thus avoiding the mind wipe.
  • This happens in Gilgamesh's point of view again in World of Final Fantasy. He's continuing his hunt for Bartz (mostly by yelling "BARRRRRRRRRTZ!"), while the Bartz of Grymoire (who is a different Bartz than the one from Final Fantasy V) had absolutely no idea who Gilgamesh is or why he's constantly after him.
• In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, it's possible to have the Action Girl Jill confront the Big Bad Ashnard about the death of General Shiraham, her father: who always struggled in the Daein army and died a rather dishonorable death, no thanks to Petrine. Ashnard's response? "I don't think we ever had a general by that name." Cue the only time in the whole game that Jill goes completely ballistic.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Bernadetta is a deeply traumatized Nervous Wreck and virtual shut-in with deep social anxiety who was cruelly abused by her father. This means that she is terrified of most social interaction and tends to assume the worst when most of the monastery's staff or the other students try to approach her to speak or make friends. Most of her early supports consist of her panicking when someone tries to approach her and then running away the first chance she gets. In a number of later supports when the other person tries to follow up on it and ask Bernadetta what happened and why she acted like she did, she only vaguely remembers that particular incident because she has so many of them with so many different people.
• In Ghost of Tsushima, much of Ryuzo's motivation and current actions in the present story are due to him losing to his childhood friend Jin in Lord Nagao's tournament two years prior. Ryuzo had been intending to use the tournament as a way to impress the watching lords and become a samurai by his own merit, but Jin went all out and beat him. In Ryuzo's mind, Jin who is already lord of his clan and ward of Lord Shimura had nothing to gain in winning and believed Jin just didn't want some commoner to best him and this would lead Ryuzo to become a mercenary and become resentful towards Jin. In reality, Jin never realized how important the tournament was to Ryuzo until he brought it up. To Jin, it was just some tournament.
• Indivisible: Ravannavar was the best thing to grace Dhar's life (as far as he knew) giving him a home and code to live by. When angrily confronted by Dhar after the main party reaches him, Ravannavar nonchalantly states that he doesn't remember Dhar, as he has already recruited too many soldiers into his army to care about who Dhar was, even if the young soldier was one of his newly-promoted lieutenants.
• Jitsu Squad have the hero, Hero, confronting his old enemy, Dash Kobayashi, who betrayed his clan years ago and killed Hero's father. How does Dash respond to all this?
  Hero: You betrayed our clan and killed my father!
  Dash: Boohoo, still whining after so many centuries? You never understood the way of the ninja!
• Knights of the Old Republic:
  • Towards the end of the first game, a Dark Jedi, Darth Bandon, is sent to assassinate the Player Character. One of your dialogue options upon meeting Bandon is to recognize him as one of the Dark Jedi who attacked the Endar Spire at the beginning of the game and tell him that "You killed Trask!" and that you will avenge his death. Bandon, naturally, has no idea which of the many red shirts he slaughtered was called 'Trask', and even worse, most players on their first playthrough have probably long forgotten about Trask, too.
  • Played with in regards to Juhani, who tells the protagonist about how she was rescued from slavers by Revan, whose kindness inspired her to become a Jedi. Little does she know that the person she's talking to actually is Revan, but cannot recall any of this due to suffering amnesia and having a new identity implanted by the Jedi Council. Of course, one could could wonder if Revan would have recalled this small act of kindness anyway.
  • The Last of Us Part II: Abby's entire motivation for killing Joel is because he killed her father (Jerry, the head surgeon in charge of Ellie's operation who got a nasty case of scalpel during Joel's Papa Wolf moment from the climax of the first game.) Abby spent four years training hard to become a strong, ruthless killer. Then she bumps into Joel in a chance encounter (after he saved her life no less) and blows his leg out with a shotgun blast. When he demands to know who she is and why she wants him dead, she smirks and dryly says "Guess", like a typical action protagonist... and Joel just scowls and tells her to finish whatever speech she had planned and get her vengeance overwith, because it is clear he hasn't the foggiest inkling of who she is, and why would he? He's killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people over two decades since the Outbreak. You can practically read how disappointed and almost offended she feels in her face.
• A heroic example in The Last Story's Playable Epilogue: A Gurak Captain swears revenge on Zael, whose response is "Who are you?"
• In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, Juna Crawford reveals that during the war between Erebonia and Calvard over the ownership of Crossbell during the Divertissment chapter of Cold Steel II, Rean saved her and her siblings lives when a Calvard airship flew and started shooting at the army with civilian casualties involved. Rean, inside Valimar, one-shots the ship and then asks if Juna and the rest are alright. Rean, when told this story by Juna's siblings (who have no idea they're talking to their idol and savior), honestly doesn't remember any of this happening.
• The Legend of Zelda: Retroactively. A Link to the Past Ganon is actually shocked that Link could give him so much trouble despite having fought the Hero of Time centuries ago. This is because in the original backstory, no hero took up the Blade of Evil's Bane against Ganon beforehand and this was the first time that Ganon fought Link. In post Hyrule Historia lore, it's implied that Ganon was so successful in defeating the previous Link that he forgot how dangerous the hero with the Master Sword could be.
• In Lunar Knights, Lucian goes into a rant on how he's been looking forward to taking Duke Dumas out for killing his beloved Ellen. Dumas' response? "Tell me, boy...do you recall the name of every cow, chicken, and pig you've ever eaten?" Lucian is much less than amused.
• Mafia II:
  • Given a twist. Toward the end of the game, one of the missions is to kill Tommy Angelo, who informed on his family. If you've played the first game, you know his entire story and what led him up to this moment, and you're bound to feel sympathetic; in fact, this is a replica of the last shot of the first game. However, for Vito, Joe and new players, he's just a guy you kill and then run from the police as usual.
  • Inverted in the opening of the "Betrayal of Jimmy" DLC, when Jimmy describes the titular betrayal.
    Jimmy: For everyone else, it was Thursday, but for me, it was the day I got fucked.
• Mass Effect 2:
  • A hero example with Shepard. In Mass Effect, you have the option of letting a criminal named Fist live (or not if Wrex is with you). If you do, you will find him at the Afterlife Club in Mass Effect 2. He isn't very happy to see you, and one of the responses you can choose is "Whoever you are, you stopped being relevant about 5 minutes after I apparently told you to run." (You can also go the other direction entirely, and tell him you`ll follow him across the galaxy to make sure he stays on the straight-and-narrow, if you have to.)
  • Played with in the world background. When turian ships fired on human ships to stop them from opening a mass relay and subsequently occupied the world the exploration force had come from, humans called it the First Contact War, their first encounter with any alien species and proving the power of the Alliance Navy. For the turians, it's the Relay 314 Incident. Played with, in that the turians unofficially and grudgingly admit that the fight over the planet was the first real military opposition they'd faced in over a thousand years.
  • Shepard has this reaction when Jacob admits to working for Cerberus, having to think a for a moment before remembering they'd encountered them a few times during their hunt for Saren. This allows for the retcon that Cerberus is a N.G.O. Superpower instead of a rogue black-ops group, by handwaving it as sketchy intel and Shepard being too preoccupied with catching Saren to investigate further.
• Mass Effect: Andromeda: One conversation between squadmates Liam and Drack has the later, a krogan, telling the former he can't remember his feelings on the First Contact War, because while it may have been important to Liam's species, Drack just can't remember it. It's zig-zagged, since at another point Drack recounts his first impressions of mankind to Vetra, which go thus: "They're so brave for making it so far. Do they know they're made of water?" This could be chalked up to the fact that Drack may not have fought in the First Contact War itself, but he's had plenty of contact fighting everyday humans.
• Omega Red's ending in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter: he's killed Ryu offscreen, and Ken is kneeling next to his corpse and asks Omega Red "How many lives have you ended?". His reply is "Do you count the number of breaths you've taken?"
• Metal Gear:
  • A probable meta-example in the Metal Gear series: In the eyes of the players, the best and most defining moments for Solid Snake are the events of Metal Gear Solid, the Shadow Moses incident, and all of the consequences of it. In-universe, while very important and, thanks to Nastasha, the reason Solid Snake is a household name in the series (none of his operations with FOXHOUND in the MSX games were officially declassified), Shadow Moses is treated as a massive Unwitting Pawn stepping stone for every Chessmaster's and Magnificent Bastard's checklist, a mere component to the greater plan. For Solid Snake, Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land are the most defining moments of his life.
  • A straighter example: For the Philosophers, The Boss is just a necessary sacrifice who can be replaced with Gene. For Naked Snake, her death, and the truth behind it, changed everything, and is more or less the direct reason behind everything else that happens in the series for the next fifty years.
• An anti-heroic example from No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: the first boss, Skelter Helter, is attempting to take revenge on Travis for killing his brother at the start of the first game. Travis claims he doesn't know who he's talking about, (and the player likely won't either, considering said brother only actually appeared in the game for about two seconds — the actual fight with him was only in a trailer), but one of his lines just before the fight ("When you see your brother in Hell, tell him that he's still a douche!") suggests that Travis knew all about it and was just taunting him. Also pulled off on the player, as the Big Bad's motivation is also trying to avenge relatives killed by Travis — the nameless, generic Pizza Butt executives Travis killed to make money for the ranked fights in the first game were his father and brothers.
  • No More Heroes III got one example as well: Travis gets spurred by Bishop and Sylvia into going to Kimmy Love's concert, whom he seemingly doesn't know about, since his next target Vanishing Point attends it. The pop idol is actually Kimmy Howell, an obsessive fangirl who tried to kill Travis and was spared by him in the aforementioned game, having come back for revenge to make up for the humiliation she felt, and kills Vanishing Point to make sure they won't be interrupted. After Travis is tricked into going onstage and Kimmy starts rapping her grievances at him, Travis finally remembers her.
• In Pandora: First Contact, the leader of the Imperium forces says this word for word, when discussing a battle that was regarded as particularly hellish.
  Heid: Yeah sure, I’m aware that for some of our guys fighting in this hellhole was a living nightmare and traumatizing experience. But for me... it was Tuesday.
  Watcher: It's possible. I kill a lot of people.
• In Persona 5, the main protagonist is forced to move out of his home to live in a new city due to him being falsely accused of assault by main antagonist Masayoshi Shido. When it is time for you and your party to face his Shadow to steal his heart, he only vaguely recognizes you. Considering he's caused the mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns mentioned and seen throughout the game so that he could become prime minister, making one teenager get a criminal record is only another small stepping stone to his rise to power.
  Shadow Shido: Small sacrifices are inescapable for those wishing to be powerful, competent leaders. How would you ever reach your destination if you stopped to count every ant you crushed on the road?
  • Interestingly, his Shadow is able to recognize the protagonist when he reveals himself, but back in reality, the real one was previously shown not to recall where he's seen or heard of him before. This makes sense considering how people's Shadows already work.
• In Pillars of Eternity, when a man (accurately) accuses the Watcher of killing his fiance, the Watcher can say, in a Shout-Out to The Princess Bride:
  Watcher: It's possible. I kill a lot of people.
• In The Pirate's Fate, Breena's husband was killed seven years ago, and Morgana, as part of Rourkie's crew was the one behind it. However, when this is angrily pointed out, they simply observe that, being pirates, they attacked many ships, and can't remember every single one, which just makes Breena angrier.
• In Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, the rival has a vendetta against Team Plasma for a Purrloin that was stolen five years prior. All the Plasma agents he demands its recovery from point out that Purrloin are insanely common in Unova, they steal Pokemon all the time, and they'd have a hard time tracking a specific stolen Purrloin for five years. Subverted with the Shadow Triad, the ones responsible; they remember it all too well.
• A heroic example in Professor Layton and the Last Specter. Layton doesn't remember the first time he met Emmy. She was being arrested on false pretenses, and he happened to be walking by at the moment and proved her innocence. For her, it was the day a stranger saved her from going to jail. To Layton, it was just another puzzle to solve.
• Played for Laughs in Project × Zone 2. Pai Chan, an actress, when paired with the pair of Chun-li and Xiaoyu, may even quote the Trope Namer after a session of beating an enemy. "This might have been the most painful day in your life. But for Me, It Was Tuesday." Chun-li, who was on the receiving end of the trope in the original, wonders if that sounded familiar somehow...
• Used against the protagonist in Red Dead Redemption. When John Marston, a former bandit, meets a mysterious stranger and asks if they know each other, the stranger claims John has forgotten more important men than him. John disagrees saying that he is good at remembering faces. In response he then asks John if he knows the name Heidi McCort; turns out one of John's bandit friends shot her while they were pulling a robbery together. When John can't recall the incident the stranger plainly states: "Then why would you remember me?" It's strongly implied that the stranger is The Grim Reaper, which is a pretty good reason for John to not recognize him.
• Red Dead Redemption II: If Arthur kills enough Non-Player Characters, widows will start spawning in various towns to berate him for killing their husbands and leaving them and her children with nothing. Arthur will say he doesn't remember since he's killed a lot of people that meant nothing to him. The player can either ignore the widow, give them money, or kill them as well.
• Doug from Rune Factory 4 is the victim of a massacre dealt onto his village prior to the events of the game. The one responsible, Ethelberd, does not recall the incident in the slightest when confronted.
• During the RuneScape quest "The Lord of Vampyrium," Safalaan Hallow confronts Lowerniel Drakan for the deaths of his parents. Drakan rudely dismisses him. Then Safalaan introduces himself by name, revealing that he's the lost prince of Hallowvale, and suddenly Drakan does remember... that he didn't kill either of them. He took Queen Efaritay prisoner, keeping her alive to witness the kingdom's conversion into Morytania, and turned King Ascertes into his right-hand vampyre Vanstrom Klause, whom YOU killed in the previous quest.
  • If you talk to The Raptor about the quests "Dragon Slayer" or "Legends' Quest", he's unimpressed by either. Elvarg the Scourge of Crandor was just another green dragon, and Nezikchened was just another black demon, both monsters that he kills by the hundreds for Slayer tasks.
• In Saints Row IV, when Keith David and Maero are together as homies, Keith tells Maero that he has never heard the Boss talk about him or the Brotherhood. Maero thinks it's because of this trope and figures the Boss probably doesn't bother thinking twice about the people they have killed. It's then subverted when Keith points out that the Boss has talked about the other gangs, their respective leaders, and even Donnie Wong.
• In Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, when Gemini finally catches Ranmaru, who killed her mentor Mifune and demands her revenge, Nobunaga's right hand man doesn't remember it.
  Ranmaru: You'll have to forgive me. I've killed far too many to keep count.
• Sengoku Basara:
  • In the third game's backstory, The Battle of Odawara (which happened between the second and third games) led to Date Masamune running into a Toyotomi army led by Ishida Mitsunari, who proceeded to butcher almost all his men and almost kill Masamune's Battle Butler Kojuro. Masamune's Red Path involves Masamune hunting down Mitsunari for revenge, and when he finally catches up to him in Kai he starts on a massive rant about how he's going to destroy Mitsunari. Mitsunari turns around and asks: "Who are you?" Masamune's reaction is priceless. It's only when Masamune mentions Odawara Mitsunari's memory is jogged: Mitsunari starts reminiscing about the battle, only to say that he defeated someone at that battle but they weren't worth remembering (Mitsunari lost his own lord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, in that battle and avenging him is something of a preoccupation of his). Masamune loses it and attacks him.
  • Bringing Mitsunari to any of Masamune's stages in Free Battle mode results in Masamune gloating about how he's finally got Mitsunari right where he wants him, while Mitsunari, bewildered, asks Yoshitsugu who the heck this person is.
    Mitsunari: You... Hate me? Who are you, exactly?
  • Turned hilariously on its head in Mitsunari's Blue Route, when Mitsunari is reminded of the battle of Odawara and remembers some random nobody (Masamune) insulting Toyotomi Hideoyshi before attacking him. With his usual grasp of prioritization, Mitsunari decides to postphone his revenge against Tokugawa Ieyasu in order to hunt down this random person who dared insult his lord to his face and kill him gruesomly. Masamune gets somewhat bemused when he finds out his would-be prey has hunted him down over a petty insult.
• This happens in Sonic Forces: Episode Shadow. For Shadow, it was just another day taking out Dr. Eggman's minions during an infiltration mission. But for Infinite, it was his Start of Darkness as Shadow killed the members of his mercenary group and gave him a Curb-Stomp Battle that he took very personally. Afterwards, he was infused with the Phantom Ruby and became the tool necessary for Eggman to finally Take Over the World.
• A funny, heroic example is used in Sonic Generations. When Tails points out what sort of trouble they're in, Sonic brushes it off, asking if it's any different than saving aliens in intergalactic amusement parks and rescuing genies in magic books.
• Implied to be the case with Maxi's vendetta against Astaroth in SoulCalibur. Maxi has confronted Astaroth multiple times on the massacre of his crew, but...
  Maxi: Remember me, you freak?!
  Astaroth: Pretentious little bug. You all look the same to me.
  • Ivy once soundly defeated Seong Mi-na in a hugely one-sided fight (down to the Ivy Blade's reach and unpredictability). For Mi-na this was a deeply humiliating experience and she spent years seeking teachers to get stronger for a rematch, but Ivy barely remembers Mi-na at all. To her, Mi-na was merely a loudmouthed girl who needed to be taught a lesson.
• In Star Wars: The Old Republic, during the Sith Warrior's initial training on Korriban, the player has the option of killing or exiling Overseer Tremel, on the orders of Darth Baras. Regardless of the player's decision, they are later cornered by his daughter, consumed with rage over her father's disappearance, believing that he's been killed and the Sith Warrior responsible. The player has the option of responding thus, "Uh, refresh my memory. I kill many people's fathers."
  • In Onslaught expansion Darth Savik holds a personal vendetta against the Republic character who had previously defeated her on Corellia. However neither the player nor the character even remember her: on Corellia she appeared only as a simple named NPC mob like hundreds of others that you have defeated, with no lines or any role in the story whatsoever. The player had an option to lampshade this, pointing out that the day they fought changed Savik's life forever, but for them was merely a stepping stone on the way to do bigger things.
• Summertime Saga: When MC finally confronts Raznikov for having his father killed, Raz barely remembers even ordering the hit, saying he's killed a lot of people. He only realizes that MC is talking about Frank Cummings when he brings up the briefcase Raz was looking for.
• In the Scenario Campaign of Tekken 6, if Kazuya Mishima confronts Leo, they will tell him that he killed their mother.
  Kazuya: So, you're seeking vengeance. There are so many of your kind, I've lost track.
• Taken to a terrifying extreme in Torment: Tides of Numenera: as a Castoff, you’ve been causing suffering everywhere you’ve gone by simply existing, without even being aware of it. Your use of the Tides is inherently unnatural and destructive, so even if you’ve been playing your character as heroic Nice Guy who fixes every problem you can, you’re still causing havoc. In fact, there’s a decent chance you caused many of the problems you deal with over the course of the game. This is the reason why the Sorrow is trying to destroy you and the other Castoffs, even though he acknowledges that you’re just a victim of the Changing God and aren’t doing this on purpose.
• Touhou Project:
  • Parodied in the game Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, where a confrontation with an ancient vampire, and one of ZUN's many JoJo's Bizarre Adventure references, is rather spoiled by Marisa being Marisa.
    Marisa: Whoa, so, do you really drink it? You know, that.
    Remilia: Of course. But I have a small appetite and leave some behind.
    Marisa: How many people's blood have you sucked by now?
    Remilia: Can you remember the number of times you've eaten bread?
    Marisa: Thirteen. I prefer Japanese food.
  • Missing and Immaterial Power also gave us this exchange between Sakuya Izayoi and Yukari Yakumo:
    Sakuya: Whatever. Stop lying and give up your schemes, now.
    Yukari: (Which lies and schemes is she talking about? It's hard to keep track of them all...)
  • In another sense we have the rivalry between Princess Kaguya Houraisen and Fujiwara no Mokou. In the past countless suitors vied for the immortal Moon Princess's hand, and she set out a series of Impossible Tasks for them to accomplish to win her favor. Mokou's father was one of her rejected suitors and she wants revenge for his humiliation; Kaguya claims not to remember him, which only pisses her off more. On the other hand, Mokou's father tried to cheat at the tasks and committed suicide out of shame when he got busted, so Kaguya might be lying about not remembering him because it's kinder than telling his daughter that he was a fraud.
• In Tales from the Borderlands, Vasquez, a new Hyperion bigwig after the death of Handsome Jack, is telling protagonist Rhys how he fondly recalls that special rapport he had with Jack. After all, Jack would personally punch Vasquez in the face every time he saw him, which meant a great deal to him. It made him special. Unbeknownst to Vasquez, Rhys actually has a copy of Handsome Jack's personality in his head, and said AI personality literally cannot remember Vasquez because he just punched that many underlings all day, every day. It's only until he gets a good enough look at him that he remembers Vasquez as the guy with crappy hairplugs that he glued money to.
• Mr. Grimm in Twisted Metal: Black is driven insane by being forced to turn to cannibalism during The Vietnam War by a random stranger. Later on, Mr. Grimm says that the man has completely forgotten the incident.
• Under Night In-Birth: As a young girl, Orie watched her parents get devoured by a Void that was capable of speech. Years later, she encounters Merkava, a Void capable of speech, and brings this up to him, asking if he's the one responsible. He doesn't remember, but also sees no reason to disbelieve that he was the perpetrator— as far as he knows, he's the only talking Void in the world and he certainly doesn't remember all of his victims. Their resulting dynamic goes as such: Merkava is willing to let Orie hold her parents' deaths against him, but won't go down without a fight, while Orie wants definitive proof that Merkava was the culprit before truly killing him.
• Zig-zagged in Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption — when you meet Count Orsi in the modern nights he instantly recognizes… someone who worked for Ecaterina. He even asks what your name is, to which you reply with your name and a death threat. He finds something in the threat familiar, since you threatened him 800 years previously and he chuckles that now he remembers you.
• An inversion: the main villain of the first season of The Walking Dead is the owner of a huge cache of supplies that you stole half a game earlier, whose wife and daughter died because you found his car and said "finders keepers". When you finally confront him, you can either admit that by now you've figured out who he is, or admit you've no idea why he wants to kill you.
• Zig-Zagged in Watch_Dogs: when Aiden confronts Lucky Quinn, the man who ordered the hit on Aiden, which resulted in his niece's death, Quinn's reaction to being told why Aiden's doing this is to ask "Is that what this has all been about?", suggesting that he did remember the incident, although he goes on to state that if Aiden had walked away Quinn would've forgotten him, implying that the only reason this trope wasn't played straight was because Aiden had been such an annoyance to Quinn.
  • Definitely subverted with the hitman himself. Maurice doesn't just remember killing Aiden's niece, the incident haunts him about as much as it does Aiden, if not worse.
• Wild ARMs 5. When Greg finally confronts Kartikeya about the murder of his wife and child, Kartikeya has to be reminded which of his victims Greg is talking about.
• The Witcher: Commoners and nobles alike treat most monsters as mythical beasts that have stepped right out of legend to rampage across the countryside completely unopposed. Witchers treat them as jobs, and not particularly interesting ones at that. In the third game, the first area involves tracking a griffon that has been harrying Nilfgaardian patrols. They attempted to kill the creature themselves, but only pissed it off and got slaughtered. Vesemir responds by rolling his eyes and saying they should have called in the professionals earlier. When the commander compliments Geralt on killing the beast, he just shrugs.
  Geralt: It's not the first time I've killed a griffin, nor is it likely to be the last.
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Junji Horinouchi drives much of the conflict in the game, with two separate characters gunning for his head. One wants him destroyed for stealing his girlfriend, the other wants him exposed for corruption in revenge for getting him blackballed for not wanting to prosecute and innocent man. Horinouchi considered the destruction of the second character a justifiable stepping stone in his career, and is surprised that he is still holding a grudge. The first character, he doesn't even know exists.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour, after Yami Bakura defeats Joey, when you confront him about it he can't even be bothered to remember Joey's name.

---