Elephants Never Forget

"An elephant never forgets, but I forget what the elephant remembered."

— Ed, Ed, Edd n Eddy

Elephants have a reputation in fiction for possessing excellent memories. This is, to a degree, Truth in Television — elephants are very intelligent animals with long lives and good long-term memory, archetypally represented in the old matriarch who knows where to find water and food for her family during the lean times, even if she only visited that location once in her youth. This is also a matter of concern for zookeepers, as elephants will very much remember an individual human who mistreated them and are very likely to get back at them, sometimes fatally, potentially quite a long way down the road.

In fiction, this tends to get exaggerated into elephants having picture-perfect eidetic memory, recalling with perfect clarity trivial events that happened many years or decades earlier. An elephant character, for instance, may quickly read their way through a textbook and thereafter recollect the correct answer to every question therein.

This is occasionally extended to elephants being intellectual, and even analytical, creatures (also not far from reality, as elephants are some of the smartest animals on the planet—probably the smartest land animals who aren't primates^note Some birds—corvids and parrots, specifically—might be on that level but it's obviously pretty hard to tell. If we expand to the sea, cetaceans are probably smarter than elephants but that's not saying much.). Such as the case of Ganesha of Hindu Mythology, an elephant-headed deity of wisdom and knowledge.

A relatively common subversion is to have elephants who are instead highly forgetful or who simply don't pay much attention to what's going around them, sometimes surprising characters who expected them to be reliable sources of information.

Subtrope of Photographic Memory and Animal Stereotypes. For other elephant stereotypes, see Cruel Elephant and Honorable Elephant.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A TV ad for Nestlé Rolo chocolate caramels features a boy offering his last one to a young zoo elephant, before yanking it away and eating it with a "nah nananah nah". Time Skip to the boy as an adult, again eating Rolos while watching a parade, when a trunk taps him on the shoulder then smacks him in the head; the angle shifts to show the adult parade elephant walking away while trumpeting its own "nah nananah nah" as the man collapses.

Comic Books

• Cattivik: Parodied in the story "The Cruise", where Cattivik ends up releasing several wild animals from the ship's hold and they proceed to wreak havoc on the ship. We see a guest telling his female friend how he once wounded an elephant during a hunting trip in Africa but couldn't finish him off, and gave up hunting, fearing the elephant's revenge and quoting their prodigious memory. As soon as the woman mocks this rumor as superstition, the escaped elephant runs by, trampling the man.
  Countess: Looks like your native guide was right, Baron!
  Baron: Never underestimate the native's experience, Countess.
• O'Malley and the Alley Cats: Inverted in "Zoo Boo Boo"; Marie, Toulouse, and Berlioz get separated from O'Malley during a rainstorm at the zoo. After the storm clears, O'Malley asks the other animals if they've seen the kittens, one of them being an elephant couple. The husband says "Three kittens? I can't remember! Can you, dear?", and his wife says "Uh, no! I can't recall!"
• In one Uncle Scrooge story, a tax man visits Scrooge McDuck to question why the latter has claimed 62 tons of hay to feed an elephant on his tax deductions. Scrooge explains that an elephant never forgets, but the old bird can never remember the combination to his vault. Therefore, he has a full-grown elephant to do it for him!
  Scrooge: (To elephant) Open 'er up, Opie!

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: In a story included in the beginning of The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin turns himself into an elephant with the transmogrifier to make learning his English homework easier, reasoning that, since elephants never forget, he can just look through it once and remember it perfectly afterward. Sure enough, it works, as Calvin's new memory is just as strong as he expected... until he has to turn back, at which point his memory is no better than usual, and he forgets most of what he memorized, forcing him to go through it again once his dad quizzes him and finds him unprepared.
• The Far Side: One strip has a dejected elephant sitting at bar, bemoaning that although he drinks and drinks, he never forgets. In another, an elephant confronts the man who shot at him during a hunting trip, reminding him of the exact date that it occurred.
• The New Yorker:
  • A two-page comic by Rea Irvin in 1926 titled "An Elephant Never Forgets" depicts a circus elephant who is fed soap by a little boy, and later recognizes him as an old man and chases him down for revenge.
  • A 1948 cartoon by Whitney Darrow, Jr. of one circus elephant talking to another: "There's a character in this town I'd like to catch up with — a snub-nosed, freckle-faced, barefooted little upstart in blue denims, goddamn handy with a slingshot. I guess he'd be about sixty now."
  • A 1976 cartoon by J. B. Handelsman of elephants in a field, each with a thought bubble, reading "The Alamo", "The Maine", "Pearl Harbor", and "April".
• Off the Mark
  • While this strip doesn't feature any actual elephants, the trope is referenced by an "ultimate memory" plug-in shaped like a trunk.
  • Done with actual elephants here, where an elephant offers another a boquet of forget-me-nots and the other wonders why the first though that that was ever an option; here, where an elephant shamefully buys a memory enhancer at a drugstore; and here, where an elephant scornfully thinks "rookie" at a computer's memory becoming full.
• Ralph Ruthe's Shit Happens series has an elephant in a bar saying that he drinks to forget. "But elephants never forget." "Yeah, vicious circle."

Fan Works

• The Palaververse: Elephants (and mammoths) develop perfect memory in adolescence — once adult elephants experience something, they can recall in perfect detail for the rest of their lives. Their culture is as a consequence highly focused on hoarding memorized lore and keeping one's knowledge away from others. This perfect memory is not always advantageous, since it preserves terrible experiences just as sharply and unfailingly as pleasant ones, and elephants in stressful professions tend to experience psychological issues as they age — and there's something terrible lurking in Pachydermia's far south, which some elephants have to burden themselves with knowing about in full and awful detail to keep contained, often courting madness as a result.
• Rise of the Minisukas: When Asuka praises Rei's good memory, the latter mutters her memory is like an elephant, since she never forgets...or forgives (refering to her desire to get even with one Minisuka who pranked her).
  "Argggghhhh! Come on Third, it's pivot step step pivot spin step jump pivot step, not pivot step step pivot spin step jump pivot jump! How hard is it to memorize that?! Even First is managing that!"
  "I like to believe my memory is like an elephant's, they never forget. They also never forgive." Rei provided ominously.

Films — Animation

• Disney Animated Canon:
  • The Jungle Book (1967): Played with. While Colonel Hathi, the leader of the elephants, is leading his herd away from Bagheera and Mowgli, his wife, Winifred, asks him if he's forgetting something. Hathi assures her that as an elephant, he never forgets anything, but she points out to him that he forgot their son, Junior, who had stayed behind to talk with Mowgli. Hathi then leads the elephants back to get Junior and scold him for not following the rest of the herd. Unfortunately, the rest of the herd ends up crashing into Hathi, because, as Junior points out, he forgot to say "Halt!". Mowgli finds this hilarious; Bagheera, not so.
  • The Lion King (1994): In "The Morning Report", as Zazu is referencing a bunch of animal puns and stereotypes, he also touches on the elephants' excellent memory.
    "The tick birds are picking on the elephants. I told the elephants to forget it, but they can't..." (original spoken version)
    The elephants remember, though just what I can't recall. (song version)
  • Zootopia: Invoked and subverted. Nangi the elephant is supposed to have an excellent memory due to being an elephant. However, she cannot remember a single detail about Emmitt Otterton despite him coming to her yoga class for six years. Indeed, Yax, the yak who is asking her about Emmitt, is shown to have a better memory than her, as he lists off various details for the protagonists instead of her.
• Horton Hears a Who! (2008): When the Sour Kangaroo asks Horton if he has forgotten what they've discussed earlier, Horton answers he didn't because of this trope and proves his point by recalling their last encounter. Later, Horton is able to remember every single name of the Whos Mayor Nedd introduced him to, despite the latter thinking otherwise.
• Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Buck tries to get Manny (a woolly mammoth) to repeat his number one rule (to always follow Buck's lead) and mocks him by saying, "Come on, mammoth! You're supposed to have a good memory!"
• Journey Back to Oz: When planning to summon a bunch of green elephants to trample over everything, Mombi sings that "an elephant never forgets".

Jokes

• One common variant on mocking someone to be Beyond the Impossible ugly: an elephant, upon meeting them, comments "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."

Films — Live-Action

• In The One and Only Ivan, Ruby (who is an elephant herself) asks Ivan to tell her a story from his past. When Ivan tells her that he's not so good at remembering the early parts of his life, Bob says that Ivan is the exact opposite of an elephant; he can't remember anything.

Literature

• In Elephants Can Remember, the elephants are the people who still have memories about the victims of the murder-suicide case that Poirot and Mrs. Oliver are trying to solve. The burden of painful memories plays an important role but, as stated by Mrs. Oliver, while elephants can remember, mercifully human beings can forget.
• The One and Only Ivan: Ivan states that, unlike himself, Stella the elephant recalls every detail about her past.
• In The Pal Patrol, a book based on The Lion King (1994), Simba arrives at Pride Rock an hour later than he promised Timon and Pumbaa because he had to help a herd of elephants who slipped on some banana peels that a troop of monkeys tossed on the ground. When Simba asks Timon and Pumbaa why the monkeys can't remember to clean up after themselves, Pumbaa tells him that he thought monkeys never forgot. Timon reminds him that it's elephants who never forget anything.

Live-Action TV

• In The Book of Pooh episode "Brain Drain", the gang believes Eeyore may have a "brain drain" after he forgets something important he wanted to say. One of their attempts to stop Eeyore from forgetting is to try making him into an elephant by putting a fake elephant trunk and ears on his head and feeding him peanuts, in the hopes that he'll start remembering again. It doesn't work, and all Eeyore remembers is that he doesn't like peanuts.
• Doubutsu Sentai Zyuohger has Zyuoh Elephant, Tusk, an elephant zyuman who is the most book-smart of the rangers and can be found reading more often than not. Subverted in that his memory is not infallible, and he is easily beaten out by Bangray's memory copy of him in a memory contest, which is justified in-universe in that memory beings will obviously have better memories than a regular mortal.

Video Games

• Mega Man Zero: Maha Ganeshariff is a Reploid themed after an elephant. His body can store massive amounts of data, alluding to the elephants' good memory.

Webcomics

• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: One strip describes elephants' exceptional memories being used for file storage, under the logic that since elephants never forget they can be used as a very reliable way of storing information. Retrieving the information, of course, is significantly impeded by the fact that elephants are animals and can't talk.
  Salesman: Have no fear. Your emails, documents, and personal photos are securely stored in the 'phant.

Western Animation

• BoJack Horseman: Wanda asks BoJack to talk about the "elephant in the room" (their earlier I "Uh" You, Too moment). However, an elephant repairman overhears and takes offense, storming out. BoJack says "He is never going to forget that."
• Color Classics: In "An Elephant Never Forgets", the elephant student cheerfully reminds the other animals of this trope every time they forget the answer to the teacher's questions, but is shamed when he can't recall what 2+2 equals. At the end, however, when a monkey who had been hitting him on the head with a washboard earlier goes to mock him, the elephant turns out to have stuffed the board down the monkey's overalls and hits him over the head instead, cheerfully repeating that an elephant never forgets as the episode ends. This cartoon (and its title song) from 1935 may have helped codify the trope, or at least helped name it.
• Futurama: In "Less than Hero", one of the animal henchmen of supervillain the Zookeeper is "an elephant that never forgets... to kill!"
• The Penguins of Madagascar: One episode features Burt, the zoo's elephant, enlisting the help of the penguins to help him escape from the zoo, so he can pay back a man who had tormented him with a kazoo as a boy. He persuades them by lampshading this trope. — "Let's just say... an elephant never forgets!" Said payback turns out to be returning the kazoo Burt stole from the kid, because as Burt points out, while an elephant never forgets, "he always forgives."
• Popeye:
  • In the early cartoon "Wild Elefinks", Popeye punches an attacking elephant. The elephant chases Popeye for the rest of the cartoon, occasionally stopping to flash back to the injury via thought bubble.
  • In another, Popeye tells this joke (with a nod to Groucho Marx) to make a zoo's hyena laugh:
    Well, it seems there wuz an elefink and a platypus. An' the elefink sez to the platypus, "I never forgets a face. But in your case, I'll makes an exception."

• The Proud Family: In "It Takes a Thief", Oscar is at the zoo with the twins and Suga Mama when he recounts how, when he was a kid, he and his friends sprayed the elephant with water guns while Suga Mama had warned them that elephants never forget. In the present, that same elephant recognizes Oscar and gets payback by spraying him with water.
• Stanley: In "Remembering With Elephants", Stanley has a tough time remembering where his other sneaker is so that once he finds it, he can go to the supermarket with his mother. He says that he wishes he were an elephant because elephants never forget, so he and Dennis go into the Great Big Book of Everything to find out if the saying is true. He soon learns that the reason behind this saying is because elephants always retrace their steps to the watering holes they visit. This helps Stanley retrace his steps to where he last left his other sneaker.
• Thomas & Friends: In "Sydney Sings", Sidney starts forgetting things. Whiff tells him that elephants never forget anything, which makes Sidney believe that he has to pick up an elephant from the Animal Park.
• Thunder Cats 2011: The Elephants from the elephant village notably subvert the stereotype, since while they're wise they also have very poor memories, which they are apparently infamous for.
• Viva Piñata: Subverted with Ella Elephanilla, who forgets things all the time. However, there are some episodes where this is flipped back to being played straight.
  • In "The Wraisins of Wrath", the raisins in Fergy and Paulie's pie causes her to be opposite of her normal self and able to remember things. She also remembers something apparently unflattering that Pecky wrote about her over a year ago, but he doesn't.
  • In "Ella Forgets to Forget", Fergy starts a service where Piñatas can confide their secrets in Ella, since she'll forget them anyway. But when Fergy tells her to remember to forget, she ends up forgetting to forget (hence the title). This somehow makes her remember all the secrets told to her.
• Young Justice: "Nightmare Monkeys" sees Beast Boy transform into one in the Doom Patrol Go! segment, expressing this sentiment in doing so.
• In Paramount's Modern Madcap "Mike the Masquerader," an elephant collides with quick-change thief Mike who had just robbed a bank. The police keep the elephant in protective custody certain they have a case as "an elephant never forgets." After Mike tries several times to off the elephant, the beast now suddenly doesn't recognize him. Mike thinks he's scot free until the elephant, who admits his memory is lousy, reveals he keeps all his memories on a tape recorder and he happened to record Mike saying "Don't you remember me bumpin' into you when I robbed that bank?" which he played back to the police.
• Tom Terrific and Manfred are in Africa dealing with an elephant on a rampage simply because he forgot something and elephants aren't supposed to forget. From the story arc "Elephant Stew."
• As a brick joke, an elephant in the Merrie Melodies cartoon "The Major Lied 'Til Dawn" appears sporadically trying to remember something. At the end he does. He remembers to say "That's all, folks!"

Real Life

• The icon of the notebook app Evernote is an elephant head, symbolizing how it helps users remember important things.
• Alongside crows, cats, dogs and lions and the other big cats, elephants are among a handful of non-human animals that are known to hold grudges. Thus, an elephant never forgets, but it never forgives, either.

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