History Main / BlankSlate

* Shrouds that belong to The Lost in ''TabletopGame/{{Anathema}}'' have no sense of what kind of person they were and extremely few, if any, memories of their life.

* Prometheans in ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated'' refer to the process of coming to life as "waking up on the slab"-waking up in an adult body with no knowledge of ''anything'', except for basic physical coordination and one language spoken by the person (or people) whose corpse the Promethean now occupies. The odds of their creators being there to teach them anything are pretty low, as well, so they have to learn fast.

* [[OurHomunculiAreDifferent Ennis]] in ''Literature/{{Baccano}}'' starts as one of these and gradually develops more of a personality. [[spoiler:It's revealed that this has happened many times before, and every time the homunculus turns on Szilard in the end, before he destroys it and makes a new one]].
* The Dolls of ''Anime/DarkerThanBlack'' are very much like this, but as with the ''Baccano!'' example above, sometimes they show signs of personality; Yin being one particular example.

* There's a lot of hints in ''Manga/ChronoCrusade'' that Fiore started out this way before she became the subservient {{meido}} for Aion and Joshua. She often still ''insists'' she's one, but she has quite a bit more personality and will than she lets on. In the manga, she possibly would've ''stayed'' this way if [[spoiler:Joshua hadn't mistaken her for Rosette when they first met.]]

* [[NoNameGiven Assistant]] from ''Literature/HumanityHasDeclined'' has this as his backstory. This plays out considerably differently from usual, as he became completely unmemorable from a lack of anything to remember. He only truly enters the story after getting a personality.

* This was the shtick of [[Characters/XMenMojoverse Longshot]] during his first six-issue series in 1985 and twenty years later he got blanked again in the pages of ComicBook/{{Exiles}}. Being a SlaveMook by design, it's unfortunately easy for his creators the Spineless Ones to do this to him whenever they catch him.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'': Queen Atomia's Nutron chamber entirely wipes the minds of those forced through it, turning them into her SlaveMooks and making them more susceptible to her low level telepathy. This ends up biting her in the ass as Wondy is also capable of pulling a JediMindTrick on them, meaning they're just as likely to follow the commands of her greatest foe as they are to follow her own orders.

-->"We clones never learn anything. We have no store of experience. When one of us dies, we're replaced by an exact duplicate, every bit as ignorant as the one before — who makes the same mistakes all over again."

[[folder:Film — Animated]]

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

* The Ali Landry film ''Film/RepliKate'' revolves around this trope; the hero is in love with the beautiful Kate but far too nervous to talk to her. When she is accidentally cloned the hero and his roommate educate the Blank Slate clone with stereotypical guy traits like love of sports and casual sex.
* According to the filmmakers on the commentary track to ''Film/BigFish'' the Billy Crudup character's wife was supposed to be a blank slate with no biases. That was her virtue.
* A 1970 movie, ''The Mind of Mr. Soames'', starred Terence Stamp as a man who'd been born in a coma -- and maintained in a coma until his (remarkably physically fit) thirtieth year.
* The 1920 silent movie ''Film/TheGolem'' hinges on the premise that the eponymous character is completely clueless about how the world works.
* Similarly, the marionette brought to life in the 1996 New Line film adaptation of ''Film/TheAdventuresOfPinocchio''. In an interview, Pinocchio's voice actor Jonathan Taylor Thomas explained that the character "basically is just a baby" at the start.
* The ''Pinocchio'' homage ''Film/AIArtificialIntelligence'' features David, a prototype model android designed to resemble a human child and express believable love, and he is a Blank Slate when he is first activated and lent to the Swinton family as a test run. It's really not surprising that David remains a blank slate after the imprinting protocol is activated and he becomes more human. He is, after all, just a child.
* Brendan Fraser has played this role at least twice: Adam from ''Film/BlastFromThePast'' and Link from ''Film/EncinoMan''.

* ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}''... The book and 1931 versions, anyway. The Creature is essentially "born" without any idea of what the outside world is like, especially since Victor (his creator) ran out on him, because of his apparently hideous appearance... in fact, it's because of the disgusted ''reactions of others'' towards how he looks (the very negative reaction) that he starts to turn toward doing evil; [[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds no one will ever try to get to know]] the ''real'' him...
* The Generics, two newly-minted characters, are initially called ibb and obb, and evolve into Lola and Randolph as they develop personalities before they try for roles in books in the ''Literature/ThursdayNext'' book ''The Well of Lost Plots''.
* The Israeli novel ''Pere'' (=''Wild'') deals with a person being born in an adult body, without knowing why.
* The classic science fiction novel ''[[Literature/AdamLink Adam Link, Robot]]'' is essentially an answer to the question, "What if Victor Frankenstein had been a responsible father to his monster?" Adam is a metal robot, and his builder does his best to raise him wisely and with kindness. Unfortunately, the builder dies, and Adam is falsely accused of killing him; but by then, thanks to his dad, Adam has already developed a personality as an intelligent, honest, and honorable guy -- he just has to prove it to the rest of the world.

* In ''Literature/TheCandyShopWar'', [[spoiler:the villain, Belinda, becomes this after a Clean Slate is slipped into her youth formula. When she turns into a child, she also forgets all about her previous villain self.]]
* Myria [=LeJean=], an inhuman spirit with no conception of personality, gender, or individuality - until she is incarnated into a fully-formed adult female body and dropped into the human world in the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/ThiefOfTime''.
* This is the central plot of the first Arabic novel, ''Hayy ibn Yaqdhan'', written [[OlderThanSteam in 12th-century Muslim Spain]] by Moorish philosopher Ibn Tufail. It's main character is a feral human child [[RaisedByWolves raised by a gazelle]] simply through his experience and reason alone.
* The needle-infected humans in ''Literature/EdenGreen'' can survive any injury, including their brain being destroyed, but when it grows back, memory and personality are badly-restored and result in a docile 'blank slate' person (at least at first...).
* [[spoiler:Robin]] of ''Literature/TheGirlFromTheMiraclesDistrict'' has been a blank slate several times, when his memories were wiped out completely so that his handlers could use him. In every case, it led to him comitting suicide (he has ResurrectiveImmortality), which is why the fifth time, he's been given FakeMemories.
* ''Literature/{{Worm}}'':
** [[TheCorrupter Jack Slash]] accuses Oni Lee of being this. Jack nominated Oni Lee as a prospective member of the [[QuirkyMinibossSquad Slaughterhouse 9]], but quickly realized that Oni Lee had little to no motivation. He deduced that Lee's power had gradually stripped away his personality until he was just an unimaginative robot, waiting for his orders. In a somewhat [[MotiveRant pretentious dialogue]], Jack notes that he ''hates'' blank slates.
** [[spoiler:Scion]], to a huge degree. He's easily talked into heroic acts, as he simply emotionlessly repeats what he's been told, but [[spoiler:once Jack gets to him, calls him out on this, and talks him into a [[AxCrazy different worldview]]...]]
* In ''Literature/TheSisterVerseAndTheTalonsOfRuin'', this is implied to be the eventual state of all the characters, who are slowly reprogrammed through trauma incurred during a seemingly endless cycle of reincarnation. When their identity has been erased, they are then rebuilt as "ascendants," living weapons of war used by the villain to invade other worlds.
* In ''Literature/QuantumDevilSagaAvatarTuner'', everyone in the Junkyard prior to the Atma Virus was an emotionless bot that only followed the Church's directives. Serph doupts that any of them was even capable of thought back then.
* In ''Literature/ProjectTau'', Tau has no memories or life experiences outside of the lab. Justified in that he's a Project and has only been alive for about six months at the start of the book.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': The character of Data was largely agreed to begin the series as a blank slate, so much so that Brent Spiner was often warned that he might seem like a "boring" character to play. But Data was a living, growing machine, who would change and develop via his experiences with humans and other assorted species. Spiner pulled this off pretty damn well.
** The later android B4 (a more basic version of Data) was also a blank slate, though possibly without Data's ability to grow and adapt.
** Another TNG episode also had a type of Metamorph character (usually male, but there was a female born every now and then) who adapted themselves perfectly to whichever member of the opposite sex (and species) they were with, and thus acquired that person's tastes and traits. They eventually settle on one individual and bond to them as their mate. One female (being delivered as a peace offering from one warring planet to another) was accidentally let loose on the Enterprise and spent her entire time there adapting to every male she came across, from a ruffian group of traders, to the Captain, to a Klingon. They stuck her with Data since he didn't have a subconscious to read into and she therefore couldn't "bond" with him. Unfortunately she ended up bonded to Picard when she was supposed to save her bonding for the person she was being gifted to, and [[DownerEnding had to spend the rest of her life faking her required personality]].
** There was also Hugh Borg, who had no idea how to act without the Collective's instructions. TNG got a lot of mileage out of this trope.
* ''Series/KyleXY'': Kyle starts out as this.
* Luke in ''Series/TheSarahJaneAdventures'' before Sarah Jane adopts him.
* The 'tabula rasa' in ''{{Series/Dollhouse}}'', though Alpha and Echo are both subversions. Eventually, their minds came to resist being "wiped" after each imprint and they accumulate bits of their previous experiences into a persistent personality.
-->'''[=DeWitt=]:''' I'm talking about a clean slate.\\
'''Caroline:''' You ever try and clean an actual slate? You always see what was on it before.

* ''Series/TheJourneyOfAllenStrange'' had created a Blank Slate by making a mannequin come to life, to play the role of Allen's father (Allen is a space alien disguised as a human, and needed to fake having a human father). The mannequin acted very odd, saying random things, and needed to have his behavior molded to be more appropriate.
* For the patient of the week in the ''Series/{{House}}'' episode "Mirror Mirror" this is actually part of his mysterious affliction. He has no memory of who he is and simply reflects the doctors' personalities back at them

* Prometheans in ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated'' refer to the process of coming to life as "waking up on the slab"-waking up in an adult body with no knowledge of ''anything'', except for basic physical coordination and one language spoken by the person (or people) whose corpse the Promethean now occupies. The odds of their creators being there to teach them anything are pretty low, as well, so they have to learn fast.

* In the first ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'', ''everyone'' except Angel (BigBad) and Sera (Amnesia) are this. After they get infected with the atma virus, they awaken to a single powerful emotion and develop from there.
* ''VideoGame/BlazBlue'': Lambda-11, after having being revived by [[MadScientist Kokonoe]], was mind-wiped and reduced to a Blank Slate because the [[AndIMustScream memories]] inside her old body threatened to overwhelm the new soul inserted [[spoiler: ([[{{Yandere}} Nu-13]])]]. However, even then, she slowly started to develop a new personality, [[spoiler:especially when Nu's memories started to come back]]. By [[VideoGame/BlazBlueCentralFiction the fourth game]], she has established by herself her new objective - being with and protecting Ragna the Bloodedge.
* [[VillainProtagonist Ayano Aishi]] from ''VideoGame/YandereSimulator'' has never felt emotions (until just before the start of the game, where she became a {{Yandere}} for her Senpai). The only constant about her is that Senpai makes her happy and that she wants to remove all rivals to his affection. The rest is up to the player. By the end of the game, she could have a HiddenHeartOfGold in there somewhere, or she could just be AxCrazy, depending on what actions the player chose to take.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'' this is the default starting state for most [[ArtificialHuman replica]] unless they are programmed to some extent (though that hampers their ability to learn and gain emotions). [[spoiler: In the case of the main character, it was mistaken for amnesia before the reveal.]]
* The Last Castoff from ''VideoGame/TormentTidesOfNumenera'', being an ArtificialHuman 'shell' left over from [[BodySurfer The Changing God]] after it jumped to a new body.
* ''VideoGame/SuperDarylDeluxe'' - the titular Daryl looks like a Blank Slate due to how [[NoSocialSkills overwhelmingly unexpressive]] he is. Because he [[HeroicMime never speaks]], it is difficult to say what he thinks - only that he tends to do what anyone tells him without question.

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' has the title character Schlock born as one of these. The short version is that when two members of his species fight, their rather unique biology usually results in a single combined amorph with the combined mind and personalities of both. However one amorph, nicknamed "Killer" developed to the ability to completely eradicate another amorph's mind and memories during this process. In a desperate attempt to stop him a young amorph trained to develop the same ability. The end of the fight was expected to be an inert lump of toxic amorph "flesh" but instead both personalities were wiped out but their combined body survived. A blank slate driven only by a powerful survival instinct and one the toughest immune systems going, even by the already impressive standards of amorphs. After getting off world he eventually picked up the name Schlock and grew to become the plasma gun wielding, psychopathic man-child mercenary from which the comic takes its name.
* Kendal from ''Webcomic/Aurora2019'' is a being created by the god Vash to use whenever He needed a body. When Vash was forced out of the body, it gained its own sentience as Kendal.

[[folder:Web Original]]

* Sylvester in ''Literature/{{Twig}}'' adapts his persona and degree of ruthlessness to suit whoever he's partnered with at any given time to an extreme degree. When partnered with Jamie and Lillian, the kindest of his friends, he shows compassion and takes care to avoid casualties. When working with Mary and Gordon, the more combative ones, Sylvester masterminds a plan that ends in them [[TheFarmerAndTheViper killing the doctor and soldier who saved their lives]] for a tactical advantage.

* Amazo in the ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' animated series.
** Quite ironic too, as his ability was to absorb all information that he targeted, which was the justice league itself. Within a few years, he essentially became a god of the DC Universe. Quite good considering he literally started as a Blank Slate, unlike say, Superman....
* This happens to ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' when she has her memory erased. She becomes incredibly passive and docile while waiting to be told who she is, combined with a stepford smile for most of the time.
* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': In "Society of the Blind Eye", while the other members go back to their ordinary lives after having their memories of the Society erased, their leader Blind Ivan literally has no idea of who he is after losing his memories of the Society. Mabel gives him a new identity as "Toot-Toot [=McBumbersnazzle=], a traveling banjo minstrel" and he promptly believes it.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'': Lily is the youngest Loud at 15 months old, and doesn't have any real interests or hobbies. This becomes a plot point in "Changing the Baby", where Lincoln tries to mold her into his mini-me with the rest of their sisters trying to follow suit.