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Amnesiac Lover

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Jasper: I'm sorry, I don't love you.
Agnes: What? — Jasper, don't move, the glass is cracking!
Jasper: Jasper? Who's Jasper?

Alice and Bob are very much in love. However, due to cruel fate and improbable circumstances, Bob has recently been the victim of some Laser-Guided Amnesia — or possibly some Identity Amnesia — that specifically targeted their shared memories of being a couple. Now Bob is in the difficult position of neither knowing who he is, nor why this crazy person insists they're in love. Alice has her work cut out for her as well. She'll have to help her Amnesiac Lover either remember his love, or even find their love all over again, in the hope that unlike lightning, love can strike in the same place twice.

This is no easy task, depending on how much of his memory is lost. While helping Bob recover the lost pieces of his identity, Alice will be further tortured by being both with and without the man she loves. If she shows her full feelings too quickly, she risks losing him entirely, ranging from him being creeped out, to feeling manipulated.

Bob may not even want to love Alice back (at least at first). Complicating matters, he may instead start falling for someone else — or even worse, perhaps in the past he was in love with somebody else and thinks he's still with them.

Where this gets interesting is if both Alice and Bob have suffered the effects of amnesia, in which case they'll somehow manage to gravitate back towards each other as if they shared a Reincarnation Romance. The effects are much the same if Time Travel is involved, though at least in these cases Alice may be able to convince Bob they're a couple in the future thanks to knowledge of his personal life. If Bob is dead in the present, expect Alice to be especially melancholy at the situation.

Compare Relationship Reset Button.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Berserk: Casca has a severe, trauma-induced case of this as a result of the horrible events of the Eclipse which drove her insane and rendered her mute. One can hardly blame Guts for being madder than hell at Griffith for driving her into this state, but leaving her to deal with her trauma alone for two years to pursue vengeance against him did not help matters for her at all.
  • In Bloom Into You, the School Play is about a high school girl who lost her memory. The girl's lover, an older female coworker from their part-time job, is one of the three people who visits her in the hospital, and describes her as a needy crybaby (unlike The Ace her schoolmate saw her as or the Aloof Big Sister she was to her brother). The girl herself is initially skeptical, but in the ending to the original play, chooses to "become" the person her lover saw her as. In the revised ending, she chooses to stay true to her current self, and she and her lover hope to start over.
  • In the Case Closed Non-Serial Movie Captured in Her Eyes, Ran Mouri briefly spends some time as a mix of The Ophelia and this to Shinichi/Conan due to Trauma-Induced Amnesia. She recovers towards the end, however.
  • Ceres, Celestial Legend inverts this: Tooya is an amnesiac when he and Aya fall in love to begin with. It's when he gets his memories back that he forgets about her. Then those memories turn out to be fake...
  • By the end of Charlotte, Yuu has lost most of his memories thanks to the extent that he had to use his plunder ability. Naturally, this includes the promise that he and Nao made that they'd start dating when he got back. However, despite some initial confusion, he seems to take her introducing herself as his girlfriend fairly well.
  • Played for Laughs in Cheerful Amnesia, where Arisa has forgotten her entire two year long relationship with her girlfriend Mari but is still in love with her (a flashback establishes that Arisa initially fell in Love at First Sight). There are a few issues (pre-amnesia Arisa was the one who usually took the initiative in the relationship, leaving neither of them with any idea how to engage in intimacy), but it's usually the source of jokes.
  • Unrequited variation in Code Geass: Shirley is very much in love with oblivious Lelouch, yet some very traumatic events in her life force him to erase all memories of him from her mind. Over the next year, she eventually falls in love with him all over again, and again when she eventually regains her original memories, including that part where she discovered that he was responsible for her father's death.
  • Daimos inverts this. Kazuya Ryuuzaki discovers an amnesiac woman on the cliffs one day and falls in love with her. He's enamoured by her and visits her in the hospital after she faints, and she falls for him in return. When her memories return and she realizes that she is the Princess of the Baam-seijin - a.k.a. the very aliens warring with Earth right nownote , she feels horrified and tries to leave him. However, Kazuya assures her that her being an alien won't change their love one bit, and that makes her heart fill with joy.
  • In EDENS ZERO, this is revealed to be a mutual case with Witch of the Four Shining Stars and Wizard of the Dark Shining Stars, once engaged to be married 20,000 years ago when they were the humans Regret and Leonard but now mutual enemies. In Universe 31, it's believed that Ziggy, before being taken over by Edens One, took the memories from the two and the other stars so they would be better prepared to fight each other.
  • Used tragically in ef - a fairy tale of the two.. Chihiro is only able to remember new things up to 13 hours after they happen. If she doesn't constantly read her diary and write events in well thinking about events throughout the day, they will be completely forgotten. This also means no matter how hard she tries, she'll never truly be mentally older than 13 years old. Her eventual boyfriend Renji and her are constantly struggling with this fact and it gets worse before it gets better. An underlining theme throughout the story is the fact The Power of Love will not help along this road and Chihiro will never recover.
    • She even completely forgets Renji and everything else after she suddenly collapses and sleeps for more than 13 hours, causing her to wake up with no memory of her accident and have to find out everything about her life up until that point all over again, which wasn't the first time this had happened.
  • Get Backers: Played with. Ban and Ginji are approached by an amnesiac man who wants them to recover his memories, apparently after he lost them when he and his girlfriend drove their car over a cliff and into the ocean. The girlfriend in question doesn't want him to recover his memories, even asking them to stop because "some things are better left unremembered". Eventually, the man recovers his memories through Ban's use of Jagan, and they figure out they were spies working for a syndicate of the underworld, and now they wish to escape abroad and leave their old life behind.
  • In Hibiki's Magic, Master Shirotsuki must sacrifice memories in order to use his magic. Things become tragic when he continually forgets his lover Yui, even though she tries her best to keep reminding him every time it happens. He eventually ends the cycle when he tells her to leave him the next time he forgets.
  • In Meru Puri, a magic spell on Prince Aram wipes all his memories of his human fiancee, Airi. Subsequent plot involves Aram thinking Airi is a Stalker with a Crush, Airi trying to make Aram remember her, and the people who created the spell trying to stop her.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Neo Roanoke ends up in this position once he's taken prisoner by the crew of the Archangel, who confirm that he's actually Captain Murrue Ramius's presumed-dead lover Mu La Flaga - at least in body. Amnesiac Dissonance sets in immediately, to the point that when Murrue tries to set him free, he comes back of his own accord to help the Archangel in battle, even though he doesn't recover his memories until the finale.
  • Played for Laughs in a chapter of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. Kashima becomes a victim of Nozaki's hypnosis and forgets who her beloved Hori is as a result, much to the drama club's horror. Amusingly, she still acts casual around him thanks to her friendly personality, calling him "Masayan" and constantly pestering him.
  • In Sailor Moon, Mamoru becomes one of these in the anime-only Makaiju arc, due to being the last of everyone involved in the previous arc to regain his memories. He still had a subconscious desire to help Usagi, leading to the "birth" of the Mysterious Protector Moonlight Knight who takes up the Tuxedo Mask role of sorts.
  • Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Partway through the series, Yuki Mori regains all the memories she had lost in her backstory, at the cost of all the memories she had gained since the moment she had originally gotten amnesia. This includes all her memories of her fiance Kodai, as they didn't know each other before the incident that cost her her original memories.
  • Strawberry Panic!: Amane loses her memories of both the Etoile election and her love for Hikari. She gets them back after a while, when hearing Hikari sing.
  • Played with in To Heart 2 Takaaki an Iron Claw so severe that he gets amnesia, cue every girl within earshot hearing about it and trying to convince the Lucky Bastard that they were lovers.
  • Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-: Princess Sakura, at least before the Mind Screw plot sets in. The Witch of Space-Time strikes a deal with Syaoran that he can travel through dimensions freely to recover Sakura's memories, but at the cost of his relationship with Sakura - the most precious thing in the cosmos to him. The Witch later reveals that this counts as Sakura's payment as well (she was unconscious when the transaction was made), because she also treasures their relationship. To twist the knife further, there's a tiny Reset Button in place: any time Sakura figures out that she must have known Syaoran before she lost her memory, she'll be knocked out and wake up again, having forgotten even that.

    Comic Books 
  • Taskmaster: In the 2010 mini, it is revealed that Taskmaster's ability to copy other peoples fighting styles comes at the price of his personal memories. He eventually remembers that he used to be a SHIELD agent and the waitress that has been tagging along with him is really his wife and also a SHIELD agent. Sadly, to save her he copies the fighting style of the guy who's attacking them, thus causing him to forget her again, leaving Mercedes alone once again. She even implies that this isn't the first time she has managed to make him remember her.

    Fan Works 
  • Given that Bucky was canonically brainwashed and continually mind-wiped by HYDRA as the Winter Soldier for seventy years, this trope automatically comes into effect in post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier Bucky/Steve fics and Bucky/Natasha fics that draw on their characters' history in the Red Room from the original comic books. Bucky/Steve fics also tend to play with this trope quite a bit: some invert it with Bucky's feelings for Steve as the only thing he can remember at first and others subvert it with Bucky coming to believe that he and Steve were lovers only to learn that they never actually were.
  • When Marinette finds out that she kissed Chat Noir while both were under amnesia in Accidental Amnesiac Cheating, it causes her immense guilt since it can be argued that she was cheating on Kagami.
  • In Advice and Trust, Rei ends up losing all memories of Kaworu (right after she begins to return his affection) due to being killed in a Heroic Sacrifice and then restored with a memory backup from before they met. She finds it very hard to believe that she could have ever fallen in love with an angel, and probably would have dismissed it as a lie if Asuka and Shinji (whom she trusts implicitly) hadn't corroborated the story. She gets all her memories back when she taps back into her Psychic Link with Lilith.
  • Many A Certain Magical Index fics, like Twist of Fate, incorporate the fan theory that Touma was a close childhood friend or even boyfriend of Misaki before he suffered amnesia early in the series.
  • Danganronpa Reimagined: A major revelation is that Makoto Naegi and Sayaka Maizono were dating before the Tragedy, and that they got married before Junko stole their memories and forced them into the Killing Game. Not only that, but Sayaka is currently pregnant with her and Makoto's child, conceived before the Killing Game.
  • Doctor Who;
    • "The Other Has My Heart" basically sees the Eleventh Doctor both take this into account and fail to take it into account when he has to use the Chameleon Arch on himself while travelling with Clara and create a fake life in the 1940s. He anticipated that his human self would be in love with Clara and created a history where they were married, but because of his complex relationship with River Song and the subconscious impression that he has something to hide from Clara "John Smith" now remembers having an affair with River when they both worked in military intelligence during the war.
    • "The Wedding of Yasmin Kahn" has an unconventional case where one party only thinks this applies. When Yasmin Kahn is seriously injured on their latest trip, the Thirteenth Doctor takes her for medical treatment and has to claim to be Yaz's wife to be allowed greater input into the treatment. As a result, when Yaz regains consciousness with some of her recent memories hazy after the treatment, she incorrectly assumes that she and the Doctor genuinely did get married and she's just forgotten about it, leaving the Doctor in an awkward position as Yaz affirms she's been in love with the Doctor for ages.
  • This happened to Danny and Sam in the Facing the Future Series when Nocturne trapped them in a dream world and sealed away their memories of each other. However, they ended up falling in love again before recovering their memories.
  • The Victorious fic "Fever" opens with Tori realising that she's in love with Jade and writing a song to confess her feelings, only for a car accident to take away all memory of her time at Hollywood Arts. However, with Jade treating her far more kindly this time around compared to how she reacted to Tori's arrival the "first" time around, it doesn't take long for Tori to fall for Jade all over again, culminating in her singing her song at Prome and Jade taking her away to confess her feelings to Tori for real.
  • The Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic "The Night Remembers" basically makes Buffy one when she is brought back to life with total amnesia and quickly develops an attachment to Angel even before she learns that they used to be together. Many of her early recollections actually focus on Angel; even her first flashback, which featured Angel and Riley, features Buffy recalling that she was more focused on Angel over Riley.
  • Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: True Colours: Rico and Terry's relationship is complicated when Rico is attacked by a Nihilego, making him forget everything about Terry. They try to continue their romance, but Rico eventually breaks up with Terry, finding it too strange, and goes into a relationship with Lupe. It isn't until Rico's memories are eventually restored that their love is able to be salvaged.
  • This happens to Crowley in Pray for Us, Icarus when he begins to be constantly reincarnated as a human with no memories of his past lives or having once been a demon. He falls in love with Aziraphale pretty much every time he's reincarnated, but is unable to retain memories of all the times they've spent together other than a sense of Wistful Amnesia and strange dreams about times gone by. Though ironically, he and Aziraphale weren't lovers before he became human, and they probably would never have become lovers if his reincarnating hadn't caused him to forget that he used to be a demon who wasn't allowed to fraternize with an angel like Aziraphale.
  • The Resident Evil fanfic the ringing in my ears gets violent has Leon Kennedy, in much the same vein as the Captain America: The Winter Soldier fics, as a Brainwashed and Crazy amnesiac going up against his almost-lover Chris Redfield. Chris is initially unaware of this trope being in play, but once he is, he's deeply heartbroken.
  • In the Supernatural fic Rivers Always Reach the Sea, Castiel loses his memories of being in love with Dean, including his Anguished Declaration of Love to him, due to the Empty taking them away from him before he was rescued which causes him to respond to Dean telling him that he loves him too with confusion and a rejection that breaks Dean's heart.
  • While Kushina was pregnant with Naruto in Seal Shatter, Minato went on a mission that resulted in him losing his memory. Due to their relationship being a secret, many of Minato's admirers tried to take advantage of his amnesia to claim Minato for themselves. While Kushina was sorely tempted to reveal her relationship with him, she ultimately decided against it; Minato wouldn't get get his memories back until more than a decade later.
  • In chapter 38 of A Starstruck, Phantasmic Romance, Vlad erases a year's worth of memories from Starfire, which unfortunately means that she has forgotten her relationship with Danny.
  • In When She Smiles (Fresh C), Asuka loses her memories after the end of the world, including everything regarding their relationship with Shinji, who is at a loss as to how to help her.

    Films — Animation 
  • Both Cinderella and the Prince undergo this in Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, thanks to the Stepmother using magic to reverse time and keep Cinderella from ever trying on the glass slipper. Because they're in true love or some such thing, the two instinctively are drawn together anyway. This makes the Stepmother's plan to get the Prince to marry Anastasia instead much more difficult. At the end of the movie, the Fairy Godmother offers to undo the magic spell so that they all go back to the original timeline (and, implicitly, get back their original memories), but decides not to since Cinderella and the Prince seem to be getting along fine as it is.
  • One Stormy Night: Near the end of the movie, Gabu gets caught in an avalanche and forgets who he is and his relationship with Mei. It is one of the few times in the movie when Mei really loses his cool, and he damn well does. Made even worse by the fact that Gabu is not just apathetic to Mei - he actually wants to eat him. He gets better, thankfully.
  • Inverted in Toy Story 3, both Evil Buzz and Spanish Buzz are still in love with Jessie. However, because there has not been any Relationship Upgrade, to Jessie this isn't the loss of a boyfriend, but of just a close and reliable friend.
  • WALL•E ends with EVE rebuilding WALL-E and trying to show him his favorite things, only to have him revert to his original programming as a trash compactor. He eventually snaps out of it when she hums his favorite love song. Some viewers interpreted this as his memory drives needing extra time to boot up after his near-destruction. Others called it The Power of Love.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Inverted in 36 Hours (1965). Major Jefferson Pike is told that during the period which he can no longer remember (from 1944 to 1950) he fell in love with and married Anna Hedler, who is now distraught that he can no longer remember her. It's all part of an elaborate plan of deception. He never had amnesia. He never married Anna. And it's not 1950.
  • The film 50 First Dates was all about this. Due to a brain injury, the female protagonist can't form new long-term memories, and when she falls asleep, forgets everything since her car accident. The male protagonist is a womanizer who enjoys "meeting" her and winning her love every day.
  • Of a sort in About Time. Tim and Mary have a brilliant first date, but it gets erased when he goes back in time to help a friend instead of going to the restaurant.
  • The end of Dark City (1998).
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop variant in Edge of Tomorrow. Cage becomes increasingly drawn to Rita with each loop, but she has no memory of him whenever time resets. Rita cuts herself off others because she used to be stuck in a similar loop where she fell in love with another soldier only to be unable to save his life in over 300 loops, so it's implied she knows exactly what's happening with Cage and is refusing to play along. In their final mission which they know they won't survive as Cage has lost his powers, Rita unwinds enough to give Cage a kiss for the first and last time. They both get killed but time gets reset this time permanently, and Cage is shown seeking out Rita and smiling when she gives her usual hostile response to his approach, clearly hoping to win her over again.
  • At the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Joel and Clementine get a second chance at romance. (Both-have-amnesia variant.) Word of God indicates the sequence during the closing credits is meant to indicate they go through this over and over afterwards
  • Fast & Furious 6 reveals that Letty survived her supposed death in Fast & Furious, but now has amnesia and is working with Owen Shaw. Dom struggles to get Letty to remember him and get her back on the team.
  • Hancock has a plot twist where it turns out the titular Hancock used to have a wife before he lost his memory. Played with because the audience doesn't learn this until Hancock does.
  • In It's a Wonderful Life, Mary naturally loses all memory of George after Clarance made it as if George had never been born. George is extremely upset to find that his wife doesn't recognize him, and tearfully tries to get her to remember. Because this version of Mary grew up in a Crapsack World and thus is extremely withdrawn, she just freaks out and runs for it.
  • In Love Letters, Allen (a soldier) falls in love with Roger's girlfriend who he writes his love letters for. She loses her memory when she kills Roger when she finds out he didn't write those letters. Allen then tries to find her and romance her without letting her know that he wrote those letters.
  • The Muppets Take Manhattan: This happens to Kermit after he is hit by a car. When he Miss Piggy tries to convince him that they are in love, he makes a series of pig jokes which result in Piggy punching him across the room. This, of course, results in his memory returning completely.
  • My Amnesia Girl: Subverted. Irene pretends to have amnesia in an attempt to avoid her ex-fiancé Apollo for leaving her at the altar. When Apollo tries to bond with her again, she slowly starts to fall in love with him again despite her "amnesia". Then this gets Double Subverted when Apollo becomes this to Irene after he gets in a car crash while he and Irene are about to get back together.
  • Once Upon a Time (2017): While using the alias Su Su, Bai Qian falls in love with Ye Hua. They get married and have a child. Then Bai Qian loses her memories of her time as Su Su after jumping off the Execution Platform. It makes things very complicated when she falls in love with Ye Hua again.
  • The Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell movie Overboard has this trope invoked. Kurt Russell's character takes advantage of Goldie's amnesia to fool her into believing she's his wife as revenge for stiffing him on a closet he built for her. Of course, they actually do fall in love.
  • In Random Harvest, based on a novel by James Hilton, a shell-shocked amnesiac veteran wanders away from a hospital and meets a music hall performer. They make a life together until he is hit by a car and gets up off the ground with his old memories back, and no memory of being with the other woman. He returns to his old life, and we are surprised to find that a few years later his secretary is his wife, who tracked down her missing husband and got the job to be near the man she loves hoping that his memory will return. It does. Check out the Carol Burnett version "Rancid Harvest".
  • Done very well in the Harrison Ford movie Regarding Henry. A shooting victim in a store robbery, the main character loses his memory and, in essence, becomes someone his wife has to fall in love with all over again (but a much nicer person than he was).
  • In Time Cop, Van Damme's character is in this situation regarding his wife who is dead in the present.
  • In A Very Long Engagement, Mathilde eventually learns that Manech is alive, but entirely lost his memory and has been given a new identity. The film ends with their "introduction."
  • The Vow: A couple on their way to being Happily Married get into a car accident and suddenly she doesn't remember who she is or who her husband is. Probably Based on a True Story where the poor husband's first conversation after a series of strokes was "It's me, I'm your wife!" "What's a 'wife'?"
  • X-Men: Apocalypse has a case of someone inflicting the amnesia on purpose on their loved one. When Charles and Moira reunite 21 years after the events of X-Men: First Class, he has trouble acting like they've never met before. Charles gives Moira her memories back at the end of the movie.

    Literature 
  • Roland from After the Revolution is an amnesiac Super-Soldier who is haunted by fragmented memories of a woman which are associated with strong feelings of love. He eventually meets her halfway through the book, but since he remembers nothing about her except that he used to love her he's unwilling to try to reconnect, and she knows he's amnesiac and doesn't want to either because Topaz was there when he lost his memories, and the newly amnesiac Roland promptly abandoned her and their mutual friends instead of trying to reconnect with them. He's since lost his memories again, and can't remember having abandoned her. At the end of the book, Roland loses his memories once again, and once again he abandons everyone he's come to care about throughout the book.
  • One of the Amelia Peabody books features Amelia's husband Emerson losing his memories of meeting, falling in love with, and marrying her.
  • Subverted in L. M. Montgomery's Anne's House of Dreams. A neighbor's husband was abusive. It was thought he had died on a sailing voyage. When traveling Captain Jim recognizes an man who not only has amnesia but brain damage as the missing husband, in part because he has 1 brown and 1 blue eye. Gilbert believes that surgery to relieve pressure from a depressed section of skull could help him. When the man wakes up from surgery it is revealed he isn't the abusive husband, but the husband's double first cousin. The cousin had a strong family resemblance down to the different colored eyes.
  • The Camp Half-Blood Series:
  • A Certain Magical Index: It is eventually revealed that Touma Kamijou and Misaki Shokuhou used to be best friends with Misaki wanting it to become more. One day, Touma suffered brain damage in a fight that destroyed his memories of her. Even worse, his brain is incapable of forming new memories of her, and only her. Whenever they talk to each other, he automatically forgets about her as soon as they separate. Misaki is still deeply in love with him and says she will wait as long as it takes for him to remember her. She finds some hope when he out of nowhere remembers smelling her favorite perfume. Eventually, Misaki gives in to despair and joins forces with an evil clone of Touma because he does remember her, as she is so desperate to be with a Touma who knows her. Then the clone gets destroyed and she is forced to make amends for the people she hurt while on his side.
  • In Don't Look Back, Sam and Del were dating and were apparently "perfect" together before her disappearance and memory loss. She finds out later that this couldn't be further from the truth: they had vicious arguments, especially over an explicit photo he took of her without her knowledge and circulated among his friends, and on the night she disappeared, she dumped him and took off the necklace he gave her because of his cheating with Cassie. He lied to her early on and told her she had only taken off the necklace to shower; discovering he'd been lying about their relationship all along is what gives Sam the final incentive to dump him for good.
  • In The Dresden Files, Lea temporarily takes away Susan's memories of her relationship with Harry. Which wouldn't be as bad if it didn't happen in the middle of a vampire ball, just as Harry needed her to trust him and just run for her life.
  • Fate:Lost Einherjar: Aslaug and her husband Ragnar Lodbrok are summoned as Servants together on the same team. For some reason, Aslaug has no memory of him.
  • In The Hunger Games, this is the case with Peeta after he is tortured by the capitol. While he isn't completely amnesiac, he does forget that he was once in love with Katniss. And then he tries to strangle her.
  • Indigo: The book Aisling inverts this trope. A Dogged Nice Guy lies to the heroine after she loses her memory due to head injury, claiming that she's engaged to marry him. They'd known each other, but she was uninterested and engaged to someone else anyway. He's treated surprisingly sympathetically for someone who takes advantage of her in that way.
  • In The Innkeeper's Song, Lukassa can't remember anything of her life or her lover Tikat, because of her recent death and subsequent revival.
  • Legend Series: At the end of Champion, Day is brought to near death, and has to undergo an experimental treatment that saves him but renders him partially amnesiac. He no longer remembers June, his girlfriend, who decides to let him go and experience a life without her. A decade later, however, they unexpectedly reunite. Although he still has no memory of June, Day feels that she is familiar to him in some way, and definitely wants to know her better. So their relationship begins again, even if it's from scratch.
  • The Lightlark Saga: Isla is revealed to be this to Grim; they'd met a year earlier and became lovers, but Grim himself erased her conscious memories of their entire relationship, though she does still have dreams about their past together. Grim reluctantly did this because Aurora's plan required that Oro fall in love with Isla, but Aurora and Grim didn't believe it would work if Isla was already in love with Grim, thinking she wouldn't be willing to go along with it. It backfires because Isla ends up falling in love with Oro too and rejects Grim when she discovers his deception, never truly regaining her memories of their relationship, although Grim insists that her memories will return and she'll think differently then.
  • In Devon Monk's novel Magic to the Bone, having caused Victory-Guided Amnesia in herself, Allie learns at the end that she had fallen in love in the course of the novel. She and the man meet again, tentatively, at the end.
  • The Participants by Brian Blose has the character Zack, who spent thousands of years as the love of Elza before repressing his memories after being buried alive.
  • In the Relativity story "Sinkhole", Sara has lost two years' worth of memories, including meeting her husband Phil. Though he's a total stranger to her, he seems nice enough and she decides to try to make it work. However, he does have a nasty side which surfaces occasionally... Oh, and the reader knows from page one that Phil is actually a supervillain.
  • In the Piers Anthony Xanth novel The Source of Magic, a Forget Spell is damaged when magic is temporarily taken away. A common farmer is eventually brought back to his home and family whom he doesn't recognize. Fortunately, he finds his "wife" quite comely and looks forward to falling in love with her again.
  • The trilogy that makes up the final Sword of Truth books features a spell that destroys everyone's memory of Richard's wife Kahlan, including Kahlan's memories of her own life and her marriage to Richard. Richard is immune to the spell and needs to find a way to help Kahlan and reverse the spell without revealing their relationship to her for fear that knowledge of their love would interfere with the counterspell. She does find out, but because she had already fallen in love with Richard again, it didn't matter.
  • In L. M. Montgomery's A Tangled Web (1931), a World War I veteran has grown somewhat fond of his wife over the years as she nursed his injuries, but he doesn't remember their falling in love and marrying. Until his head gets whacked at the end.

    Live-Action TV 

In General:

  • Often a part of Soap Opera Back from the Dead storylines. Whether or not the audience knows that the person is alive, when he/she returns to town, he/she is amnesia stricken and has either fallen in love with someone else while in their new persona and/or needs to be reminded of the love they shared with the lover they left behind:

Series:

  • All My Children:
    • Edmund's wife Maria got amnesia when she returned from the dead. It didn't help that of course, she'd fallen in love with someone else while she was away.
    • Ryan got amnesia that made him forget the past four-or-so years of his life. He couldn't even remember meeting his current wife, much less anything about her, and instead believed he was still seeing and in love with one of his ex-girlfriends. Also he had a child with another woman (which was a botched surrogacy, not another romantic relationship) he didn't remember to complicate it even further.
  • Played with in the episode of A.N.T. Farm when Olive loses her memory completely. Olive's Abhorrent Admirer, Angus, introduces himself to her as her boyfriend. She may have lost her memory, but not her mind, so she doesn't fall for that one.
  • As the World Turns:
    • Kim lost her memory, including those of her love Dan. Scheming Susan worked this to advantage, even going as far as to attempt erasure of Kim's answering machine message proclaiming that she did indeed remember Dan and their love. Susan failed and Kim and Dan were reunited.
      • When Jack was presumed dead, he had actually been rescued and nursed back to health by a woman who shared a name with his crazy ex-wife Julia. The Florence Nightingale Effect took place, to the point where he all but loathed his true love Carly when she tracked him down. It took intense work on her part to get him to remember her.
  • In the pilot for the spin-off series The Bionic Woman, Jamie Sommer's brain-damage causes her to forget who her fiancé, Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man, was. Eventually, though, she gets her memory (and feelings back) and they wed in the last of the series of tele-movies.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Two mutual examples occur in "Tabula Rasa", where the main cast all end up with a case of Identity Amnesia after one of Willow's spells goes wrong.
    • Lovers Willow and Tara are clearly still attracted to each other despite Willow initially assuming she's dating Xander because she was wearing his coat, but things go sour when their memories are restored; Tara had threatened to break up with Willow for abusing magic and casting spells on Tara to make her forget arguments they'd had, which promptly leads to Tara moving out after all the trouble Willow caused.
    • Xander and Anya forget they're engaged, with Anya actually assuming she's engaged to Giles because of the ring on her finger, them waking up close together and the papers showing they co-own the magic shop. Funnily enough, neither Anya nor Xander claims to feel any sort of connection between them, though it becomes less funny if one considers it foreshadowing of Xander leaving Anya at the altar later in the season.
  • Occurs in an episode of Castle. The man suffering from the amnesia never really gets his memories back, but since he can't remember why he and his wife divorced, they are able to get back together. Also subverted in the same episode where a woman claims to be the man's wife after seeing on the news that he had amnesia and figuring it to be an easy way to get a husband.
  • Used in Chinese Paladin 3 between Changqing and Zixuan, due to two previously failed Reincarnation Romances. In this case, it's the "I don't know why this person is bugging me (but I kind of like it)" version. Changqing eventually regains his memories, but doesn't stay with her. Initially.
  • In the Series Finale of Chuck, Sarah has had her memory of the past five years destroyed when Quinn used a faulty Intersect to wipe her mind and brainwash her, and Morgan suggests that Chuck can restore her memories with a kiss after commenting he's watched too many Disney Princess movies with baby Clara. It's hinted that Sarah's memory hasn't been totally destroyed, and while by the end of the first half Sarah acknowledges Chuck has been telling the truth about their relationship, she tells him she doesn't feel it anymore. Over the second half of the finale Chuck attempts to help restore her memory entirely and there are more bits and pieces that shows she might be able to recover, but by the end of the episode Easy Amnesia has been averted and Sarah still doesn't have all her memories. Fortunately, however, the final shot of them kissing on the beach where they met at the end of the pilot and Word of God suggests that Chuck and Sarah will ultimately remain together.
  • The plot of an episode of Doc, made more complicated by the fact that the fiancée did remember him, just as her boss, not her lover.
  • Doctor Who:
    • When Rory not only dies, but is erased from existence by a crack in time, Amy forgets everything about him. Eventually he manages to remind her (he comes back as a Roman centurion — don't ask).
    • A season later, they both manage to forget who each other are due to the Time Crash in "The Wedding of River Song". All Amy knows is that she's in love with a man named Rory; she just doesn't know what he looks like. What a shame that Officer Pond never asked what Captain Williams' first name was. They still sort it out anyway.
    • In "Hell Bent", most of the Twelfth Doctor's memories of Clara Oswald are erased by her after his love for her (whether platonic or otherwise is a matter of fan debate) drives him to threaten all of reality by attempting to change her fated death. While he retains memories of their adventures, and is able to piece together some facts such as her name, crucially he no longer remembers "what she looked like, or how she talked, or laughed..." Sadly, he says this to Clara, who is standing right in front of him and he doesn't realize it.
  • Dollhouse:
    • Happens towards the end of the series to Paul specifically. He remembers Echo but his feelings for her are wiped because Topher had to re-purpose his most active neural pathways to get Paul's limbs working again after Alpha left him brain-dead. By the post-Time Skip series finale, they're together again anyway.
    • Throughout the series, Victor and Sierra, seem to fall in love every time they meet, despite their memories constantly being wiped, no matter what personality each of them have been imprinted with. Even in their blank state, they gravitate toward one another.
  • The Good Place:
    • Everyone but Michael keeps having their minds erased from all of his hundred of reboots, but in the months between repeatedly fall in love only to have their memories erased again. However, Janet, who got married to Jason in the first generation, remains in love with him in spite of her own memory also being constantly wiped. Part of the second season (where Michael has finally stopped rebooting everyone) has a sub-plot revolving around her being miserable while Jason pursues a relationship with Tahani.
    • Happens again later: At the end of season 3, when the new Good Place experiment is being set up, the Bad Place chooses Chidi's ex Simone as one of the subjects in order to mess with him. Chidi asks Eleanor and Michael to erase his memories of Simone (whose memories of him have already been erased) so he won't slip up around her and ruin the experiment... but this will remove all his recent memories, including his memories of Eleanor, whom he's just started dating. Eleanor then has to run the experiment for a year and can't tell Chidi about their past relationship, and in fact at one point she tells Chidi that he and Simone are soulmates.
  • Season two of Grimm has a plot where Juliette can't remember Nick due to a spell. It actually turned out to be a good thing because as a result of what she went through while under the spell, when she finally remembers what Nick told her about the masquerade, she actually believes it.
  • An episode of House featured a patient who turned up in the ER with no memory of who she was. When they find out she's married, she seems repelled by both her husband and by the life she turns out to have (having no memory of their history together, or of the events that catalyzed her choices). Naturally, this disturbs her husband, but the team explains that her memories are unlikely to ever return, while he thinks of her as his wife, she sees him as someone she's just met. He appears to take their advice to court her and try to rebuild their marriage from the beginning, and she appears to be receptive.
  • A rather cruel inversion of this trope occurs at the end of the season 9 episode “Savant” of Law & Order: SVU. The Victim of the Week Corrine Nicholson wakes up from her attack with amnesia, having completely forgotten the past six months of her life. She is in love with her husband, having forgotten that she cheated on him. He, however, hasn’t forgiven her betrayal, so he takes their daughter and walks out on her, while she helplessly complains.
  • Lois & Clark: Lois, during a season three arc, goes through two versions of amnesia: one with fake memories and one that left her memories in a blank state. In both cases, she cannot recognize Clark/Superman as her fiancé. But Asabi, a psychic with Telepathy capacities, is able to tell that Lois' heart is taken.
  • On the 5th season of Mad Men, Pete Campbell starts an affair with the just-as-depressed Beth Dawes. Her husband is a philandering jerk who has her take a lot of electroshock treatments to break her out of her depression and leave behind her lovers. After one, when Pete sees her, she politely receives him as a stranger.
  • In an episode of Medium, Ariel flashes forwards to being married with a child and not remembering anything beyond high school. This is what it looks like to her husband. Then she flashes forwards again and he tells her that she never recovered her memories the last time. Yikes.
  • Inverted in The Nanny episode "Where's The Pearls?" when Fran gets amnesia and thinks she's Maxwell's wife.
  • Virtually the entire cast of Once Upon a Time. The very premise of the show is that all the characters have been ripped apart from the people they love, and their memories have been erased. The separated lovers still find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other, but they don't know why, which is especially troublesome when many of them have already married other people since the amnesia set in.
  • Subverted in a One Life to Live storyline. "Todd" (actualy the real Todd's brother) rescues an amnesiac Marty from a car wreck and nurses her back to health. He convinces her that they were friends in college and that he was secretly in love with her from afar. She falls in love with him based on this "friendship" and seduces him while in his care. It's only afterwards she learns that not only did he neglect to tell her that she had a son who was convinced she was dead, but that when they were in college together, he was the ringleader of her gang rape.
  • Occurred in an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch that parodied daytime soaps. Sabrina's beau Harvey was knocked out and lost his memory. Libby tried to pretend she and Harvey were in a relationship, but eventually Sabrina got through to him.
  • Smallville: In "Abyss", Chloe completely forgets about Jimmy due to Brainiac's influence.
  • One episode of Stargate SG-1 has the team finding a whole city on a planet that seems to have lots its memory, and two of the main people they interact with — who spend the whole episode bickering like an old married couple — turn out to have been married before the memory wipe.
  • In a Star Trek: Voyager has a few:
    • One episode the crew are abducted and their memories wiped so they can be used as labor; Official Couple B'Elanna Torres and Tom Paris manage to gravitate towards each other despite their memory loss.
    • Another has Chakotay meet a woman who claims he is this to her. She is from an alien race that gives off a pheromone that causes Laser-Guided Amnesia to all other species they come in contact with. Within a few days of being separated from them, you forget them entirely. And they have agents who enforce this by trying to erase all physical evidence of their presence. She and Chakotay had a romance months previously but she had been forced to leave by an agent of her xenophobic government, and Chakotay had completely forgotten her. They proceed to fall in love again, but then the agent returns, promptly erases erases her memories of Chakotay, and begins the process of deleting evidence of her presence from Voyager's databanks. Having no memories of Chakotay, she now wishes to leave the ship, and Chakotay desperately tries to convince her to stay by retelling their love story. He fails and she departs. He's left with nothing but memories of her that will fade within days, and resorts to writing their story down by hand on paper, as a desperate attempt to preserve some record of her.
  • An Inverted Trope occurs in an alternate future episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Captain Archer suffers from a condition where he loses his long-term memories, and T'Pol is forced to nurse him and constantly remind him each day of his condition. Both Archer and the viewer are left unclear as to just how intimate this relationship has become over the years.
  • Torchwood: In "Adam", the titular Adam is actually a memory altering alien which infiltrates the facility. While inserting memories of himself into Gwen, he accidentally erases those of her fiancé Rhys. When she gets home, not only does she not remember who is he, but thinks he's some psychopathic stalker who wants to rape her. However, once she gets over the initial shock (and her friends try to jog her memory), she is perfectly willing to let Rhys remind her of their relationship.
  • Total Recall 2070: After Olivia Hume's fake memory implant is destroyed, she doesn't remember ever meeting her husband David Hume in the first place, so they have to rekindle their romance all over again.
  • Young & Hungry has the episode aptly named "Young & Amnesia" where Josh, who was just about to declare his love for Gabi, gets scarred by a squirrel and accidentally smashes his head against a glass of Champaigne, giving him amnesia.

    Music 
  • "I Don't Remember Loving You" by John Conlee is all about this trope.
  • In "Yoiyami No Uta" from Sound Horizon's Märchen album, the amnesiac Märchen gets the feeling that he had once been in love, only for the seven dead princesses (except for one: the very girl he loved) to assure him that it's only his imagination.

    Roleplay 

    Theatre 
  • In Jasper in Deadland, Jasper has to rescue Agnes from Deadland before both of them lose all of their memories to Ghost Amnesia. He manages to find her and inadvertently restore her memories just before losing the last of his own memories, leaving him clueless as to who Agnes is and why she claims to love him.

    Video Games 
  • In the Dating Sim Always Remember Me, Amy's boyfriend Aaron loses his memory of the past few years (including their relationship). She goes through a lot of stress and a couple of emotional breakdowns while trying to help him regain his memories. That is, if you choose to stay with Aaron instead of pursuing other eligible bachelors in town.
  • Cave Story: The protagonist and Curly Brace (if you hold to the interpretation that they are a Battle Couple). In the aftermath of the Core fight, Curly sustains damage and can't remember you at all the next time you meet. You have to backtrack to nearly the beginning of the game to find an item that restores her memory. When she does get her memory back, she realizes that all your in-game interactions with her were amnesiac romance—you had been partners ten years ago, and then both she and you sustained amnesia prior to the start of the game.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Rachel is this to Locke in Final Fantasy VI. While exploring a cave, she falls and loses her memory after some nasty head trauma. Her family basically forces Locke to leave and say that him being around and trying to get her to remember him just causes her more pain. He becomes a Failure Knight after he later learns that Rachel was killed when The Empire invaded the village she lived in, and she remembered him right before she died.
    • Sir Fratley, amnesiac lover of Freya in Final Fantasy IX. A particularly bittersweet example in that the game shows this to still be the case in the epilogue. However, he is beginning to return Freya's affections and she plans on trying to start over anew anyway.
  • Played pretty straight in Fire Emblem Gaiden and even straighter in its remake, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. The White Magician Girl Tatiana is in a relationship with the knight Zeke, whom she found ashore with no memories of his past and rescued/took care of. What she doesn't know is that Zeke is actually the Anti-Villain and Black Knight Camus, believed to have died in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light; when he begins to recover his lost memories, Tatiana is very scared and conflicted, though Zeke promises that he will stay with her. What happens in the end depends on whether both of them live to the end: If both survive, Zeke fully recovers her memories and briefly leaves to help Archanea (and his former love Nyna) in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem but ultimately returns to Tatiana's side and they marry. If Tatiana dies, Zeke crosses the Despair Event Horizon and leaves to help Archanea too, but never returns to Valentia. If Zeke dies, Tatiana also crosses the Despair Event Horizon and falls in heavy depression (and only recovers in Echoes).
  • Two examples for Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Zelda and Mipha. Both had feelings for Link before the Great Calamity, and it takes Link looking at locations he had been with them to recover his memories of them. In fact, the very first thing Zelda does after Calamity Ganon is finally slain and she is free of its grasp is to ask with anticipation whether or not Link truly remembers her, the answer to which depends on the player's actions.
  • Littlewood: The Player Character is an Amnesiac Hero. One of their Romance Sidequest options is is Willow, a woman with whom they had a "spark" prior to the event that caused the amnesia. If dated, Willow will mention that she and the Hero kissed before said event.
  • In Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, Lufia loses her memories after her "death" on Doom Island. Despite this, she is shown to have feelings for the Hero when they "first" meet and the Hero still loves her.
    The Hero: "Memories... That's alright. We'll make new memories."
  • In Planescape: Torment, Deionarra has this problem: She loves The Nameless One, but the incarnation she fell in love with is long since gone and subsequent ones do not know who she is. Her love is so strong that it binds her to the world even after death. It takes on a decisively tragic bent when you learn that the incarnation she fell in love with never loved her in the first place, but purposefully deceived and used her so she would stay bound to the planes and keep on serving his designs even after death. The Nameless One has the option to reciprocate her feelings at the end of the game (or at least claim that you do out of kindness) to grant her peace.
  • Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon has an instance of this where Lusamine discovers Mohn, her missing husband who now runs Poké Pelago, visiting Aether Paradise. After talking with him a bit and confirming that he doesn't remember anything about her, Lusamine (having undergone Character Development) decides to let him go, accepting that he has found happiness.
  • Rule of Rose makes an extremely unconventional twist of this trope. It turns out that Jennifer swore everlasting true love with Wendy when they were children, but Wendy went Yandere when Jennifer got a puppy on the side, eventually leading to the deaths of everybody in the orphanage except Jennifer who lost her memory from the trauma, and the game is set in her muddled memories trying to reclaim what she lost, even though both subjects of her love are long since dead.
  • Rune Factory: With the exceptions of Frontier (a direct sequel to RF1) and Oceans, the protagonist of every game has a case of Laser-Guided Amnesia. As the series is part Dating Sim, every one of your relationships turns into this. Rune Factory 2 is the only one in the series where the protagonist explicitly get his/her memories back.note 
  • Sly Cooper plays with this trope by faking the amnesia at the end of his third game and then starting a Relationship Upgrade with Inspector Fox
  • Subverted in Tales of the Abyss. Natalia and Luke are arranged to be married and have a Childhood Marriage Promise. But later, Luke loses ALL his memories, and seven years later Natalia still can't make him fall in love with her. Then it turns out that Luke DOESN'T have amnesia, he's a clone of the real Luke and took his place, the real one having adopted another identity (Asch the Bloody) but having his memories intact and still caring for Natalia. So Luke can't remember Natalia's love because he isn't the one she loved to begin with.
  • Downplayed in To the Moon. Johnny meets River in high school, marries her as an adult, and lives happily with her until she dies from a illness in old age. What he isn't aware of is that him and River had met long before high school, and back then made a promise that if they ever got separated in some way, they would meet each other again on the Moon. But Johnny has forgotten this since his twin brother, Joey, died in an accident and he was given beta blockers to cope with the experience, and this had the side effect of suppressing almost all memories of his early childhood. When River discover that he has forgotten about their old promise, she tries for the rest of her life to subtly jog his memory, as she is implied to have Asperger's Syndrome and therefore have difficulties with telling him outright, but Johnny never realizes this. In the end, after River's death, all he remembers is a inexplicable longing to visit the Moon.
  • A non-romantic instance in The World Ends with You. Rhyme has suffered Laser-Guided Amnesia, and fails to remember that her partner Beat is her older brother. However, Rhyme is such a pure, happy little girl that she still remembers what a good person her older brother was, and talks about him and his good deeds endlessly to Beat. However, Most of that was either lies told by Beat for Rhyme's benefit, or instances from several years ago, back before he grew away from her and began to hate her just as much as the rest of his family. Although apparently even this is partly a lie, since Beat died trying to save her. Not to mention that apparently her memories of him were his most important thing, since they were taken as his entry fee.

    Visual Novels 
  • Becoming an Eternal in Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword causes everyone to forget that person ever existed. Only similar people will remember the way things were before. Which means that if it happens to the player character, the lover isn't going to remember. Except while they don't remember, their emotions will still be there. They'll just be very confused.
  • Galaxy Angel: In the final game of the first trilogy, Eternal Lovers, Milfeulle suffers an injury that removes all memory of Commander Tact Mayers, her boyfriend. He spends a great deal of time trying to restore her memories, but eventually has to settle for loving the "Milfeulle now"... until he kisses her and her memories are restored anyway in a throwaway line.
  • In Frozen Essence, the protagonist Mina suffers from Trauma-Induced Amnesia after she's freed from her Crystal Prison and hence has no memory or clue that the Oracle who rescued her and the mysterious voice that occasionally comforts or helps her is actually Zareh, her childhood friend who's in love with her and has worked hard for a long time to be able to help her. Zareh chooses not to tell Mina about this in most story paths because he believes that she'd be happier not remembering anything about her past and/or being with someone else, but his own story path has Mina regain her memories and choose to either accept or reject him.
  • Little Busters!: Every time Riki tries to ask her out, Kurugaya turns up the next day as if nothing happened. Even after they start going out, she forgets every night and has to remind herself with a Note to Self. In this case, though, the amnesia is specifically caused by the fact that they're lovers - the world they are in didn't expect that and so can't cope with it, causing it to break down.
  • Shall We Date?: Ninja Shadow has Eduard, a Dutch man who cannot remember what he did and how he lived before coming to the still-isolated Japan and working for both the Dutch trading houses and the Nagasaki Vigilantes. It turns out to be Trauma-Induced Amnesia, coming from having been a Tyke Bomb for a guild of Dutch assassins. The Big Bad of the route, Willem, aims to make Eduard remember so he'll return.
  • If you screw up the timeline in Tick! Tack!, Nerine will eventually forget who Rin is, though since she still longs for him for some reason it manages to work out okay anyway.

    Web Animation 
  • Etra chan saw it!: Kuroki loses his memories relating to his wife, Yuri, due to being overworked for a year. Yuri tries to help Kuroki regain those lost memories, which rekindles their romance.
  • Murder Drones: N's flashback dream at the beginning of the second episode reveals that in a previous life, V and N had a mutual crush on each other. While N still has a crush on her, he doesn't remember their shared past prior to them becoming disassembly drones. Meanwhile, it's made clear that V likely remembers all the details concerning how they ended up on Copper 9, but chooses to obfuscate both this information and her continued feelings for him, believing that he'd be far happier not knowing anything, even if he comes to hate her for the deception.
  • Sekai No Fushigi: Aina lost her memories when she got involved in an accident including memories of her brother Haruto. Her parents took advantage of the situation to prevent their marriage, preferring her to be married to Ichinose, a rich man. Haruto briefly gave up but Atsushi convinces him to come back to the hospital, and he was able to get Aina to fall back in love with him. At the end of the story, Haruto and Aina get married although Aina still hasn't regained her memories.

    Webcomics 
  • In Binary Stars, Anastasia has lost her memory of her life before being possibly shot in the head, but even in her dream flashbacks the name of her husband is specifically pixelated out.
  • In Vinci and Arty, a knock to the head makes Vinci forget everything that has happened since he moved from Greece to the United States, like learning the English language or being in love with Arty. What makes it worse for Arty is that pre-immigration Vinci was apparently kinda homophobic.

    Web Original 
  • Gemma and the Bear is a rather unusual series about a white woman (Gemma) who turns into a gay black man (Bear) at night. Unfortunately, she has no memory of anything he does. In a misguided attempt to find himself and Gemma a man, Bear has the annoying habit of bringing dates home, leaving Gemma to wake up with random guys in her bed. (Don't worry, it's Played for Laughs.)

    Western Animation 
  • The episode "Betty" in Adventure Time ends like this — once Betty restores the Ice Crown's magic in order to save her fiance, Simon/Ice King, from succumbing to No Immortal Inertia, it erases his memories and he once again has no idea who she is. However, she is still in Ooo searching for a cure for him, so there may be hope yet.
  • Aladdin: The Series:
    • In the episode "Sandswich", everyone but the animals sidekicks is rendered amnesiac, and believe Sadira is the princess- and Aladdin's fiancee. Thus Aladdin and Jasmine fall both under the trope; and it rings a bell to the both of them when they meet again. They finally break the curse with a spontaneous True Love's Kiss.
    • In "Forget Me Lots", Jasmine's new memories of a Criminal Amnesiac are so strong that even after seeing her loved ones, she is still trying to kill them. Still, when Aladdin reminds her that they met and fell in love exactly a year ago, it cures her.
  • An episode of American Dad! took it a step further, with Francine not just losing her memories but reverting to herself from college, where she was a drunken free-spirited party girl. Stan, who's just about the definition of "The Man", had to try to win her back by convincing her that he had a sensitive side (which he managed to do after failing several times by saying I Want My Beloved to Be Happy).
  • In the Futurama episode "Fun on the Bun", Leela undergoes literal Laser-Guided Amnesia after thinking she ate Fry, who was presumed to have fallen into a sausage maker. Fry however fell down a chasm, hitting his head, and discovered a hidden society of Neanderthals who assumed he was one of them because of his swollen forehead and natural stupidity. Fry eventually leads the Neanderthals to battle against the Homo Sapiens, and just has he and Leela are about to kill each other, they both regain their memories and unite the two species.
  • Kim Possible suffers Phlebotinum-induced amnesia in the fourth season episode "Clean Slate". After a night of reviewing childhood memories, she soon remembers that Ron is her Best Friend, but finds it laughably unlikely that they had got a Relationship Upgrade. It takes seeing his pants fall down to remember that she gave him a belt for their "half-a-versary" and that she does love him in that way.
  • Miraculous Ladybug:
    • "Oblivio" inverts the trope. The Monster of the Week's power is inducing amnesia, resulting in the heroes forgetting that they're not already a couple. Their obvious mutual attraction and things like them having photos of each other as the wallpapers of their cellphones gives them the obvious but wrong conclusion.
    • The third season finale has Master Fu being held dead to rights by the villains trying to get information out of him, so he decides to quit being a Guardian and pass his duties on to Ladybug. This causes him to forget everything from his time as a Guardian, making him useless to the villains so they let him go. Marinette then hooks him back up with his old girlfriend, who he previously couldn't be with due to It's Not You, It's My Enemies. He doesn't remember her, of course, but still falls in love with her at "first" sight, and remarks that despite the fact that (as far as he knows) he's never met her before, he feels like he's known her forever.
  • The Simpsons:
    • The trope is the main focus on the episode "Regarding Margie", in which Marge got amnesia from bumping her head on a stool.
    • Don Hertzfeldt's Couch Gag for "Clown in the Dumps" posits a particularly horrifying scenario: as the show continues to air for century after century, the art design changes radically, with increasingly abstract versions of Marge struggling to tell Homer that she loves him and will never forget him. But by the year 10,535, the characters have mutated beyond all recognition — confronted with grotesque, catchphrase-spouting children and a vacant wife who can only shout alien propaganda, Homer utters a rather forlorn version of his trademark [annoyed grunt].
  • Early in season 5 of Winx Club, Sky takes a hit for Bloom from Icy, injuring him and causing him to fall from a great height. He's miraculously alive from the fall, but now he doesn't know who Bloom or also how use a sword. Bloom tries to jog his memories, but her attempts are usuless and leave him annoyed and frustrated. More later, he regain his memories when Flora gives him the Pendant of Eraklyon, a present for Bloom that he had lost in the first episodes.

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