Sandbox / Selective Memory Wick Check

A wick check for Selective Memory

Problem: Selective Memory is a video game trope about the separation of PC and player knowledge, in that the player has to discover things the character should already know or be able to look up. But despite the warning on the page, it's often confused with in-character memories. Either for Self-Serving Memory or a character having amnesia or simply omitting events the audience knows about but the character should still remember.Sandboxes and a duplicate entry from a Pantheon page have been excluded from this check.

• 7 correct out of 46 (15%)
• 20 self-serving/twisted (44%)
• 8 amnesia or omissions (17%)
• 4 unsorted misuse (9%)
• 7 indices/related tropes (15%)

Correct

• Great Big Book of Everything: In this case, new information may even literally appear as the plot demands, the entry for each location, item, enemy, or other piece of interest only readable after you have encountered it.
• Tropes Q to Z:Tetra Master, a card game with vague rules which are not particularly explained to the player. Justified in that nobody you talk to knows the rules either, and you can only pick up the rules from people's suppositions about them. These people are otherwise avid players, but they only know about half a rule each... Fortunately, none of the rules matter much. The outcome of each game is more or less random, and the few rewards with an actual use you can get out of it are easily gotten elsewhere...including one of the very few cards you can get outside of the treasure hunt sidequest that actually has a use beyond using it in the card game itself.
  • A full explanation of the rules was eventually provided...in the manual for Final Fantasy XI. On-page example
• Resident Evil 0: The inversion of Selective Memory is easily explained as Gameplay and Story Segregation. Rebecca and Billy have radios they use to stay in radio contact throughout the game.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Our hero was going from the second largest city on the continent to the largest one, but does not remember where these cities are located. All our hero has is a map which shows the major topographical features of the continent, but none of the settlements. The player character is supposedly from a different continent which makes their lack of geographical knowledge about Arcanum understandable. Variant on an on-page example.
• Resident Evil 0:
  • Inverted. At one point, the player has to split Rebecca and Billy up. The one who goes upstairs, by using the hookshot, will find a file that hints at the combination to a locked room. It is explained how the other character gets the dial to enter the combination, which is inexplicably off, but not how they know about the file, let alone the password. And that knowledge is needed for the other character to progress.
  • Just before Billy has to save Rebecca from falling into a chasm. In order to unlock the door, Rebecca needs to pick up a note that says what the power settings need to be. However, when she falls into the chasm, Billy needs that note, because it hints that he's got to go through the boiler room. So he really shouldn't know that.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Inverted in Chariot of the Dogs. Sam and Max shouldn't be able to know about Superball erasing short-term memory in response to bringing up time travel, but it's the only way to make past Sam forget why he needs the Embarrassing Idol contract.
• The Infinite Ocean: The game's protagonist is heavily implied to be either SGDS or one of the scientists. In either way, they react to the messages on the walls with knowledge of the plot. A bit lacking in context for how it would help though.

Misused - self-serving

• Jeepers Creepers 2: D's "Reason You Suck" Speech to Scotty, pointing out that, even if he is right, he conveniently left his own name off the list of people the Creeper targeted, before saying that he hopes Scotty gets eaten.
• Echoes Alternate Worlds:
  • Her Motive Rants tend to leave out all of the horrible things she's done, such as her pettiness, habit of turning people that criticize with her into the Unperson, and the pointless genocide she's performing just to make her life easier.
  • Stepford Smiler: So good that only Mikoto knows what he's really like even Kakashi to a certain degree doesn't seem to know the real Minato, though all Kakashi show a very Selective Memory when Minato is involved.
  • All five of them are prone to completely rewriting history in their own minds to either make themselves look better or to avoid taking responsibility for something.
• Atop The Fourth Wall Main Characters:
  • The Ace: He's a nice-looking hero with wonderful toys and True Companions around him... and he wants so badly to be the perfect Nice Guy superhero and to think that he's much more than his Channel Awesome co-workers. He has a fairly big ego and a Selective Memory, his number one priority seems to be whether the fans watch him or not, and his Comedic Sociopathy is far creepier than the others because whereas they embrace it, he denies it. He does start to leave it behind altogether after being called out on it by Aplos the Wizard.
• Dark Match: Noleaf can never seem to remember Murphy's name; in his mind, there is only Gunner, and Gunner's Pal.
• The Death Mage Who Doesnt Want A Fourth Time Gods: When he sees Zod on Van's side, he calls out the latter "for siding with Vida after she's gone insane and serving a 'Demon King'," ignoring that Alda's forces attacked Zod first. originally filed under Moral Myopia
• Hayate the Combat Butler: During her second appearance, she chooses to remember her failed confession as an honorable, graceful defeat and not Hayate turning her down with an awful joke.
• If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device - The Imperial Palace:
  • Irony: He knows his father's greatest weakness is the Emperor's ego. Totally blind to this weakness in himself, except when he's using it to point out the Emperor's arrogance.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The Gang: All five of them are prone to completely rewriting history in their own minds to either make themselves look better or to avoid taking responsibility for something.
• Kickassia:
  • The Hero: Subverted. In the videos he made following Kickassia, he portrays himself as one; calling himself "the liberator of Kickassia". Two things, however: first that a Selective Memory is in-character for Linkara, and second, that while technically he helped liberate Kickassia from the Critic, he was still part of a group that invaded Molossia for no reason and took it over from its rightful ruler.
• The Witcher - Geralt's Other Friends, Lovers, and Allies: Roach has no memory of ever bucking off Geralt during combat.
• Echoes:
  • Dysfunction Junction: The Arashi clan. Full stop. They're like a Darker and Edgier version of the Straw Hat Pirates. Every one of them has some sort of psychological trauma, suffers from some sort of psychological problem or has a Dark and Troubled Past. See The Woobie for details.
    • Note: Kuebiko doesn't count because he isn't part of the Arashi clan. He's just helping them because he's a Nice Guy. Though he is somewhat bigoted and has a very Selective Memory when his brothers dickier moves come up or the flaws in the Will of Fire.
• The Iron Lady: Maggie's are definitely slanted in her favor.
• Crash Twinsanity: Cortex: I was eight years old and the most popular student in the academy. Ah, yes... (a student throws a knife at him offscreen that barely misses his head) how they loved me.
• Tropes Season Four: In "Murtaugh", the basketball team that Marshall was coaching (and that Lily had forbidden him from pushing to actually play to win) loses by over a hundred points. According to Future Ted, every time Marshall would recount the story, the opposing team would get older and taller. In the second half they even had a teenwolf on their team!
• Entitlement / Extrovert Flaws: A trait notable with Cardassians is their ability to discern what they have done negatively to others is positivity on their end, which is exactly what they thought of their occupation of Bajor to be of.
• Danny Phantom S 2 E 1 Memory Blank: Danny lists three times Sam got him in trouble. While the first two were indeed her fault, the third (selling his dad's stuff at a garage sale) wasn't, by any stretch — that was entirely Danny's idea.
• Game of Thrones S6E9: "Battle of the Bastards": Tyrion gleefully bullies Theon for supposedly making imp jokes the last time they met. The problem is they only had one scene together prior and Theon had in fact tried to be polite while Tyrion was the Jerkass.
• Storage Wars: Barry declares his $1 parlay into a $150 payoff an all-time storage auction record, seemingly forgetting his rather famous turning of $2.50 into $2000 just the season before.

As an example from a reality show, it could be a genuine memory lapse, but ignoring the past to make oneself look better makes it fit better here.

• A.J. Lee: A lot what she says during her "Total Diva feud". Apparently they had been slacking off, getting nothing done for years until AJ Lee came along as a serious wrestler. In actuality, AJ only became known for being a "serious" wrestler not long before this feud. Prior to it her time on the main roster was defined mostly by dates and a stint as GM (as in, off the active roster) and she had been on main programing longer than half the show's cast. It almost looks like Three Month Rule since no one ever corrects anything she says (especially when you consider her and Kaitlyn were the first targets of Natalya's Divas of Doom team, whose primary concerns were the women they perceived not to be serious wrestlers).
• The Trolley Problem: One woman cries out how her daughter was almost killed because of the esper's energy going rogue. But Joseph thinks to himself how the daughter was saved because of another esper (Teruki).
• The Crown S 6 E 4 Aftermath: Mohamed Fayed becomes convinced that Diana and Dodi were going to marry had they not been tragically killed in the accident. Truth in Television, as he made such claims in Real Life.

Misused - memory gaps

• World Of Mayrin:
  • Fallen Angel: Eamon is a rare example of a fallen aasimar who fell before he ever was able to transform. This must have happened at some point during his childhood, but he just doesn't remember how.
• Bungo to Alchemist: The writers reincarnated has blurry memories of certain events in their previous lifes, especially those happened around their late years. It's suggested that the stronger the writers get, the more memories they can regain.
• The Railway Series: Despite being older than Stanley, and on the Mid Sodor Railway before Stanley arrived; Falcon still acts shocked when Duke recounts the story of Stanley's demise. Especially strange given that one of the illustrations in "Duke the Lost Engine" even shows Stanley in the back of the engine shed alongside Falcon (although erroneously, seeing that Stanley wouldn't be built until World War One and that particular story was set in the early 1900's). Still, its heavily implied the two engines worked alongside each other and as such Stanley's transformation into a stationary boiler should not have been news to Falcon.
• Shadow of Destiny: The human mind might not be capable of handling more than a few hundred years of memories, then again, homunculus' de-aging gave him immediate amnesia, it may just be recurring every X years. Though he does remember the museum owner as a friend, so he does have at least some long term memomory of recent years. Then again, there's endings where the good doctor dies, so his past may be as in flux as his future. In the end, it's a case of Selective Memory.
• Kleptomaniac Hero:

If "Adventure Games" were a medical condition, the first symptom would be amnesia and the second would be kleptomania.

— Yahtzee reviewing Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Zero Punctuation

• I was going to give this the benefit of the doubt, as in the player being the one who doesn't know anything about the setting and goes around stealing everything, but in an adventure game, the latter usually isn't optional and the protagonist of this one really is amnesiac.

• SpongeBob SquarePants S 8 E 17 "Are You Happy Now?" / "Planet of the Jellyfish": Depression can affect memory and perception, making it impossible not only to feel happy but to comprehend that anything can bring happiness. Squidward's definitely had happy memories before (“Band Geeks,” "Love That Squid," "Enchanted Tiki Dreams," etc.), but his inability to recall any of them is tragically consistent with the depression he's clearly going through. Then again, this might just be Negative Continuity.
• My Immortal: The symptoms of bipolar disorder, according to this Healthline website include: Mood Swings; [while in the manic state:] inflated self-esteem, lack of self-control, poor temper control, reckless behaviour {i.e. impaired judgement, sexual promiscuity}; [while in the depressive state:] difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions, feelings of worthlessness, persistent thoughts of death, and suicidal thoughts.
• Wandering of a Sword Hero:
  • The Talk: Keel, due to being Raised as the Opposite Gender, had to be explained the differences between boys and girls by Sadeena, of all people. It gave them a Thousand-Yard Stare that lasted around five minutes before apparently managing to purge the memory out of their brain.

Misused - Unsorted

• BoJack Horseman - Main Characters:
  • Unfazed Everyman: Despite being an Audience Surrogate in the way of Hollywoo epic scale eccentricities, Diane is otherwise calm and straight-faced in absurd situations like a lemur catching on fire in "Prickly Muffin" or the fact that she's dating an anthropomorphic Labrador. Varying from episode to episode go from a selective Weirdness Censor or a harsh case of Scully Syndrome.
• Fanfic Theater 3015:
  • Rage Breaking Point: Part 4 of the fic had SC276 go absolutely ballistic when Peter, the sociopathic prankster, sings "The Poet and The Muse", skipping almost all instances of the chorus, and everyone treats it as a sad heartfelt thing, to the point that his reaction to Peter's backstory is to immediately Page Down for the first time in over a year and a half.

Does the chorus contain something that would change the meaning of the song? And does the song actually tell the character's past?

• The 100 S 01 E 09
  • Un-person: Finn makes reference to a thirteenth space station, that was blown out of the sky by one of the others in order to convince the remaining twelve to come together to form the Ark. It's apparently not part of the official history of the Ark. Unusually, everyone on the Ark seems to be aware of it, they just ignore it to celebrate Unity Day. This isn't about personal memories, but about going along with the official record even if they know otherwise.

Indices and related tropes

• Amnesiac Hero: Compare You Wake Up in a Room, Selective Memory, Fake Memories and I Am Who?. I don't like this because the other tropes are about a character having faulty memories.
• Fake Difficulty: When the player is denied information that the actual character should have.
• Gameplay-Guided Amnesia: Also see Selective Memory, Tell Me Again, As You Know.
• Memory Tropes: When the Player Character has important information the player has no access to.
• Elenco Provvisorio S
• Selective Memory: Player Character has important information the player has no access to.
• Tropes O to S