Headscratchers / Memento

• OK, so if the whole diabetes-Sammy story really happened to Leonard how does Leonard remember if it happened AFTER he developed the amnesia? How does Leonard even now he has the condition? How does he know that he suggested to the cops to find the guy who did it to his wife, and that they ignored him and never found the guy... if this all happened AFTER he got the amnesia? Shouldn't he always be waking up, dazed and confused, asking if his wife's OK, because last he remembers she was laying in a pool of blood?
  • I was under the impression the "diabetes-Sammy story" happened before Leonard's trip into Brain Hole City. Granted, I'm going from the Rifftraxy version and still a bit peeved they never solved the raccoon problem.
    • That is the ORIGINAL impression you are given - that Leonard heard the story about Sammy before he got the injury. But the twist is that what happened to Sammy actually happened to Leonard himself - but it could have only happened to Leonard AFTER getting the condition (it's the whole point of the story.)
    • I think this may be the point of the "conditioning" thing he's talking about. It's possible that he wrote down the altered story and read it over and over again until it sort of stuck. This could also be the reason he keeps telling it to everyone. (Okay, this is a long shot, but it's all I got.)
    • This troper was under the impression that Leonard's condition was degenerative with his memory gradually worsening from the attack onwards, until he's completely incapable of forming new memories. It could also tie in with the issue (mentioned below) of the apparent variation in how long Leonard's short-term memory lasts: if the condition itself is degenerative, he could have occasional "peaks" or spikes in how long he's capable of remembering things.
    • It's all because of conditioning. After waking and finding out his wife had died for hundreds of days, it was finally cemented into his mind.
  • Truth in Television: with the Real Life patients, a few intensely emotional events sometimes manage to break through the amnesia. This might also mean that the expectations of Teddy and Lenny himself that he would remember the murder of the second attacker weren't that unrealistic after all, and that Lenny didn't want to rather than really couldn't retain it in his memory.
  • As far as I understand it, the Sammy stuff happened before. That is, when he was normal and an insurance investigator he met a man (who had no wife) named Sammy and learnt about Sammy's condition. But Sammy actually was just faking it. Then the assault happens and Leonard does the whole insulin thing. Then the trauma of seeing his wife's corpse like that, again and again with (this is speculation) the insulin needle present and knowing that insulin overdosing can cause a coma like happened, the trauma scrambled his already scrambled brain and lodged itself in places other than short term memory (the rest of his brain, like conditioning, still worked) so he couldn't remember what happened but parts of his subconscious could and the trauma caused him to project his guilt onto Sammy and give him the goal of killing his wife's "murderer" so that he could somehow put his wife's death right. The police memory was manufactured from this.
    • My personal theory is that Sammy WASN'T faking it, but Lenny - perhaps bullied by his bosses - wrote an official report that he was so that no insurance would be paid, and Lenny never really overcame the guilt. How would Teddy know if Sammy did fake it, after all? He's a cop (probably), not a psychiatrist. It's not a far stretch to suppose that he only relied on the materials of the investigation compiled by Lenny himself to reach that conclusion. If so, then it's probably guilt about this fraud that made Lenny to falsely attach the memories of his own wife specifically to his case and also to (probably falsely as well) claim that he'd never said that Sammy was a con man, thus rendering Leonard guilt-free of BOTH traumatic events.
    • Teddy would have found out about the real Sammy Jankis while investigating Leonard's case. Leonard proved that the real Sammy was a fake with the electric shock test: watch closely and Real Sammy is shown to briefly hesitate before touching the electrified object.
  • I just assumed it was a lie Teddy told him to keep him occupied long enough for his memory to fade so he would forget what just happened. Teddy had manipulated him for years.
  • I just finished my second viewing of the movie, and I noticed that Teddy specifically says that Lenny used the whole conditioning thing to alter his memory of certain things. This was at the very end of the movie while they're both yelling at each other, so it's understandable if people missed that line. I'm pretty sure I did the first time around. So after he got put in an institution, he basically blended his story and Sammy's so that he could feel blameless for his wife's death.
  • My understanding is that Len may or may not have met 'a' Sammy at some point while working as an insurance inspector, but at sometime his wife was assaulted and his head was knocked in the incident and he developed anterograde amnesia that was partially or wholly psychogenic. That leads him to inadvertently dosing his wife with insulin, the trauma of which leads him to conjure up the rape/murder story as a psychological defense similar to The Machinist. It would also explain why he seems to know he has amnesia whenever is memory 'refreshes'. As with the stuff Teddy reveals about his history, I'm not sure how much stock to put in his account.
• If Leonard has met Teddy before, how does he not have a picture of Teddy already? From what's been in the movie, there's no particular reason for Leonard to destroy previous photographs of Teddy, or anyone else, unless for some reason Leonard was dissatisfied with the previous kill in a way to destroying Teddy's photograph. Still, he hasn't destroyed any photographs except Jimmy Grants and the mysterious pointing picture, so it is quite out of place.
  • The way he destroys those two photos suggests to me that it's something he does regularly. He burns a photo when he decides he doesn't need that memory any more; otherwise he'd be carrying thousands of photos around with him. I guess Teddy knows this. After every kill: "Glad I could help you, Lenny. Goodbye forever." One burned photo later... "Mr Shelby? You don't know me, but I think I can help you find the guy who murdered your wife."
    • This may be supported by the fact that Teddy isn't for a second surprised that Leonard is trying to take a picture of him, indicating that it might have happened before.
  • Also this has only been taking place for a year, it's possible he didn't immediately develop the polaroid system and that even maybe Teddy had kept out of his way and tried to manipulate him by messages and phone calls for most of the time. This is probably backed up with the "Never answer the phone" tattoo. At one point he realized he was being manipulated through it and tattooed that. Once he stopped responding to normal methods, Teddy realized he needed to guide him face to face.
  • It's also possible that he hadn't met Teddy before. Except for the Photograph of Lenny that Teddy slipped into his room, every other piece of evidence we have that Teddy and Lenny have been doing this for ages was Teddy's story. It's possible Teddy got ahold of that photograph somehow, and when Lenny took his picture was the first time they actually met face to face.

• Just how long does Leonard have before his memory "resets"? Some sources say 15 minutes but this time limit is only given for Sammy Jenkis Which is already a huge lie and we don't know how much of that is actually applicable to leonard. And it doesn't make sense, because after dealing with Dodd he heads back to Natalie's house and seems to still have an intact memory, but between those two scenes the sky has gone from day to night which is impossible in under 15 minutes. But on the other hand his memory resets while having that confrontation with Natalie which seemed to be less than 15 minutes. Is his conditioned just ill defined and he has no idea when he will just forget everything?
  • Nolan's DVD commentary describes Leonard as remembering things as long as he's paying attention, or can keep them in mind (I don't know if this is how the condition actually works in real life, but this seems to be the standard for the movie) (different troper: it's at the very least scientifically plausible; current psychological theory is that people have three "tiers" of memory, roughly being immediate, short-term, and long-term). In the case of Dodd, it does seem iffy that he can remember for that long, but it does seem that Leonard can keep his goals in mind while driving, and it is possible that a combination of this, and of having "ask Natalie" in the Dodd's bloody nose photo kept it in mind. In the Natalie scene, he got distracted, which lost the memory. (The movie still doesn't make complete sense even with this memory method in mind, since the black and white scenes seem to forget the condition at some points, but it will make somewhat more sense.)
    • My Psychology professor showed us this movie to illustrate anterograde amnesia, and it does basically work like that. Leonard can remember something for as long as he can focus on it. After that, it's gone. Knowing how to drive is a different kind of memory from knowing information (it's unconscious) so Leonard can drive and keep a single event in mind at the same time.
    • It's not much of a jump from how people's memory works when they don't have amnesia. A lot of people get distracted by something (even for a moment) and then forget what it was that they were originally doing. Normally, after a few seconds, we remember what it was, but for people like Leonard, that memory is gone. In the case where Natalie was messing with him, Leonard was concentrating so hard on finding a pen that when Natalie walked back inside, he had forgotten why he needed a pen.
    • Specifically, knowing how to do certain things (drive a car, shave, or in Sammy's case, inject insulin) are all different kinds of what is called procedural memory (memory concerning skills) which operates in a very different way to memory of facts or people. There are reported instances of people with retrograde amnesia who can't remember their own names but can play a violin expertly, for example.
    • There is actually a fairly common experience that's quite similar to how Leonard lives constantly: remembering a dream after waking up. If we don't do anything to retain the memory of a dream we just awoke from, it usually disappears from our mind; we're only able to retain it if we write it down or otherwise concentrate on remembering it.
  • Compare Leonard to the case of Clive Wearing, a musicologist who suffered severe brain damage due to an infection. Wearing remembers very little about his life before the infection and retains absolutely nothing about it afterwards. He is constantly "waking up" approximately every 30 seconds and rationalizes it as that he's just come out of a coma. He keeps a journal but will cross out previous entries because he doesn't remember writing them and can't accept that he wrote them even though he knows that they're in his own handwriting. Wearing retains procedural memory and can still play music (but if he plays a piece he hadn't completely mastered before his infection he will make the same exact mistakes each time he plays it) and can be kept occupied for extended period by playing simple card games. Wearing can retain some new skills and even a few facts through procedural memories if he does/watches/listens to something enough times, somewhat similar to how Leonard is able to delude himself into thinking he's on a hunt for his wife's killer because he's gone through the cycle so many times.

• How about a notebook?
  • I have a very similar condition and keep notebooks, with tabs and post-its to mark where I wrote something down. Easier than a tattoo but less dramatic, I suppose.
    • Aside from drama, you could also say Lenny is paranoid, to him tattoos mean "this is permanent, it's definitely correct", plus he's sending himself a message "all this stuff about John G is serious, not just something you scribbled in a book one day" but he's already learned to trust his handwriting so it shouldn't be necessary.
  • As it happens, Lenny does have the words "notes can be lost" in his belly...
  • Its heavily implied that Leonard is sabotaging his own investigation as he long ago actually solved it, its just that without this quest he has nothing to keep him going. At one point he mentions that a lot of pieces are missing from his files, one can assume that he's removing key evidence that would lead to specific J.G.s (i.e. the ones he's already 'caught').

• Okay, maybe this was explained and I need to re-watch it, but isn't Leonard's quest for constant justice kinda screwed now that he's tattooed the license plate number of a dead John G. to his arm? How many identical license plates being driven by John G.s could there be?
  • Down the road, he'd realize it's a dead end or that the guy's already been killed. It's quite possible he'd alter the evidence again to keep up the illusion. We've already seen him do this once on camera, and it's implied he's done this several times before. He'd probably put a sticky note on his leg telling him to remove or alter the tattoo. It's not like he's let evidence stand in his way before!
    • Or maybe Leonard's quest for justice is in fact screwed. After all the story "ends" with Leonard killing Teddy. It may be possible that Leonard gets stuck in a loop where he keeps looking for that license plate and finds out that it belongs to a dead cop. Until he is arrested for Teddy's murder anyway, as suggested below.
    • Considering that Lenny has progressed from killing criminals to killing a cop, I'd say his days as a free man are limited.
    • An interpretation is that he didn't want to kill people, he was manipulated by Teddy to do so (well, the first guy was John G maybe but it's not confirmed either way, and while the rape seems likely the murder seems much less so). After learning that Teddy has been tricking him into killing criminals for him, he decides to set things up to kill Teddy and "get his man" at the same time, ending the cycle.
    • I think he wanted to end the cycle. The voice-over when he writes it down suggests he wants Teddy to be his lasting vengeance. He takes Jimmy's car because he wants people to recognize him and link him to Jimmy, which as well as helping get Teddy probably is also making sure that he'll get locked up after this.
    • There is also a split-second shot at the end of Lenny in bed (with his wife?) with a tattoo over his heart that says "I did it", so I assumed Teddy would be his last kill.
    • The license plate is probably another part of his plan, it's something that would let him CONFIRM that "John G" is dead and was murdered. So even if he forgets to write it down, he'll know he's killed John G and his vengeance ends. And with Teddy dead, there's no one left around to manipulate him further.
  • It could be possible that Jimmy may be the last one. Keep in mind, the reason why Leonard decided to target Teddy as his John G. was because Teddy had allowed him to continue on after having killed the murderer, and kept the photo of when Lenny had killed the real John G. from Lenny. So, it's possible that after killing Teddy, Leonard wrote on the back of it, saying he got the killer, and then proceeded to drive to the tattoo parlor to tattoo "I got him" on the spot he saved for the end. As for what would happen to Leonard after that, it's hard to know.

• Why did Leonard switch clothes with Jimmy Grants?
  • One person in the previous entry mentioned the possibility that he wanted to be recognized and get caught. While that's possible, I think he did it for the opposite reason, to alter his appearance quickly. He goes from a guy in a pickup and dressed like a laborer to a fancy suit and a Jag. Teddy didn't seem to find it odd that Leonard was doing this, so it's possible that he's done it before.
  • Another possibility is, being someone who was an insurance investigator (if he was indeed one), he probably knew that his clothes would have evidence of his victim on him. Seeing that he made the victim take his clothes off before he killed him, it's possible that he had planned on killing his target and switch clothes with him so that there's no evidence on him if the body was ever discovered.
    • Leonard says that he doesn't want to get blood on the clothes, yes. Knowing that he might very well get blood on his clothes when murdering Jimmy Grants, he has Jimmy take his clothes off so Leonard can wear clean, blood-free clothes. (Convenient that Leonard and Grants are the same size.)

• How does Leonard know he has amnesia? How come he does not spend every new loop figuring out that he cannot remember anything?
  • Leonard's pre-accident experience with this type of amnesia is through meeting Sammy. Your and my previous experience with this type of amnesia is through the film Memento. Therefore, if you were to find yourself in a park, sitting on a bench, with no recollection of how you got there, no familiarity with the clothes you were wearing and no concept of what time it was, the first thing you might do as a reflex action is look at your watch. Instead of seeing the watch, you'd see a small note that says 'Remember Memento'. All it takes to put two and two together is a bit of mental sharpness, helped no doubt by having done this same thing, hour after hour, day after day, for months/years.
  • This also falls under the 'conditioning' explanation. He's had it for years, so it's managed to penetrate.
    • Which is Truth in Television actually. Real Life people with this condition ARE usually aware of it.
• Why doesn't Leonard write specific dates and times on his notes to keep track of their order?
  • It could be he doesn't want to, it's part of the thing Teddy was talking about with Leonard altering his memories through conditioning. He doesn't want the information to be too specific, so he can interpret it to fit whatever his current circumstances are. The thing with putting down Teddy's license plate is a departure, because that time he was specifically targeting Teddy, and wanted to make sure he got the job done.
  • Alternately, it could be that he has his own system that doesn't require dates. Everyone's got their own personal way of doing things, and often a person's system only makes sense to himself.
• If he remembers things from before the attack that lead to his injury, why has he never called or sent a letter to any family members or friends?
  • It would be a little difficult to explain to family and friends that you, a formerly mild-mannered insurance investigator, are going on a quest for revenge.
  • Possibly he had no family or friends apart from his wife. Might help to explain his devotion to her.
  • Do we know for sure that he never did though? It's just that it was irrelevant to the main plot so it wasn't shown onscreen. The film isn't necessarily any more reliable than Leonard's memory... On another thought though, I can also imagine that if he really feels the urge to communicate with someone in particular, he might resist it just for fear that he's actually doing it all the time and thus bothers that person more than he would like to. Of course, if this is the problem, he might eventually condition himself to deal with this issue as well (like always noting the date and time of every conversation to each significant person and keeping these notes in a particular pocket).
• When Leonard got the tattoo, how did he remember that the "I" wasn't a "1"? The way he wrote them, they looked the same, and the tattoo lady put a "1" on his leg. While Leonard was a very observant person, I doubt he paid attention to the pattern of letters and numbers on the license plate.
  • Even if he did screw up one letter for a number, it wouldn't have really mattered. If you put in a license number when searching for who owns the car, it would still come up as Teddy owning the car. All Natalie would have to say is that find out who owns this number and the person might have the name John G. Typically you only need a few letters to search for the car (hence why cops can catch you on cameras even if you have a few numbers blocked). It is also somewhat implied that Natalie met Teddy before so once she saw his picture she knew he was a cop.
  • There are actually some letters that can't be used in official identification like plates and licenses. I and O are among them because they resemble 1 and 0 too much in non serif text. This is also the case in insurance, which was Leonard's job. So he would know this.
• What's with that short shot late in the movie where Lenny's wife is lying on his chest and he already has all of his tattoos? This doesn't fit with the timeline of the movie as I see it. Thoughts? He is only supposed to have tattoed the John G bit after he's found out he's killed his wife.
  • Could be just to illustrate that there is no such thing as a "perfect memory" - even the things he remembers pre-amnesia can become blurred and distorted over time.
  • This troper took it to be Leonard accepting what Teddy said to be true (about killing the original John G) and deciding that Teddy would be his final John G (as revenge for manipulating him). Afterwards he would get the tattoo "I've Done It" and finally be at peace regarding his wife. It could also be an implication that this time Leonard will remember the kill because of conditioning (which is a big thing in the movie). After tracking down and killing his wife's murderer over and over for something like a year this time it sticks (if not the exact details the fact that he did it). Either way I think it's supposed to be symbolic of Teddy being Leonard's final John G.

• After the final scene, why didn't Leonard just kill Teddy there and then? I'd say that this wish to rather artificially prolong "the investigation" sadly testifies against the abovementioned theory that Teddy will be Leonard's last kill...
  • It could be because Leonard doesn't actually see himself as a murderer; he sees himself as a crusader of justice for his wife's death. Sure, he can end the life of the man who killed her, but that's about it. Teddy even (correctly) calls him out on this. Leonard knows he's not capable of killing Teddy just for manipulating him, but if he believes Teddy killed his wife...
  Leonard (putting a gun to Teddy's chin): I should kill you.
  Teddy (casually pushing the gun away from his chin): Quit it! Lenny, come on; you're not a killer, that's why you're so good at it.
  • In fact, when Leonard puts the gun to his chin, Teddy doesn't show any fear or concern (if anything he shows amused annoyance); Teddy doesn't believe for one moment Leonard is actually going to pull the trigger, which could mean this is not the first time Leonard has pointed a gun at Teddy (we know for a fact it's not the last time Leonard will do it). For all we know, this could be how it plays out every single time Leonard finds his John G (except for the original John G). The only difference between all these times and the last time (start of the movie/end of the story) is that Leonard believed Teddy to be John G.
    • This is why Leonard makes the license plate note, to set himself up to kill Teddy. He could not do it in the heat of the moment because as Teddy himself notes, Leonard isn't a killer. So after Teddy's told him the whole truth, but before he forgets, he makes the cold-blooded decision to copy down the license plate, thus directing himself to Teddy to murder him.

• How would Teddy know the real backstory of Sammy? One possible answer is that he checked all the potential enemies of Shelbys while investigating the assault - including all those whom Leonard had rubbed against the grain in his capacity as an insurance inspector. And, for that matter, how would Teddy know why Leonard's wife went along with him giving her multiple insulin injections? Did he manage to extract it from Lenny's mind only for the latter to conveniently forget it again?
  • The insulin injections were the real reason that Mrs. Shelby died and why Leonard went to the insane asylum. That would have been public record. So while Teddy knows that the killers didn't kill Mrs. Shelby, he does know that the real John G raped Leonard's wife, caused Leonard's condition, destroyed Leonard's life, and indirectly caused the death of Mrs. Shelby by being the reason that Leonard has his condition in the first place. And as you say, at any point Teddy could have dug into Leonard's background while investigating his case and found out the story of the real Sammy Jankis the con artist.
  • Teddy probably looked into Sammy's file after hearing about him for the umpteenth time from Leonard. As for the situation with the wife, I'm sure there was a police report regarding her death. They were probably able to piece together that Leonard was the one who gave her her shots, and maybe even figured out what she was trying to do (or Teddy may have made that connection himself, especially if he knew the real Sammy story in addition to Leonard's version). We have every reason to believe that Teddy is not lying about being a cop, so it shouldn't be difficult for him to get access to either file.

• How did Teddy and Leonard get together, after Leonard's escape from the mental hospital, and begin their murder spree? Did Teddy go looking for an escaped Leonard, find him, and then decide to help him find John G rather than turning him back in to the asylum? Why didn't Teddy, who has a lot more resources at his disposal than Leonard does and also is not burdened with a severe mental disability, send Leonard back to the nut house and then go look for John G on his own?
  • For that matter, is it confirmed Leonard escaped from the hospital? If so, how on earth did he remain at large long enough to kill at least two people? He’s not exactly subtle. And if he was released, who decided he was fit to return to society? Even a cop like Teddy couldn’t have set that up, considering how much of a danger Leonard had already shown he was to others…