Easy Amnesia

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"Let me get this straight. Does anybody here not have amnesia?"

— Calculon, "All My Circuits", Futurama

In the real world, amnesia is rare, and it can last anywhere from days to a lifetime. It comes in two flavors: psychogenic amnesia, which comes from a psychological trauma, and organic amnesia, which comes from brain damage. In the former case, the sufferer might get all or part of his memories back through adequate therapy and rest; in the latter, even if he might get back some pieces of information, he most probably will never recover the big picture.

On TV, amnesia is just a plot device for the current episode or movie or whatever, and it's pretty much always organic and originated by some kind of funny injury or physical impact. Everything and anything the character knows about him or herself may be lost, or just the last 24 hours may disappear — it's completely dependent on the plot. This is often used to avoid As You Know exposition by making it so the character doesn't know things they should be familiar with; whether it's actually an improvement is down to the individual viewer.

If the victim recovers, it usually occurs by the end of the episode, with the character simply bonking their noggin a second time (conveniently ignoring the fact that this is likely to make things worse, not better), or with some Applied Phlebotinum from the resident scientist/physician (which ignores that, as said above, the bonking type is precisely the kind of amnesia that rarely get better in real life). On the other hand, if the victim does not recover by the end of the episode, they almost certainly never will and those memories will be gone forever.

Do note that TV usually uses retrograde amnesia (the inability to recollect memories from before the head bump) but almost never uses the actually more organically realistic anterograde amnesia (the inability to create memories after the bump). While there have been a few examples recently, they have mostly been due to the popularity of the movie Memento. Even when it does appear in a show, what's depicted usually doesn't come close to the actual disorder. For a realistic breakdown, read up on the case of Clive Wearing.

So yeah. Get bonked, lose memory, get bonked a second time, regain memory.

Expect a Non Sequitur, *Thud* before being out cold.

See also Tap on the Head, Amnesia Danger, Amnesiac Lover, Identity Amnesia, Criminal Amnesiac, Hard Head, Amnesiac Hero, Regained Memories Sequence. Can be easily reverted via Injury Bookend.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• 7 Seeds has Hana have a bout of amnesia, not remembering how she got separated from the other teams and came to be on a different island. She does wonder if she bonked her head somewhere. She also doesn't remember that Ango tried to rape her, nor that she was sucked into a whirlpool and was underwater for several days, before resurfacing. A few chapters later, though, she just gets all the memories back and there are no repercussions or after-effects.
• At the end of Area 88, Shin sustains injuries after an aerial duel with Kanzaki. He suffers amnesia from his injuries and trauma and cannot remember the events of the previous few years. On the bright side, his amnesia provides a Relationship Reset Button with his fiancee Ryoko.
• In Bleach, Nel lost her memory after receiving a blow to the head from Nnoitra. And being turned into a child. This, from what we know about Hollows, is something Nel never experienced as a Hollow, and may be one of the reasons for the problem. It is implied that the incident occurred years before the recovery.
• Dragon Ball's treatment of amnesia seems closer to reality than most: Goku got amnesia as a child when he fell out of his Grandpa's hands and down a steep gorge. He never recovered from it, and whenever a character would refer to it, they would almost always mention how Goku nearly died from the fall.
  • Another realistic treatment is Piccolo's, or rather, Kami's memories. After arriving on Earth in a spaceship as a child, he had absolutely no memories of who he is or what he's doing there - he speculates that he probably hit his head. He also never recovers from it, and unlike Goku he never even finds out what his real name was (not that the reader ever finds out, either; he's called "the son of Katas" by the Grand Elder or, after Piccolo and Kami re-merge into a single being, he calls himself "the Nameless Namekian", but continues to go by "Piccolo" for convenience).
  • Some DBZ video games have re-used this plot device for What If? stories; Budokai Tenkaichi 2 has it happen to Raditz while Supersonic Warriors 2 does it to Broly. Both eventually get their memories back, but have been changed for the better thanks to their time among the heroes (Raditz sacrifices himself to prevent the other Saiyans from attacking Earth, while Broly stays Mr. Satan's friend and student — but still gets fired up when Goku is around).
• Celty from Durarara!! lost some memories from over a hundred years ago, possibly due to losing her head. There's only that thought and one of Shinra's theories to go by and the head loss seems to be the most sensible explanation.
• ef - a fairy tale of the two.: One of the stories is about Chihiro, who can't remember anything beyond 13 hours in the past. This leads to one very dramatic scene, when she passes out for a longer period of time and can't remember why she's so much older and lacks one eye.
• In Elfen Lied, Lucy has this. While she can sometimes remember herself, most of the time she is reduced to a powerless, infantlike Blank Slate that knows nothing about proper behavoir, the bathroom, or the Japanese language. Then again, considering her life, heavy braindamage might not be so bad.
• Ga-Rei sees Kagura lose much of her memory within a period of time. She eventually recovers it in a matter of chapters.
• In the 35th episode of Go! Princess Pretty Cure, Prince Kanata, who disappeared while helping the Cures escape from DysDark, is located in Yumegehama after being found by the local violin shop owner, having lost his memories during the escape. While pieces of his memory do peek through from time to time, he has yet to recover them fully, subverting the trope for now.
• In Chapter 35 of Haou Airen, Kurumi falls down a flight of stairs and loses all her memories of the events of the whole series. She gets them all back just as easily in Chapter 43.
• A number of characters suffer from this in the Dating Sim adaptation Kanon. Specifically, Makoto and Yuuichi. Makoto because she's a fox turned into a human, so she had to sacrifice her memories and the remaining years of her life to make the transition and Yuuichi because he blocked out the very traumatic event in his past, and lost all memories of his prior trip to the town, seven years ago.
• Supposedly happens to Kaito in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, but it's revealed early on that it wasn't a bump at all.
• Midori Days has a slightly more realistic example. A bump on the head eliminates a minor character's knowledge of Seiji's secret. Not only was this unnecessary to resolve the story, it also alters his personality a bit. The brain is a fragile thing.
• In Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, all it takes is some amateur hypnotising from Nozaki for Kashima to forget Hori. The drama club (and Rei) spend a whole chapter trying to revert her, but in the end the hypnosis is quickly and easily undone by Nozaki and Sakura.
• In episode 15 of the 1990 series based on The Moomins, while Moomin and Snorkmaiden are in the Lonely Mountains, Snorkmaiden ends up slipping down the Lonely Mountains, and after a long roll down, she ends up losing her memory and begins thinking she’s a princess. Moomin’s family (as well as his friends) spends the entire episode playing along and treating Snorkmaiden like a princess (as Snorkmaiden continues to think she’s a princess) until she ends up getting a basket put over her eyes by Mrs Fillyjonk, resulting in Moomin and his family trying to get the basket off, in which Little My smacks Snorkmaiden in the head with the broom, which not only destroys the basket, but also results in Snorkmaiden’s memory returning.
• Referenced in My Monster Secret: Aizawa, an alien investigating the Earth for her highly advanced species, believes (thanks to reading manga) that humans can have their memories erased by blunt force trauma. We have no idea if this would actually work, because everyone refuses to let her use her "memory erasure device" on them because it's just an ordinary hammer (or her alternative, a shovel).
  • Played straight in the Animated Adaptation's last episode: Youko's father discovers that her secret has been exposed and says that as per their original arrangement, she has to leave school. Fortunately he accidentally gets hit with Aizawa's hammer, causing him to forget the whole thing.
• In Naruto, a repentant bandit fell from a cliff and became an amnesiac as a result, earning him the nickname "Menma" in Konoha. Shortly afterward events in the village reminded him of his past as a bandit, but he chose to keep his returned memories to himself.
• Subverted in Negima! Magister Negi Magi, where Yue seems to have this, until we find out that someone accidentally gave her Laser-Guided Amnesia about her life, and was too embarrassed to say so, so she just told Yue that she bumped her head.
• This trope is the central premise of One Week Friends, where a girl named Fujimiya Kaori will lose all memories of her friend after a week.
• The twins in Ouran High School Host Club attempt to invoke this on Kasanoda by hitting him on the head with a baseball bat. Kyoya stops them, much to their annoyance.
• Kurando from Popcorn Avatar reverts to having the memories of a 3rd-grader after Lisa throws him to the floor a little too hard.
• In the Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire episode "A Scare to Remember", Pikachu gets amnesia after a Team Rocket attack and Meowth convinces him to be a part of Team Rocket. Pikachu gets cured after taking a long drop into a river with Ash. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
• Ranma ½:
  • Anime Chinese Girl Shampoo, in her first story, reveals she has a Pressure Points technique that lets her modify memories; she not only manages to make Akane Tendo forget who Ranma Saotome is, but also puts a kind of block on her mind so she literally cannot form any mental association with him — which leads to her repeatedly asking who Ranma is after he just told her his name a few minutes ago, much to Ranma's annoyance. Fortunately, Akane Tendo is such a Tsundere that the technique gets broken by having Ranma mock her until her sheer rage breaks down the blocks. For added Martial Arts and Crafts appeal, the actual technique looks like the user is performing haircare on their victim; as the points (understandably) are on the head, and certain herbal extracts are needed to bring out the full effect, it's easiest to disguise the maneuver as washing hair.
  • Shinnosuke, a boy from the forest of Ryugenzawa, is forgetful to a crippling degree. Among the things he's forgotten: his own grandpa, the location of the traps he has set for the animals of the forest, people he's met only minutes ago and the conversations he's had with them, and having saved a young Akane's life ten years ago. When he meets her again (believing it's the first time) he endears himself to her by writing her name all over the house so he won't forget again. Unfortunately, he later forgets having confessed his love to her also, but not the love itself.
• The cause of Elie's amnesia in Rave Master is unknown, with most likely causes being magic overload, Sieg blowing up the building she was in, and a 50 year long deep sleep. It takes most of the manga (roughly thirty volumes) to recover her memories, which is the focal point several times. When she finally regains her memories she gets amnesia again roughly a week later simply because she doesn't want to remember a certain death. When said death turns out to have not been real, she regains her memories again.
• Rumbling Hearts: Haruka suffers from anterograde amnesia after being hit by a car. This is on top of the three years she missed while comatose. This could be considered a subversion, as it takes most of the length of the series for her to recover.
• In the 100th episode of Sgt. Frog, everyone in the Hinata household at the time when a laser beam hit the house. They try to figure out who they are by trying out several identities. But the amnesia couldn't have come at a worse time as the Keroro Platoon's underground HQ has started the countdown to self-destruction.
• In one chapter of Squid Girl (and in one episode of season 2 in the anime) Squid Girl loses her memory after she falls down some stairs. Eiko and the others try to restore Squid Girl's memory, but things do not work out well. That is where the hat Squid Girl has comes into play with another role. One may recall at one point that according to Squid Girl, if her hat is taken off, she dies. That is what restores Squid Girl's memory at the end of the chapter/episode when Squid Girl tries to take it off, and everything is back to normal.
• In episode 129 of Tamagotchi, Himespetchi falls down some stairs and develops amnesia. She remembers she has a crush on somebody, but doesn't remember exactly who her crush is, causing her to develop a crush on Prince Tamahiko for part of that episode.
• Words Worth: This happens to Prince Astral after Maria uses her magic to banish him into the future in a fit of rape-induced rage, affecting him to the point where in later episodes he even participates in an attack against his former kingdom.
• Toyed with in Zombie Land Saga. Sakura starts off the series with amnesia, due to head trauma from dying by truck collision before being resurrected as a zombie. Her initial motivation for going along with her situation is to get her memory back, as she apparently gets flashes while performing as an idol. Come the end of episode ten, and she's hit by a truck again—she gets her old memories back, but loses all the memories she made over the series, and has no idea where she is.

Asian Animation

• BoBoiBoy: The titular hero can split into multiple counterparts with a catch - the longer they remain split up, the more his forgetful he will become. This leads to Accidental Misnaming at first, and gradual identity loss that pits the counterparts against each other at worst. Regardless of which state they are, however, merging all of them back will restore BoBoiBoy's memory.
• Happy Heroes:
  • In the two-part episode at the beginning of Season 2, Careful S. has a run-in with a spaceship that hits him and unplugs part of his inner wiring, giving him amnesia. The amnesiac robot agrees to work with Big M. and Little M. to let Planet Gray invade Planet Xing.
  • In Season 2 episode 50, Big M. decides to fake amnesia for his evil plan... and then he actually does get amnesia and helps the Supermen to defeat the shark monster he had sent after them.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 95, Wolffy sets up a pitfall and wants to trap the goats in it by dropping a big rock on it once the goats fall in. Wolffy himself ultimately winds up the target of the trap instead; the moment he wakes up, he forgets who he is, thinking he's Weslie the goat.

Comic Books

• Asterix: In Asterix and the Big Fight, Getafix becomes amnesiac (and crazy) after getting accidentally hit by one of Obelix's menhirs. When they take Getafix to another druid to be treated, Obelix demonstrates how it happened by tapping the druid with the menhir, leaving him in the same condition as Getafix. Later, Obelix gets the bright idea of curing Getafix with another tap on the head... just as Getafix manages to cure himself. Fortunately, he's still all right — but unaware of intervening events, so he dumps out the potion that cured him before the other druid can have a taste.
• The Beezer: In a "Numbskulls" comic, "Our Man" gets a bump on his head, which creates a dent in Brainy's filing cabinet that means he can't open the drawer that contains Our Man's name and address. Another bump unsticks the drawer, with the passerby who's trying to help saying that it's amazing how that works.
• In Detective Comics #430, Batman gets a clout on the head from a fire escape ladder. Remembering who he is when he's not Batman proves especially difficult because he's disguised as a criminal at the time — and the makeup turns out to be exceedingly hard to get off. But once he arrests the criminals and gets home, he uses remover to restore his original countenance and seemingly regains his memory upon seeing Bruce Wayne's face in the mirror.
• Disney Fairies: Happens in the comic "Vidia Turns Nice." Vidia loses her memory when she gets hit by a falling branch. The nursing-talent fairies tell Tinker Bell to hit Vidia on the head again, but she decides to convince Vidia that her talent is helping other fairies, hoping she'll be nicer when she’s cured. But the other fairies start taking advantage of her, and Prilla convinces Tink to hit her again and cure her. It's quickly clear after that Tink's plan failed-Vidia's back to her usual sour self.
• Groo the Wanderer: The "bump on the head" concept is taken to its logical extreme in a storyline where the various antagonists, some who need Groo to keep his memory, and some who need him to forget, literally turn Groo's memory on and off by hitting him repeatedly on the head.
• Lucky Luke: As expected, the story "The Daltons' Amnesia" feature this extensively, complete with the Tap on the Head that can both cause and cure amnesia with no ill side effects.
• Paperinik New Adventures: Inverted. Photomas is one of the best lawyers of XIII century, but he can't remember names (including the protagonist's) and words. However, after a bad hit on the head he suddenly remembers everything. Unfortunately it's explained it won't last.
• Peter Pan: As in the original story, Neverland makes all its inhabitants forget the past; if something or someone isn't around anymore, they'll be forgotten after a while. Tinker Bell actually uses this to her advantage; after she's killed Rose she hides away from Peter and the others and waits for them to forget. The Neverlanders actually discuss this tactic, straight-up admitting that in a while they'll all have forgotten about Rose, and just welcome Tink back as if nothing happened — but there is nothing they can do to prevent themselves from forgetting. True enough, this is exactly what happens.
• Rex the Wonder Dog:
  • Rex forgets his name and life after hitting his head, but remembers after hitting his head again.
  • Rex helps track down a missing US scientist who somehow forgot his identity and was mistaken for a member of the French Foreign Legion. Dr. Peter Weston then remembers who he is upon hearing his name.
• Spider-Man: In Spidey Super Stories #21, Spider-Man loses his memory when he runs out of webbing and falls head-first onto a piano. A bonk on the head from J. Jonah Jameson restores his memory.
• SODA: Lampshaded in the comic when the main character gets Laser-Guided Amnesia after a car accident. When he comes back home, he watches a TV special on the subject which explains that it's incredibly rare and almost never happens - except in fiction written by people who "lack imaginative ideas".
• Superman:
  • In The Unknown Supergirl, villain Lesla-Lar abducts Supergirl and brainwashes her into believing she is Lesla herself. Kara spends two days living as Lesla-Lar until she is found and rescued by Krypto. As being brought out of the Bottle City and enlarged, though, Kara hits her head, is knocked unconscious (was depowered at the time) and forgets the false memories imprinted in her brain.
  • In A Mind-Switch in Time, Superboy's mind is swapped with Superman's. Teenager Clark spends several days in the future, learning about his upcoming life, but when his mind is finally returned to his proper body, the strong shock causes him to forget all about it.
• Tintin: In Destination Moon, this happens to Calculus after he falls down a ladder. It's hypothesized that a shock may bring his memory back, so Captain Haddock tries to do so, but ends up failing. He finally gets so fed up with it that he mentions that Calculus is "acting the goat" (an expression that previously acted as a Berserk Button for Calculus), which gets Calculus so angry that his memory returns.
• Wonder Woman Vol. 1: When Robert Kanigher was brought back as the writer after the ill received "Mod Era" he quickly killed off I Ching and then had Diana fall out of a window and hit her head, forgetting all about her now dead martial arts master with no other side effects, to write him and any grief over his death out entirely.

Comic Strips

• Garfield had a run of strips in which Garfield loses his memory. Jon ultimately brings him in to Liz, who tells him to rap Garfield on the head with a reflex hammer - which cures him. Unfortunately, Garfield punches Jon in the head in retaliation, causing Jon to lose his memory.
• Modesty Blaise: In "A Present for the Princess'', Willie loses his memory after hitting his head on a rock in the river, although he retains all of his skills. This leads to a Criminal Amnesiac situation.

Fan Works

• All for One lost large chunks of memory in Are you my dad? from the head injury All Might inflicted on him. He is genuinely unsure if he is Izuku's father when asked because he has gaps in his memory that stretch on for years before the fight and can't recall enough to prove or disprove it.
• Averted in Hunting the Unicorn. Blaine gets concussed and starts rambling nonsense, then regains awareness with no memory of the past half-hour. This is bad, because he got locked in his stalker's basement with Wes and David. In the next chapter when he calls home for help, he ends up crying and calling his father out on his Parental Neglect. ...Except he's actually talking to his Parental Substitute Greg. And now he's wandering around the city, terrified and incoherent.
• In With Strings Attached, the Baravadans have liquor called Thief. Drinking Thief gradually removes your memories until you barely have enough left to find your way home. The effects wear off overnight, or when something reminds you of something. Paul drinks a lot of it to forget his emotional pain during his Depression Era, though it always comes back full force in the morning.
• Kurogane suffers a realistic variant after a roof falls on him in Shatterheart. While he initially lost his memories of his dimension traveling, he quickly regains them after seeing Syaoran triggered his memories. He only forgets his fight with Syaoran which lead to his concussion in the first place.
• In Tealove's Steamy Adventure, the protagonists meet Libra Ace in a cave, and Libra can't remember any of her life from before she entered the cave. (In fact, she thinks the outside world doesn't even exist.) However, an offhand mention of the white dragon bush—whose flower caused Libra's amnesia in the first place—causes her to abruptly regain all of her memories.
• In How I Became Yours, Azula is given total amnesia by a poison, though she can still function on an almost adult level (she keeps all her language skills, for example). The amnesia also gives her a personality wipe.
• In Damned If You Do Damned If You Don't Voldemort gets amnesia after hitting his head on a counter in Gregorovitch's shop.
• In Forget Me Not Harry has extremely severe anterograde amnesia, to the point where he doesn't remember anything that happens after age nineteen for longer than a day.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe fic "Spider-Who?" basically opens with Spider-Man suffering from this when he's lured into a trap at a warehouse that subsequently explodes; while he's able to just get out of the building before it goes off, he subsequently hits his head on a dumpster and wakes up with amnesia. Fortunately, he is rescued by Mary Jane Watson (here a separate person from Michelle Jones), who takes him to her aunt's apartment to recover for the next few hours, his healing factor restoring certain key memories even before Tony Stark finds Spider-Man and is able to take him home (coincidentally, Mary Jane was right next door to May's apartment).
• Basically deconstructed as a theme in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fic "Riley Who?" (currently lost to the 'net), when Buffy takes a knock to the head mid-season 4 and wakes up thinking it's a year ago. As the Scoobies try to work out why this blow to the head in particular cost Buffy her memory, when Riley mentions that his last pre-amnesia talk with Buffy ended when Riley told her that he loved her and Buffy said nothing in response, Xander speculates that the key is the timing. With Riley having just had sex with Faith while in Buffy's body, Buffy realised that she can't tell Riley that she loves him after such an event where she was able to forgive Angel when he kissed Faith as part of his plan to pose as Angelus, so her mind used the 'excuse' of the latest blow to the head to go back to when she was involved with someone she could say "I love you" to after they had an 'encounter' with Faith (to be clear, the issue is that the idea of Riley being with someone else doesn't hurt Buffy as much as it hurt when Angel did it, affirming to Buffy that she doesn't care enough about Riley to be hurt by that mistake).
• In Hawk-Eyed Charlie Harry's grandfather Charlus Potter lost his memory during a Death Eater attack that destroyed his house and killed his wife. The goblins give him a bare outline of his past when he takes an eleven-year-old Harry school shopping for Hogwarts.
• In Gets Wrecked, Ms. Frizzle gets into a car crash and gets Identity Amnesia. It is noted that brain damage is hard to recover from and Ms. Frizzle might never regain her memories, but Ms. Frizzle does regain some of her memories upon seeing the bus again. It takes a little longer to recover her memories of her students.
• In the Scooby-Doo fan fic In A Flash Velma gets amnesia after being struck by lightning and becomes a beekeeper named Jane.
• The plot of Steven Universe fangame Flawed Crystals is kicked off by Steven accidentally erasing Jasper's memories in an attempt to heal her corruption. This is later Played for Drama; Jasper's amnesia is extremely convenient for Steven and the gems, as it means she does not remember her animosity towards them and is instead willing to cooperate. Stevonnie notes how incredibly lucky this was, but also notes how dishonest it is to abuse it to make her help them.
• In You're My Density, Hermione and Harry travel back in time from the end of 1998 to the troll encounter at Halloween 1991. Unfortunately for Harry, since his magic had been bound and his memories drastically altered as a result of his Kangaroo Court encounter with Fudge and Umbridge in 1995, he arrives in 1991 with zero memory of Hogwarts or the people there or magic, only remembering his adult self's meeting with Hermione. He's very unimpressed with anyone else at Hogwarts on first meeting.

Films — Animation

• In Anastasia, the main character has amnesia and gradually gains back her memories as she's given and seeing things from her past life. What brings her fully back is a music box that plays a song. She is shown falling over and hitting her head as a child — and she later describes herself as being found wandering around Russia.
• Finding Nemo has a surprising twofer subversion of standard Hollywood amnesia. Dory is one of very few fictional characters to suffer from anterograde amnesia, in that she has profound difficulty retaining new memories without constant repetition. She also never really finds a cure, but learns to deal with it by finding a constant in her life to serve as an anchor. Though frequently Played for Laughs, it's also somewhat heartbreaking at times, and has actually been cited as a very accurate portrayal of the condition by mental health professionals.
• Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer features a rare example of anterograde amnesia in the titular grandma, though it's never identified as anything more than "she's lost her memory". Not only does she completely forget who she is, she doesn't seem to form any new memories either: her grandson has to keep reintroducing himself to her, and the villains can laugh over their evil scheme with her standing right there and not registering anything. All of this would seem to imply some serious brain trauma, but it's instantly undone by a bite of her famous fruitcake.

Films — Live-Action

• The Addams Family: Decades before the movie begins, Fester Addams became an amnesiac as a result of his unspecified experiences in the Bermuda Triangle. His memory is restored by being hit in the head by lightning coming out of the Portal Book Hurricane Irene.
• Alien: After Kane wakes up from having the Facehugger attach itself to his face, he can't remember anything about the planet, and even seems confused where he is. All he can remember is a horrible dream about smothering. Fridge Brilliance on why the victim can't remember being attacked by the Facehugger: anyone who was already aware what the things were all about would kill anyone who confessed to being Facehugged.
• In American Dreamer, the main character has a concussion and thus thinks she's the heroine of her favorite mystery novels.
• The film Christmas On My Mind opens with Lucy Lovett suffering amnesia of the past two years of her life after she slips on snow after collecting her wedding dress; from her perspective, she's still engaged to her previous fiancé Zac Callahan and hasn't met her new partner. Lucy eventually realises that she was actually planning to go back to Zac when she had her accident, justifying the amnesia as her psychologically regressing to a point where it would be easier for her to go back.
• Clean Slate is about a detective in the middle of a big case when an injury leaves him with a unique form of amnesia: every time he goes to bed, he wakes up with without his memory. This leads him to leave various notes and messages to himself to clarify his situation until he recovers, while still trying to crack the case.
• At the beginning of Dark City (1998), Murdoch wakes up in a room with a murdered woman and Easy Amnesia. Somewhat justified because the Strangers were constantly removing and re-inserting new memories into their human test subjects.
• Dr. Kildare: At first played straight in Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant, when the Patient of the Week is a young woman who has had a sudden and total onset of amnesia but otherwise is perfectly fine. Inverted in the end when it turns out that she's faking it to get out of her marriage.
• Falling for Christmas: Sierra hits her head and loses her memory, but it starts to come back over the course of the film, and comes back in full after she is reunited with her father and fiancé.
• In Fast & Furious 6, Letty is revealed to have survived her supposed death in F&F 4 but has been suffering amnesia ever since and cannot remember who she is nor her relationship with Dom nor even her own team. Owen Shaw exploits this to make Letty pull a Face–Heel Turn and betray her friends and family to join his team. Fortunately, by the end of the film, Letty regains her memory and makes a Heel–Face Turn.
• The Gathering: Cassie exhibits classic Hollywood retrograde amnesia after being hit by a car, remembering other than her name and that she's from somewhere in the Midwest.
• I Love You Again: Boring stuffed shirt Larry Wilson is struck unconscious by a blow to the head — and wakes up as charming, suave con artist George Carey. It turns out that nine years ago, George got in a fight, hit his head, and suffered a case of total amnesia that led to him starting a new life as "Larry". After he wakes up again as George, he doesn't remember Larry's life any more than "Larry" remembered George's.
• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Harry sedates the barkeeper after the Bar Brawl with a poison arrow labeled "Amnesia".
• The Last Letter From Your Lover: The beginning shows that Jenny was in a car accident and doesn't remember her life before it. When she bumps into Anthony again four years later, the memories come rushing back.
• Invoked in the Korean film Lost and Found. The heroine gets hit by the car of her crush, and she pretends to have amnesia so that he'll have to let her stay at his home. The doctor at the hospital points out that this kind of amnesia usually only happens on TV. Later on, when the man starts to suspect that she's lying, she's hit in the head by a baseball and then claims the blow brought her memory back.
• One act of murder causes Victoria to lose almost all her memory in Love Letters.
• The Majestic: Pete Appleton, a Hollywood writer, gets branded as a communist. Appleton gets drunk and loses most of his memory in a car accident, and the people who rescue him mistake him for Luke Trimble, a soldier who went missing in action during the war, causing him to create an accidental false identity. His memory returns when he sees one of his own films.
• Men in Black: The titular Men have a device that can cause amnesia of varying lengths more or less at will, and they often "helpfully" provide their victims with a more mundane explanation of what they witnessed so that they go off with new (false) memories rather than a blank. In the first movie, Kay does it to Laurel so many times that Jay gets worried about the state of her brain.
• In The Muppets Take Manhattan, right after Kermit finds out that the production is a go, he gets hit by a car, and he loses his memory. He regains it as a result of Miss Piggy throwing him against a wall.
• The killer in The Mystery Of Mary Celeste loses his memory of past events when an errant boom hits the back of his head. Since he's the sole living person left in the ship, he is left confused and ultimately jumps overboard.
• Used as a plot device in Open Grave. The story revolves around a group that has lost all their memories, they manage to remember everything by interacting with certain items.
• Overboard (1987) features a Rich Bitch who gets amnesia after she falls over the side of her yacht and almost drowns. A working-class man she's insulted tries to enact a little revenge on her (and get her to do a little housework for him) by convincing her that she's his wife. Of course, this being a quirky Romantic Comedy, things don't go as planned...
• Paris, Texas has its main character, Travis, walking around in the desert with seemingly no recollection of what his life was like four years prior; he remembers how to drive and who his brother is, but has no idea why he bought a certain plot of land or what his son looks like. His memory gets better after spending a couple of days in the comfort of a lovely home with his family, however.
• In Random Harvest, a World War I veteran hospitalized with shell shock and complete retrograde amnesia escapes from the hospital, gets married, and settles down to a happy small-town life — until he makes a business trip to London, where he is involved in a car accident that causes him to recover his lost memories but completely forget his entire life since the war, including his marriage.
• Resident Evil Film Series:
  • In Resident Evil (2002), both Alice and Spence Parks lose their memories of their past lives as a side effect of being rendered unconscious by sleep gas. They regain at least some of their memories by the end of the movie.
  • In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Clair now has amnesia but is slowly regaining memories as the plot advances. Presumably everybody fitted with the control bug also don't have a clue who they are, were they are, or what's going on.
• In Shredder Orpheus, Orpheus's parents work in the memory-processing department of the Underworld and are able to erase citizens' memories with an ordinary paper shredder.
• In Snow White and the Three Stooges, Prince Charming gets hit on the head when an assassin is trying to kill him (but the Stooges save him). He grows up without knowing his past.
• In Spider-Man 3, Harry Osborn has temporary amnesia after being badly injured during a fight with Peter Parker. It not only results in rather convenient selective memory loss, but also changes Harry's personality substantially. (In the Spider-Man comics, similar tactics were used on occasion to make Norman Osborn forget that he was the Green Goblin.)
• Swelter has the main character take a bullet to the head during a heist, escape with the money, hide it, and then totally forget the whole thing, and his entire life beforehand. His co-conspirators start off the film as incredulous as the audience, but eventually come to believe that he really doesn't remember. He gets some flashes of memory back throughout the film, but he never does remember where the money is.
• Parodied in The Truman Show when Truman's father's inconvenient reappearance after being killed off is to be explained as down to amnesia. When he admits this, the director looks suitably shame-faced.
• Averted with the five men in Unknown (2006), who wake up with no memories of who they are or how they got there due to an unspecified chemical. They slowly recover memories, but only in disjointed ways as they encounter sensory experiences which jolt their memory.

Literature

• Zigzagged by The Heroes of Olympus, a fantasy series by Rick Riordan. Both Jason and Percy have their memories stolen by Hera/Juno, but get them back a few days after joining the other camp of demigods. Jason joins the Greeks almost immediately after waking up with amnesia, but only gets most of his memories back at first. The rest take presumably months to return. Percy wakes up with and spends roughly two months with only the faintest memory of Annabeth and little else, but gets all of his memory back pretty much all at once. While this is appropriate, as Jason needed time to learn to trust the Greeks while Percy’s Fatal Flaw allowed him to trust the Romans quickly, YMMV as to whose amnesia was easier. Percy's memories returning quickly was also partly caused by his drinking gorgon's blood.
• Older Than Feudalism: The Recognition Of Shakuntala, an episode from the Ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata that was later Expanded into a theatrical drama by the Indian playwright Kalidasa around the 1st century BC, is probably the Ur-Example of this trope. It's a Girl Meets Boy story about a woman named Shakuntala who meets Dushyanta and they get married him, only for him to get cursed with Amnesia and completely forget her. The only way to lift the curse is to show him the ring that he gave her, but she loses the ring in a river. She eventually finds the ring by the end of the story, makes him remember, and then they live Happily Ever After.
• The hero of Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Monster Men suffers from amnesia, allowing him to be taken for a result of the Mad Scientist's experiment.
• In Fred Saberhagen's The Frankenstein Papers, it turns out that Frankenstein's creature was actually an alien who'd been struck with amnesia while investigating the electrical activity in Frankenstein's lab: amnesia is a typical side-effect of exposure to high voltages in his species, and the lab's equipment wasn't properly insulated.
• "Jason Bourne", in Robert Ludlum's Bourne Trilogy and the movies loosely based on them, forgets his name and past, but instinctively remembers his superspy/assassin training. It is revealed that the conditioning he received in Project Treadstone made him a psychological accident waiting to happen. In the film, the amnesia is triggered by a psychotic break, several gunshot wounds, and nearly drowning; in the novel, it was being shot several times including once in the head, being cast adrift in a stormy sea for several hours, and lingering in a prolonged near-death state.
• Gene Wolfe's Soldier of the Mists, Soldier of Arete, and Soldier of Sidion feature an ancient warrior who, every night, loses his memory of the day before. He also has visions of various gods. Though the characters view him as cursed by the gods, he had suffered a head injury and it is a known form of amnesia.
• The character Tzigone from the Forgotten Realms Counselors and Kings trilogy has this. It turns out her wizard mother deliberately wiped her memory just before she was captured by her enemies, so that Tzigone wouldn't go looking for her and get herself killed. Her memory comes back gradually over the course of the novels.
• Jame, the protagonist of P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath series, cannot remember anything from when she was seven years old until when she was seventeen. Some details have resurfaced, but five years later, most still remains gone. It's likely the amnesia is magical in nature, though its exact cause is as yet unknown.
• Occurred in a Super Special of The Baby-Sitters Club, when Mallory came across a woman asking random by-standers if anyone knew who she was. She ended up regaining her memory in about a week, tops.
• Happens to Jimmy, the apprentice Michael and Fisk bring with them as a witness in the Knight and Rogue Series to prove that they weren't responsible should a fire start. The initial mob that appears when a building does, as they suspected, catch fire, not only ignores Jimmy, but throws him into a wall, causing him to forget most of the previous day.
• Happens to Bran in A Song of Ice and Fire after taking a bit of a tumble from a high window. May be a more justified example than most: it's implied that his inability to remember the events immediately preceding his fall may be as much psychosomatic (it was a very traumatic injury) as physical.
• The trope is given a little jab in Isabel Cooper's No Proper Lady, when Simon plans to get around explaining where Joan came from by claiming she hit her head and lost her memory. Joan protests that amnesia doesn't work that way, to which Simon replies that nobody they're telling the story to is going to know any better.
• Done realistically in Caliban. Doctor Leving does suffer from traumatic amnesia from being violently assaulted, but it's limited to events shortly before being attacked. Which is exactly what Ariel wanted - for Doctor Leving to forget about needing to doublecheck the inventory records (What she had been doing when the attack took place) until she could arrange to alter the records to cover up the fact that Ariel a non-Three Law Compliant test robot that was intended to be destroyed after the tests were completed.
• In Devon Monk's Allie Beckstrom books, one consequence of magic is losing memories. You don't get them back, though.
• Blood Knight Rachel from Animorphs comes down with an unfortunate case of this in the first Megamorphs book, The Andalite's Gift. She gets better halfway through. It's really just an excuse to keep her out of the plot until then, and has no effect on the story.
• In John C. Wright's Count to the Eschaton, the Nymphs' culture made heavy use of nepenthe to keep everything happy and pleasant. Security forces would go fight down enemies and then imbide to keep their culture
• This trope gets referenced in a self-deprecatory joke in Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz Series, when the First-Person Smartass narrator after revealing a fake spoiler suggests that hitting yourself on the head with one of Brandon's Doorstopper novels would be a convenient way to forget about it.
• In Manning Coles' A Toast to Tomorrow British agent Tommy Hambledon gets amnesia and believes himself to be a German citizen. It takes fifteen years for his memory to return, by which time he's fairly well-known in the Nazi Party.
• Averted in Idlewild. Although the character does regain fragments of episodic memories, it's unclear how much of that he synthesizes from his interpretations of the evidence (especially given how positively he remembers his past). In the sequels it's made clear that he never fully recovers.
• The epitome of this trope occurs in Betrayed, when Neferet erases Zoey's memories and then she gets them back in the same chapter, after about only a page's worth of effort.
• The Relativity villain Master Blankard, who's in jail now but has no memory of what he's done to deserve being there.
• Karyl of The Dinosaur Lords suffers full-blown Identity Amnesia as a result of a blow to his helmet. It's suggested that the actual reason behind his amnesia is that the blow actually killed him, and this opens a whole new can of questions, starting with "how is he even alive?".
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Index remembers very little of her own life due to periodic mind-wipes by her magician caretakers, used to keep her photographic memory from overloading her already strained brain. Except that's just a lie to keep her under control.
  • At the end of the first book, Touma gets all his memories wiped due to being hit in the head by a spell. The spell was originally meant to be lethal, but he negated it before it could do any more damage. It later turns out that he had another case of amnesia before this. When he was badly injured, Misaki (a telepath) used her power to anesthetize him. However, as a side effect, this somehow gave him retrograde and anterograde amnesia specific to her, and her only.
• In The President Vanishes by Rex Stout, a van which was delivering goods to the White House is suspected of being the vehicle used to abduct the president when its driver is found in a nearby park suffering from amnesia after a simple blow on the head.
• The premise of What Alice Forgot. The protagonist takes a blow to the head and forgets everything that's happened for the last ten years, leaving her to have to make sense of a life where she seems to have turned into everything she once despised.
• Temeraire: The eighth book begins with the protagonist waking up on a beach halfway around the world from the last place he remembers... which turns out to have been eight years ago. When his companions find him, they have to contend with the loss of all his Character Development throughout the series, until his memory is finally restored at the sight of his close friend Tenzing Tharkay.
• The Mermaid Chronicles: In Quest for Atlantis, the protagonists travel in a submersible to the bottom of the Challenger Deep to retrieve one of the Keys to Atlantis, as well as a map showing what to do with it. On the way up, the submersible starts to leak and flood, destroying the map. Maya has already memorized it, but when the submersible implodes, Maya gets total amnesia from being thrown against the ceiling. Later she hits her head again and gets all her memories back, including what was on the map.

Live-Action TV

In general:

• Subverted on most soap operas. While characters being injured and not remembering anything about their past life is a very common plot, the recovery is somewhat realistic — occurring over a period of time, with intermittent flashbacks.

By series:

• Harry from 3rd Rock from the Sun gets this after getting sucked into a tornado — not from the crash, but from a flowerpot falling on his head, which leads to him finding out that about the Aliens Among Us, but not knowing that he's one of them. He gets better after getting hit by a lightning bolt (which might be justified with the chip in his head).
• A particularly infamous example occurred in the first series of 24 when Teri goes into shock and forgets nearly everything about her life, only to recover suddenly a few hours later. It should be noted that the first series of 24 was much less tightly written than later ones, and the writers have admitted that they just needed a way to keep the character away from the action for a few episodes. In a nice nod to realism, though (and the only good quality about that sordid plotline), Teri gets amnesia after she gets out of a car parked on a narrow ledge, tells Kim to stay there while she tries to find help, and watches as the car goes rolling over the edge and explodes. One of the most common causes of retrograde amnesia is sheer brain-rending trauma that the sufferer feels primarily responsible for, so it's nice to see that happen instead of another coconut to the head.
• The Addams Family: The episode "Amnesia in the Addams Family" is entirely about this.
• The titular character in ALF gets this after a bump on the head^note originally, it was using an egg beater in the tub to make a hot tub, but some kid tried it in Real Life and it had to be Bowdlerized and thinks he's an insurance agent named Wane Shlaygil (he was reading insurance brochures right before the bump), triggering the Flashback Episode.
• In the Andromeda episode "Music of a Distant Drum", Tyr gets this from some Nanomachines — his Nietzschean immune system eventually fights them off, but in the meantime, he becomes somewhat attached to the fisherwoman who finds him.
• In the Angel episode "Spin the Bottle", all of the heroes lose their adult memories due to a magical spell, causing them to revert to their teenage selves. The title character then freaks out, partly because his teenage self is from about 1740 and partly because his adult self is a vampire.
• Are You Being Served?: Subverted in "Memories Are Made of This". Mrs. Slocombe gets hit on the head with a golf ball, and uses the opportunity to pretend to have lost all her memories past the age of 5 so she can get a free coat.
• King Tut from Batman (1966) is an archaeology professor who gained a Napoleon Delusion after a bump to the head. Being knocked on the head again restores his sanity and true personality, but sadly for him, he tends to relapse (and make return appearances) just as easily.
• In an unusual exception, Jaime Sommers of The Bionic Woman suffered substantial amnesia (forgetting most of her life) as a result of the operating table resuscitation that launched her series — and never recovered from it.
• The whole point of Blindspot is a woman being found in a large bag in Times Square, her body covered in fresh tattoos and her completely lacking in memory. The doctor examining her explains that her body was flooded with an experimental drug capable of causing temporary memory loss. She eventually starts getting flashes of her past. It turns out she agreed to the procedure as part of a highly complex Batman Gambit by her adoptive terrorist mother. In Season 2, she zaps her brother with the same drug, but he only gets a single dose and eventually recovers all his memories, extremely pissed at her.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In the episode "Tabula Rasa", all of the heroes lose their memories due to a magical spell.
  • Exploited after Xander Harris is possessed by hyenas in "The Pack". He tells Buffy and Willow he has no memory of it, but when Giles confronts him, he confesses that he was lying so he wouldn't have to talk about it. In Season 2, he inadvertently reveals that he was lying.
• Happens to Delia in Call the Midwife after she's hit by a car, after a brief coma. Most heartbreakingly, Delia doesn't recognize her girlfriend Patsy when Patsy visits her in the hospital. It's not resolved by the end of the episode... but by the next episode, set a couple of months later, it is (though Delia is still suffering from milder lingering consequences of her brain injury).
• The Castle (2009) episode "The Fifth Bullet" features a case of this, though an unusual one in that the character in question never recovers.
• Averted in the series finale of Chuck. Sarah's memory is virtually destroyed by the faulty Intersect 3.0 after she is captured by Quinn and forced to Flash repeatedly, which he then uses to brainwash her into working for him. Even after the team helps her throw off Quinn's influence, there is no way to restore her memory again after Chuck uploads the sole remaining copy of the Intersect himself to save a theater full of people from being blown up by a bomb. Although there are fragments of memories remaining that strongly imply she could eventually recover some of what she lost, the series still ends on a somewhat ambiguous note over her future.
• Discussed in Cinderella and the Four Knights. After she suffers a mild concussion and wakes up in the hospital, Ha-won comments that she always thought she'd be out for weeks and wake up with memory loss like she's seen in movies and TV.
• David in Coronation Street shoves his mother down the stairs after finding out she convinced his girlfriend to abort their baby. Gail develops amnesia after the event and is temporarily led to believe that she just fell down the stairs. A few years later David himself spontaneously develops epilepsy - resulting in black-out periods where he can't remember what he's done.
• The UnSub in the Criminal Minds episode "Tabula Rasa" got amnesia after falling off a building and being put into a coma for three years.
• Averted in CSI: NY. Mac has a kind of amnesia called aphasia due to his being shot in the back and flatlining during surgery. He remembered most things but forgot random everyday words. It took several months for him to recover, though once he did, he was fine.
• In Danger 5, this is how Ilsa explains to Rommel why his wife hasn't been in touch:
  Rommel: You've had amnesia for two years?
  Ilsa: Yes. After I was hit by the mortar in Stalingrad, I wandered through Europe with a group of priests until a magician brought back my memories. Then I came to find you.
• Subverted in Dark Matter (2015). Initially, the crew assume that whatever wiped all their memories while they were in stasis was just a glitch in the system, but at the end of "Episode 2", Five (the Mysterious Waif who is the youngest member of the crew and has everyone's memories buried in her subconscious) reveals to Two that she can recall one of them erasing their memories deliberately, "Because we're dangerous."
• In a two-part episode of Diff'rent Strokes, Dad loses his memory after being in a car accident. He recovers by the end, though.
• Jeremy Darling of Dirty Sexy Money fakes a case of this as a way to try to figure out how to get Nola out of a jam, which he is not supposed to know she is in.
• Doctor Who: Inverted in the case of Donna Noble. In "Journey's End", the Doctor has to wipe her memories of him to save her life from a My Skull Runneth Over situation after she absorbs the Doctor's consciousness. Her memory isn't wiped very easily, but the Doctor warns her family that anything that reminds her of those memories will restore them and kill her. However, in "The End of Time", when she's cornered by several copies of the Master, it turns out the Doctor put in a defence mechanism release valve that can help somewhat.
• Due South does this in its second season closer, and uses it as an excuse for a Clip Show as Ray has to "remind" Fraser about their adventures. Gah.
• In La familia P. Luche, this is how Junior came to be. He was an undercover police officer known as "Comandante Aligheri", who lost his memory after being run over by Federica and reducing him to the level of a 6-year-old upon waking. Every time he recovers his memory, the couple smacks him in the head to revert him back into "Junior" and keep him from spilling the beans on the incident.
• In the Fraggle Rock episode "Boober Gorg", Boober loses his memory after being hit on the head by a radish, and begins thinking he's a Gorg. The Gorgs are actually fooled too, but only because there were rumors of a sorcerer roaming the area, and Junior had coincidentally gone missing, leading the Gorgs to jump to the wrong conclusion...
• The Fugitive: The episode "Escape into Black" has Richard Kimble getting amnesia from an exploding stove, making him forget he's a wanted felon and thus vulnerable to capture.
• Michelle falls off a horse and gets amnesia in the final episodes of Full House.
• Completely averted with General Hospital's Jason Quartermaine after he suffered brain damage in a car accident. When he woke up not remembering anything about his life beforehand, viewers naturally assumed this trope would play out... only for him to never remember anything and adapt a completely new identity as Jason Morgan.
• Lisa from Green Acres suffers an interesting case where she actually believes she's a different person with a very thorough Backstory. She believes Oliver is her butler, expects her fiancé to pick her up for a date, and has amazing cooking skills. Since she is normally a Lethal Chef, Oliver is flabbergasted when she cooks muffins so light they drift slowly down to the plate when dropped. Finally, she instantly recognizes their neighbor Mr. Kimball and treats him normally, even though she can't correctly identify anyone else.
• Hannah Montana gives Jackson amnesia through what seems like a blow to the head, and Miley uses his memory loss to her advantage, convincing Jackson that he is her idea of the perfect older brother (Happiness in Slavery). Subverted when Jackson's amnesia turns out to be an even more epic Zany Scheme to remind Miley that she would miss her brother if he were any different (given nearly every episode ends with An Aesop of some variety, this is the Disney Channel after all, so this is just par for the course for the show).
  Jackson: Amnesia? What is this, an episode of Gilligan's Island?
• Subverted in Heidi, bienvenida a casa: After Toro finally asks Clara to be his girlfriend, he immediately falls down and hits his head. Given the timing and the soap opera nature of the show, one would assume that he just lost his memory of asking Clara. However, he turns out to be perfectly fine.
• Peter spends most of the second season of Heroes running around Ireland without his memory. He gets it back around the time he rejoins the main plot thread of the season. In this case, the amnesia is the result of the Haitian using his mind-wipe ability on him.
• An episode of Human Target has the client lose his memory in a car bombing incident right as the team was about to meet him. Thus, they know almost nothing about him except that he's being targeted for murder, which is one more thing than he knows.
• Ideal features a call girl who is kidnapped with the intention of ransoming her off. The plan falls through, but during the ruckus, she is hit on the head and suffers temporary amnesia. One character takes advantage of this by telling her that he's her boyfriend and that he'll help her remember things. When her memory starts to return, she runs back to who she thinks is her genuine boyfriend, but he turns out to be her pimp. After being mistreated by him, she runs back to the man who had lied to her, seeking protection.
• I Dream of Jeannie:
  • One episode has Jeannie getting amnesia from a bump on the head, and forgetting that she's a genie.
  • In another episode, Tony bumps his head and forgets that Jeannie is a genie. He almost marries her, but another bump makes him recover.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Frank gets a head injury after falling out a window and believes it's ten years earlier. The gang tries to convince Frank it's 2006 to take advantage of him and keep him out of their lives. His memory is restored when he tries the rum ham in Charlie's apartment.
• Subverted in Kenan & Kel. When the two go to the airport to pick up Kenan's friend's girlfriend, they accidentally hit her on the head. When she wakes up, she claims she doesn't have a boyfriend and leaves. Hilarity Ensues as they try to find her and get her back. In the end, it turns out they got the wrong girl. It was also lampshaded when Kel attempts to get her memory back by hitting her a second time.
• In the Knight Rider episode "Knightmares", Michael loses the last few years of his life. This is particularly stressful for him given that in that time, he's acquired a) a completely new identity, b) a new face and c) a partner who's a talking car.
• The Legend of Dick and Dom: In the episode "Forget Me Nuts", all the characters (including a mysterious one we have not seen before) wake up with no memory and have to try and work out who they are, what happened, and what they need to do next. By the end, they have managed to get the Big Bad to lose his memory too, and convince him that he is a travelling sandal saleswoman. Then the narrator loses his memory.
• In Little House on the Prairie, a boy fakes blindness after an accident, and Laura finds out but agrees keep quiet and let him tell his parents. Before he can do that, he falls off a horse and hits his head again, conveniently forgetting everything since the first accident. His parents and Doctor Baker just assume the second blow brought his sight back.
• In the Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman episode "All Shook Up", Clark attempts to destroy an asteroid heading for Earth by ramming into it, only to fall back to Earth and lose his memory. The asteroid is delayed on its mission due to destroy all life on Earth in a few days, but Superman didn't get it sufficiently pushed off its course — and he's nowhere to be found. Everyone wonders where their hero is, including the amnesiac Clark. His parents try to explain to him that he is Superman. His dad succeeds by trying to hit Clark with a bat and having it shatter. He can't re-learn to fly in a few days, though. Eventually, just as all seems lost, he regains his memory and pushes the asteroid out of the way. Like a number of Lois and Clark episodes, this is based on the 1950s television series with George Reeves. This one is from the 1953 episode "Panic in the Sky".
• Lost:
  • Claire Littleton suffers this kind of amnesia after her mysterious kidnapping and return by the Others. Lampshaded by Sayid asking Jack if he's ever seen such a convenient case of amnesia in his medical practice, and Jack agreeing that it's unlikely and probably a sign of something more sinister. Season 2 reveals Claire's amnesia is partly due to blocking out trauma, but mostly because the Others kept her heavily drugged the whole time they had her. How the Others achieved this isn't really explained until a bonus feature on the Season Six DVD, in which a DHARMA orientation film reveals that Room 23 was used to brainwash captured Hostiles and remove all memory of their captivity.
  • Daniel Faraday apparently had anterograde amnesia before coming to the island. This was eventually explained as a side effect of his experiments, which involved sending his own consciousness briefly into the future.
  • In Season Six, Sun suffers from a convenient bump on the head that renders her unable to speak English for several episodes.
• MacGyver (1985): MacGyver became an amnesiac several times as a result of blows to the head. Given that he's knocked unconscious at least once an episode, he's lucky that's the worst he ever got.
• Averted in the Magnum, P.I. episode "Try to Remember". Thomas isn't just bopped on the head, he is in a terrible accident in the middle of a missing persons case, and has a serious concussion among various other injuries. When he wakes up, he has no difficulty remembering who he is, but not what happened immediately prior to the wreck, and he is the prime suspect in the murder of the woman he was supposed to find.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:
  • In the second season episode "The Nowhere Affair", Napoleon Solo, facing imminent capture by a pair of THRUSH mooks, takes "Capsule B", a drug which induces "total amnesia" for a period of at least 72 hours.
    Illya Kuryakin: Just how effective are these capsules, total amnesia?
    Alexander Waverly: Oh, I daresay he'll still be able to count up to ten in Swahili, or conjugate a few simple Latin verbs, but he'll not be able to remember a thing about U.N.C.L.E., or have the remotest idea who he is, for at least 72 hours, by which time the information will be in our hands... I hope.
  • In the third season episode "The Pieces of Fate Affair", the innocent-of-the-week suffers partial amnesia when she's grazed in the head by a bullet during a THRUSH assassination attempt.
• In one episode of Married... with Children, Peggy bumps her head and gets amnesia. Al tricks her into believing that she was a good housewife. Thelma does the same to Naomi on Mama's Family.
• The Mentalist:
  • Jane loses his memory after he almost drowns.
  • Used in the episode "Red Badge" when Lisbon loses the memory of what happened in a certain night near a crime scene ^note they get tipped off that something is wrong when she can't remember even under hypnosis and fakes a breakdown afterwards to trick the killer to confess when reliving the moment. He told them about a cross that was on the inside of the door, somewhere that only the killer could see.
• Hilariously lampshaded in an episode of The Middleman in which a guy who the heroine recently met and has become fond of suffers a concussion during one of her missions, and consequently develops amnesia that conveniently causes him to forget the past 2 days.
• Ed the horse gets amnesia in Mister Ed, forcing Wilbur to fake having it as well so he can use whatever cure is tried on him on Ed.
• Monk once gets temporary amnesia from a blow to the head. In the episode, his therapist does acknowledge that this kind of amnesia is quite rare.
• Used in an episode of My Name Is Earl. Earl's old buddy Sweet Johnny ('cause he's the sweetest guy anyone knew) is convinced by Earl to keep doing dangerous stunts that leave him laid up... so Earl can bang his girlfriend. After twice trying to confess, he finds out it wasn't his fault. Johnny bashed his head into a drawer, which resets his memory to the same day every time. Slightly subverted as there is no magic fix. After trying to kill himself, Johnny simply knocks himself out, resetting his memory once again. Earl finally resigns to the fact that this is the one list item he can never cross off. He circles it instead.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: "Angels Revenge" opens with Crow believing he has amnesia, and asking Mike to "clear it up" by hitting him on the head with a large wooden mallet.
  Mike: So, Crow, about this amnesia of yours...
  Crow: Oh, it's terrible, Mike. The list of things I can't remember is endless! I can't remember you, I can't remember Cambot, I can't remember Fisk's home run off the foul pole in the bottom of the 12th in Game Six of the '75 World Series!
  Servo: [working a crossword puzzle] Okay, 'Mythical beast', eight letters, beginning with...
  Crow: Minotaur.
• Gibbs suffers a two-part amnesia arc after being blown up in the third season finale of NCIS. It's mostly an excuse to drag out the search for the bad guy while still allowing Gibbs to be conscious in many scenes. Also, to make Ziva cry. In an ironic twist, a bonk to Ziva's head (courtesy of the Gibbs slap) triggers some of his memories.
• The New Avengers: A variant in "To Catch a Rat". An agent suffering crippling injuries in an attempt on his life and loses all of his memories. Unlike most uses of this trope, his memory stays gone for 17 years. The Easy Amnesia comes into play when a blow to his head (from a child's swing) restores his memory instantly.
• Night and Day's Jane Harper was lumbered with this on her much-anticipated return to Thornton Street towards the end of the show’s run, in order to string out the mystery of her disappearance right up until the finale.
• Once Upon a Time has this in Belle's backstory. She and her mother were attacked by the ogres and Belle blacked out — so she has no memory of her mother's death. Rather realistically, she's never shown regaining the memories (though she attempts to do so by magic) and simply gets the event explained to her by her father.
• Happens to Cousin Larry in Perfect Strangers after he falls down the stairs. Balki coaches Cousin Larry on how to introduce himself...
  Balki: Hello, my name is Cousin Larry Appleton.
  Larry: Hello, my name is Cousin Larry Appleton.
  Balki: How are you?
  Larry: [in a sad tone] Fine.
  [Balki sighs]
• Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons: Chi Lu-Jen, courtesy of the fire spirit who crafted the Dragon Bone Sacred Sword. Transitions into some form of Obfuscating Stupidity as the actual amnesia recedes and Chi Lu-Jen starts acting purposefully again.
• The Power Rangers in Space episode "T.J.'s Identity Crisis" has T.J. suffer an injury that makes him forget who he is and that he is the Blue Space Ranger.
• Jarod develops amnesia in an episode of The Pretender after a criminal he's going after turns out to have an accomplice, who whops him in the head.
• Psychopath Diary: Dong-sik gets amnesia from being hit by a car.
• Radio Enfer: Jocelyne hits herself with a frying pan in one episode to prove that one can avoid feeling pain with enough concentration, leading to this trope. Other characters get hit on the head with it throughout the rest of the episode (some more than once), but she's the only one who seems to suffer from amnesia every time she gets hit.
• Parodied in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch episode "As Westbridge Turns", an Affectionate Parody of the Soap Opera. Harvey is hit in the head with a falling ladder and can't remember who he is. Libby manages to convince him that she is his girlfriend — but his memory gets jogged with a bracelet he gave Sabrina, commemorating their relationship.
• The entire plot of Samantha Who?.
• After a car crash in the S Club 7 Christmas Special, Paul gets amnesia, which is later cured by watching another patient at the hospital crash his wheelchair. Hannah is also left unable to speak correctly for a time due to the crash.
• In the Shining Time Station episode "Stacy Forgets Her Name", Stacy Jones loses her memory after sniffing some flowers Mr. Conductor had sprinkled with a "Forgetting Dust" in order to shoo away some bees. Her nephew, Dan, and Mr. Conductor help jog her memory, and she makes a full recovery after taking a nap.
• Shoestring: Keith Amery from "Where Was I?" falls and hits his head on a rock. He isn't knocked out and starts running again almost immediately, but it's enough to give him total retrograde amnesia. He gets his memory back on time for the climax.
• Rachel McKenna from Shortland Street lost her memory and underwent a total personality change when she was struck by lightning. After several weeks all it took was a simple electric shock from a lamp to get her memory and her old personality back. Only now she couldn't remember anything that happened when she suffered from the amnesia.
• Sisters: Second-oldest sister Teddy doesn't remember anything about her life after being shot in the head. But within one episode that only takes place over several days, she regains her memory and never again suffers any ill effects from her injury.
• Smallville: One Story Arc doesn't use this trope. Lex Luthor, through his father's machinations, is given permanent amnesia through electroshock at a crooked psych ward, causing him to forget both his father's evil dealings and Clark's secret identity. Is also an example of Laser-Guided Amnesia, since it's convenient to the plot. That said Smallville has a lot of Easy Amnesia. 90% of the cast, Clark Kent included, ought to be suffering from severe head trauma by now. If someone sees Clark using his powers, especially in the early seasons, you can bet they'll get an instant bonk on the head to forget that. The bludgeoning might not even be needed, but although psychological shock is more likely to trigger something like this, they don't show any other signs of it. There's a vaccine: "If you learn Clark's secret and don't forget it immediately, you are henceforth immune to amnesia". Or you die.
• Soap has a classic case of this with Chester forgetting who he was and only slowly recovering. For a while he thought his name was Chester Plate instead of Tate.
• Stargate-verse:
  • An episode of Stargate SG-1 has Vala hooked up to a device meant to probe her memory. When a zat sends a power surge through it, she loses all knowledge of who she is (but apparently gains enough knowledge of Earth customs to pass unnoticed).
  • Stargate Atlantis has a rare example of both: Everyone in Atlantis except Ronon and Teyla gets not only retrograde amnesia, but also loses their newly formed memories every few minutes. It's caused by a common childhood disease similar to chicken pox that humans never encountered before and therefore isn’t immune to.
  • There's another episode where team member "Michael" wakes up in the hospital with absolutely no memory of who he is, and the other main characters assure him that it's a temporary amnesia that will probably get better with time... except it won't, because Michael is actually a biological experiment designed to turn Wraith into humans, and he has no memory of his life as a Wraith. He eventually discovers the truth, and the shit hits the fan.
• Subverted in Starsky & Hutch; after a car accident, Hutch apparently has amnesia, which is used as an opportunity for a Clip Show as Starsky reminds him of their past. Near the end of the show, it turns out that Hutch is fine; he's just taking revenge on Starsky for his reckless driving.
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Twilight", Captain Archer actually gets anterograde amnesia. Earth is destroyed by the Xindi, and Archer has been unable to form any new memories for years. Every morning he wakes up and thinks it's the same day, when in reality it's about 13 years after the event. Of course, Dr. Phlox eventually cures him (it's due to a virus), but because it's a time-based virus, curing it in the present also cures it in the past; meaning Archer never lost his memory and Earth was never destroyed.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • The typical "amnesia plot" is subverted in "Future Imperfect". After an away mission goes awry, Commander Riker wakes up sixteen years in the future, with Doctor Crusher explaining that he has acquired a brain disease which has ravaged all memory of the intervening years since he contracted the infection during the away mission. This turns out to be an elaborate ruse — he's still in the present, and his mind is being probed to construct this future reality in the hopes that he will keep a lonely alien company.
  • In "Clues", the crew gradually discover that they have amnesia after being led to believe they'd been knocked unconscious for 30 seconds and going through a wormhole. In actuality, they voluntarily had their memories of the previous day wiped, but failed to eliminate all the clues that indicated more time had passed.
  • "Conundrum" has the entire crew losing their memories as the result of a cunning plan by an alien intruder to have them help him make war on an enemy. Naturally, this leads to all kinds of hijinks and hilarious misunderstandings as the crew misinterpret their true roles on the ship.
  • "Thine Own Self" has Data getting amnesia while on a pre-industrial alien world. This at least is justified somewhat, since Data is an android and thus his "memory loss" can be explained away as a malfunction.
• Cameron in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles gets a kind of this in "Alison from Palmdale". Her 'amnesia' is caused by a faulty chip, however.
• Subverted in the Three's Company episode "Forget Me Not". Jack only pretends to have amnesia to avoid Janet's wrath after totaling her new car, but Janet smells a rat, and schemes to get him to reveal he's faking.
• The Time Tunnel: In "The Death Merchant", Tony is knocked unconscious by an artillery explosion and wakes up with amnesia. In a fight near the end of the episode, he's knocked unconscious again. When he comes to, his memory has returned.
• Tracker (2001): Cole recovers his memories fairly quickly in "Remember When". He lost them when he was zapped while working on his life force collector machine. Like the Due South example, it was an excuse for a clip show.
• The Transmart: Subverted. Mamet forgets his identity after falling down the stairs in one of the Bali episodes. At the end of the episode, Ella decides to push Mamet down the stairs again, assuming this will bring his memory back. Instead, it causes Mamet to forget his species, and he starts behaving like a primal ape.
• In the Under the Umbrella Tree episode "Who Am I?", Iggy loses his memory when he falls from a high height and bumps his head. Climbing to the same spot, falling and bumping his head again cures him in the end.
• In Vazelina Hjulkalender, Santa gets Easy Amnesia from hurting his head in the sledge crash. The injury didn't cause any permanent damage. In fact, it didn't even knock him unconscious.
• Weird Science:
  • Practically every episode ends with Lisa handing out free Laser-Guided Amnesia for all implicated parties except for the main characters of course. Subverted when Lisa couldn't wipe Chett's memory because he developed a brain callous out of the absurd number of times his memory has been edited.
  • In "By the Time We Got to Woodstock", Lisa herself gets amnesia after banging her head on the sign reading "You Must Be as Tall as This Sign to Enter the Time Hole" that she placed above Wyatt's bed before she, Gary and Wyatt went back in time to 1969.
• Wonderfalls subverts this in a late-season arc: Heidi Gotts gets bumped on the head and decides to fake amnesia precisely because so many people think it works this way.

Professional Wrestling

• In the early 1990s, after suffering a powerbomb onto a concrete floor from Vader, Mick Foley had planned to take some time off and return to WCW in a 'revenge' feud, in which he would use the very real injuries he'd suffered at Vader's hands over the years to take their rivalry to new and realistic levels. The Booker in WCW at the time, Dusty Rhodes, had a better idea — Foley's character, Cactus Jack, would suffer amnesia from the impact of the powerbomb! This led to the ludicrous 'Search for Cactus Jack' skits, where Paul Heyman scoured America for clues to Jack's whereabouts, eventually finding him living homeless, clean-shaven and eyebrow-less, convinced he was a merchant seaman of some kind. The segments were so bad that WCW dropped them quietly — Foley returned to WCW with his memory recovered and no explanation was ever given as to how.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks: Mr. Conklin's Plaque begins with Mrs. Davis telling Miss Brooks how her sister Angela received amnesia after a blow on the head. Angela recovered after received a second blow.
• In the Big Finish Doctor Who radio drama Orbis, the Doctor has amnesia ... Sort of. Mostly it's because he's started to forget things that happened before his six hundred year stint on Orbis; however, he still remembers Earth, the TARDIS, and the events that led to his living on Orbis (He was pulled off the edge of a balcony into a gigantic canyon by Morbius.) Oddly, though Lucie was present during that event, he doesn't remember her at all. In the end it's a combination of time (e.g.: a few hours) and Lucie slapping him across the face several times that brings his memory back.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons. In the Dungeon magazine #22 adventure "Tomb It May Concern", a paladin is blown into a wall headfirst by an explosive gas trap and develops amnesia. He forgets about his Character Class (paladin), how to use his class abilities, where he is, how he got there, and why he's there. His memories eventually return, either during the course of the adventure or over time (within a month after the end of the adventure).

Theatre

• A magically-enduced version of this trope is central to the plot of Götterdämmerung, by Richard Wagner, as Siegfried is given a potion that makes him forget he ever met Brünnhilde.
• Too Many Cooks surprisingly averts this. Mickey develops both anterograde and retrograde amnesia which is still unresolved by the end of the show.
• In Eurydice, Eurydice, her father, and other souls are stripped of their memories by showers in reference to the River Lethe, also losing the power of language.
• Played for Laughs in Little Me. Val du Val initially loses his memory due to his girlfriend leaving him, then recovers it. After that, he loses it twice more when he believes he's been jilted again, the latter instance leading to his death aboard a sinking ship because he also forgets how to swim.

Toys

• In BIONICLE, Takua has suffered permanent amnesia three times. The first was due to his being kidnapped and brainwashed for his own protection, the second was a result of his entire city having induced amnesia, and the third was just good ol' head trauma.

Video Games

• Double H in Beyond Good & Evil gets Easy Amnesia not from a whack on the head, but from prolonged exposure to alien lightning. It temporarily renders him a Cloud Cuckoolander with what appears to be an action movie hero complex and a tendency to mangle names. He recovers after a boss battle that requires you to use his head as a battering ram several times, which is something of the inverse of how this trope usually works...
• In Cave Story, a pair of Ridiculously Human Robots loses their memories, but it's hardly easy. It's implied that both of them contracted amnesia after getting battered in an epic fight that happened in the backstory; one of them loses the few memories she has left after recovering from nearly drowning. A mushroom restores her memories completely; the other bot only regains a select few of his memories (and even this is arguable) and mostly relies on the word of others for information about his past.
• Dragon Quest IV: A villager from Burland who goes off to search for the missing children in Chapter 1 winds up amnesiac and locked up in a local jail after encountering too many monsters. To restore his memory, you go back for his wife so that she can show him her wedding ring.
• The main character in the first Enigmatis installment loses her memory just before the game's story starts, spending the rest of the plot trying to figure out what her investigation had previously uncovered.
• In Fallen London, mere exposure to irrigo, the colour of forgotten things, is enough to induce amnesia. It starts off mild, but before long you're forgetting things like who you are, where you're from, and so on. In gameplay terms, it can cause you to lose skill and quirk points, and the only way to get them back is to grind for them all over again. It's so dangerous that your body will start to grow bone over your eye sockets to protect you from its harmful effects. People occasionally use it to remove traumas from their memory, while spies use it to forget details they don't want anyone getting their hands on.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy V has Galuf, a king from another planet and powerful warrior who's had quite a bit of experience fighting the Big Bad get amnesia within the first five minutes as a result of a meteor crash (he was piloting it). All he is able to remember is his name. Not that it keeps him from hurling himself headlong into the quest.
  • Largely averted in Final Fantasy VI; there are precisely two cases of amnesia, and neither one is easily received or easily fixed. Terra's amnesia is explicitly magical, stemming as it does from years of wearing a Slave Crown. Any memories she gets back after that tend to be hazy and less than useful, and while she does make a full recovery, that too is magical. Rachel suffers a far more mundane case of amnesia, that comes about from a serious fall. The entire affair is hugely tragic, and she doesn't recall anything about who she was or who Locke is until her final moments.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • The Player Character is found by the Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick in the middle of a field with no memory of his/her past life. Notably, when the Avatar tries to explain this, Frederick is doubtful and suspects them of hiding something. It's revealed the amnesia was caused by Grima from the Bad Future trying to go ahead and possess them then and there, but the Avatar was too weak in the present time, which caused their amnesia and weakening the Fell Dragon even further than the original trip through time did, forcing him to act through proxies until the endgame. Noticeably, the Avatar never recovers all those memories and effectively considers said past life dead to them.
  • This comes up again with Morgan, the Avatar's Kid from the Future, who had a similar experience, and like them never remembers everything about their past. Chrom can't resist snarking at the absurdity of the situation:
    "...finding amnesiacs is apparently my special talent."
  • Subverted, however, with Emmeryn, whose Trauma-Induced Amnesia has left her in a state of barely being able to talk, which she never recovers from.
• In Flashback, at least part of the plot is about getting your memory back, after having it erased by aliens. Later, you find you uploaded your memory and left it with a friend just in case something like this happened.
• In Hidden City, the eponymous City is plagued by a mysterious magical fog that causes anyone caught in it to lose bits and pieces of their memories. However, those affected by it can usually regain the lost memories if they can find personal belongings that relates to the memories they lost.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link discovers that Ilia his best friend, suffers from this as a result of being shot with a poisoned arrow when she and the other village children were kidnapped.
• Justified in Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work, the fourth game in the Leisure Suit Larry series. At the start of the game, Larry, being a character in a computer game, has completely forgotten the events of his previous adventure, Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies, because the villain has stolen the game disks. The game was indeed created, but was flushed down a toilet by Space Quest's Roger Wilco in Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers. This temporal paradox caused the game to never be published.^{In reality...}Leisure Suit Larry 4 never even existed, as the third game's ending didn't lend itself to a sequel and the designers decided to skip straight to the fifth game, letting players come up with their own theories on the events of Leisure Suit Larry 4. There's also the fact that Al Lowe promised there'd never be a fourth game of the series, due to some of the negative reactions garnered by the series. He kept his promise, too...
• Averted in Mega Man Legends. Roll declines to reveal to "Joe" that she's his daughter because she knows he'll never be the man he was again and wants him to be happy with the new family he has on Calinca Island and spare him the pain of knowing that not only is his first wife dead, but the thing that killed her is taking her body for a ride.
• Averted in the Nancy Drew game Secret of the Scarlet Hand: a witness suffers amnesia after a bad fall, and Nancy must collect once-familiar items from his workplace and show them to him in the hospital to help him gradually re-connect with his old memories.
• Nintendo Wars: Isabelle from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is found in the rubble of a city suffering from amnesia. Or so you think. It's later subverted when you learn she's a recently created Artificial Human who has no memories to begin with, just a butt-load of information about the two countries in the game.
• One sidequest in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door involves hitting someone in the head with a hammer so that they can remember something they forgot earlier. It works, and it's hilarious. Doubly so if you accidentally hit him one time too many and he forgets it again.
• Averted in Persona 4: The Death Social Link, Hisano Kuroda, is a widow whose husband recently died of what was pretty obviously Alzheimer's. As in the real world, he only got worse until he finally died, as Hisano bitterly relates.
• In Pokémon, a move called Amnesia (Japanese: Memory Lapse) exists which raises the user's Special Defense (probably because it's less susceptible to attacks like Psychic). The Pokemon, however, doesn't forget/lose any moves, experience, or stats. In addition, if you switch out with a move like Baton Pass, the new Pokemon gets the bonus stats. Your Pokemon apparently recovers after switching out, fainting, moves like Haze, or otherwise ending the battle, so yes, it is truly Easy Amnesia.
• Puyo Puyo:
  • In Raffina's ending in Puyo Puyo Fever, Ms. Accord tricks Raffina into closing her eyes so that Ms. Accord can hit Raffina on the head with a hammer, causing Raffina to suffer a bump on her head when she wakes up and lose her memory about the flying cane.
  • This becomes one of the major plot points in Puyo Puyo!! 20th Anniversary. The previous game's Omnicidal Maniac, Ecolo got a case of amnesia after being defeated. He regains his memory at the end, and decides to go back to space-time travelling, albeit being upset that everyone will forget him most likely, and everyone does... except Ringo.
  • Puyo Puyo Puzzle Pop: Meena accidentally does this to Feli in her Side Story, when she was intending to make her forget about her worries. She overdoes it and makes her forget near-everything.
• Resident Evil: Survivor begins with the protagonist stumbling from a crashed helicopter, passing out, and waking up with no memory of his identity or what's going on. He starts finding proof that he might be Vincent Goldman, an utterly horrific man responsible for his horrible circumstances. But nope, he's actually Ark Thompson, a private investigator hired by Leon Kennedy to check out Umbrella's operations on Sheena Island and stop them if possible.
• Every Rune Factory protagonist so far, except for the second of the second game. Raguna's memories are seemingly gone for good, Micah only gets some of his back and Kyle seems to get his back in full, but we're never told who he really is. Aden and Sonja in Rune Factory Oceans break this trend, being the first Rune Factory protagonists not to lose their memories. Lest and Frey picked up the thread in Rune Factory 4, though.
• In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, Johnny lost his memory and hasn't gotten it back by the start of the game. Subverted (kinda) in that he got from an accident that killed his entire family — maybe a self-defense mechanism, or maybe a side effect of being brought back from the dead.
• In Sonic Heroes, after his fall from outer space in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow got amnesia and can’t even remember his own name. He can only remember one major thing in Shadow the Hedgehog. Also this is a major point in the plot of the aforementioned titular game.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • Super Robot Wars Alpha 2 has Ibis Douglas, who lost her memories due to a jet fighter crash and some severe repression before the story starts. She's a terrible pilot, and some assume she must've been a great pilot before she got amnesia. As later events reveal, she was actually even worse. Since she's a main character though, she later does turn into a great pilot.
  • Played straight later on with Axel and Alfimi when they get themselves transported to the Endless Frontier world, after the events of Original Generation Gaiden.
• In Vandal Hearts, character Eleni has this as a result of having been sent traumatically back in time as a young child; the character recovers her memory after seeing herself sent back.
• In the second expansion set for World of Warcraft, Muradin Bronzebeard is revealed to have been knocked out and given amnesia instead of being killed, which completely destroys the dramatic purposes of his death. The strangest part is that there's no discernible reason for this. Yorg Stormheart could have been a completely new character and it wouldn't have made a lick of difference to the plot so far, save for some Back Story told to the PC to liven up a long period in one quest in which nothing much happens.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Played with, but averted in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. The first couple of times that you encounter Seven, they are shown to have no memory whatsoever of their time with their loved ones. However, when they later join the team, they reveal that someone else was controlling their body, but they could still see and hear everything that was happening. They wanted more than anything to tell their friends and family that they were alright, but no one could hear them.
  • When the Driver of a Blade in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 dies, said Blade reverts back to a Core Crystal, and, upon resonating with a new Driver, retain no memories about their previous 'lives'. This is a cause of concern for many Blades, and, as Brighid notes, not many are in a position to chronicle their past lives as she does, since a Blade would have no means of preserving or protecting any such records while they're in their Core Crystal form. The game also consistently averts the "easy recovery" part of this trope, as even when a Blade is straight-up told who they were and who their Driver was in a past life (such as with Vess, Theory, and Praxis), the most they get out of it is a sense of mild nostalgia; no actual memories are ever recalled.
• Yakuza: Averted. After being abducted and nearly raped by Sohei Dojima, and forced to watch as Nishiki gunned down Dojima, Yumi was severely traumatized and it took her several years to recover. And then it took her another year to deal with the emotional fallout of her memories returning.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night has a rare example of anterograde amnesia in the Heaven's Feel route: Tapping into the power of Archer's left arm (which has been surgically grafted in place of his original arm) causes Shirou irreversible brain damage, leaving him increasingly unable to remember past events and causing him to be unable to write new memories. It is only through a constant effort of will that he can remember events that happened hours or minutes ago.
  • The series also contains a subversion: Archer claims not to know who he is as a result of Rin making errors in his summoning. This is a lie.
• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Miles Edgeworth believes he's blocked out a traumatic childhood memory of a murder as a defense mechanism. This is partially true: he had a hard time remembering the parts of the event he was conscious for, but passed out due to oxygen deprivation before the murder actually happened.
• In the first case of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, Phoenix gets clubbed on the head just before the trial, and (naturally) loses his memory. This makes a bit more sense when you realize the level is the tutorial of a sequel.
  • The case also parodies the "cured by a second bump" aspect of the trope, by having Phoenix' client, as soon as she realizes the condition of her lawyer, try to get him back to normal just this way. Phoenix, of course, objects. He eventually recovers gradually in a much more realistic way, by triggering the memories with familiar inputs like holding a cross-examination.
• In Ace Attorney Investigations 2, Kay gets pushed off a building and gets hit with amnesia. Don't worry, she gets better, luckily.
• This happens to Tamie in her route in Princess Evangile, after a typhoon blows a sign that hits her in the head. Fortunately, it takes her a few weeks to regain all her memories, thanks to the efforts of her friends.

Web Animation

• Featuring the rare mechanical deviation, Red vs. Blue: Recreation has already given us amnesia in real time:
  [click]
  Church: Uh oh.
  Caboose: What? What happened?
  Church: Crap. Instead of turning on my long-term memory, I think I just shut off my short-term memory.
  Caboose: Oh. Is that bad?
  [beat]
  Church: Huh? Is what bad?
  Caboose: Your memory thing getting shut off.
  Church: Who shut off my memory?
  Caboose: You did.
  Church: I did what?
  Caboose: Shut off your memory.
  Church: Why do you want me to shut off my memory?
  Caboose: No, it's already off.
  Church: What's already off?
  Caboose: Your memory.
  Church: Yeah what about it?
  Tucker: Wow. Well, this is an improvement. HEY, YOU!
  Church: Huh? You talkin' to me?
  Tucker: YES, YOU! DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE!
  [beat]
  Church: (to Caboose) Well, are you gonna answer him?
  [BANG]
  Caboose: Oh no!
  Tucker: Jesus Christ!
  Church: OH MY GOD, WHAT ARE WE YELLING ABOUT?
  Tucker: I think they broke into the temple!
  Church: (while inside said temple) Oh, that's not good, where's the temple?
  Tucker: Jesus Christ, just don't let him talk to me!
  Church and Caboose: Okay, don't talk to him!

Webcomics

• Nevy in Ava's Demon, subverted because she got her amnesia by drinking a potion that simultaneously killed her and bound her soul to the next thing to be born in the universe.
• In Sluggy Freelance, Bun-Bun has suffered from this twice. The first time was just temporary, where nearly dying in an explosion caused him to behave like an ordinary, non-talking bunny for several months. The second time, however, Bun-Bun actually met and beat up his past self. This gave past-Bun-Bun a nasty concussion and partial amnesia, leaving him vague about most of the details concerning his life before the start of the series.
• The kobold oracle in The Order of the Stick has a spell surrounding the area where he lives so that anyone who visits forgets everything except the answers to their questions upon leaving.
• In The Law of Purple, Myranian women can memtwist anyone they make skin-to-skin contact with. This allows them to absorb the victim's memories at the same time that they're erasing them. Shi Shi does this to Blue just before the start of the comic.
• Ctrl+Alt+Del uses this in one arc, as Ethan suffers from amnesia after being hit on the head with a computer box.
• Van's sidekick in Van Von Hunter is suffering from amnesia several times over. This is the given reason why nobody knows her name.
• In Oceanfalls, Nino seems to have forgotten everything just by falling down and hitting his head at the beginning.
• Sylvester suffers this at one point in The Mansion of E after being zapped by an ancient magical device. His memories start trickling back over the next couple of hours, before he's completely "repaired" by a local magic-user.
• In Freefall, fixed by picking up the memory chip.
  • An entire story arc involves Florence losing newly-formed memories as she tries to figure out what she's doing at Ecosystems Unlimited. This is caused by an injection that induces temporary anterograde amnesia by paralyzing the hippocampus.
• In Far Out, the main character is introduced as an amnesiac. Or possibly Really Was Born Yesterday. After a bit, the later choice is established as the truth.
• In Faux Pas, Stu didn't remember a bit around his Tap on the Head.
• Karin-dou 4koma: Shigure and Sachi remove Elza from Rindou's memory by smashing her in the head ten times with Shigure's golden hammer. (Rindou's a dragon, so she's got a pretty Hard Head.)
• In Yokoka's Quest, the barrier around Betel's Forest, among other things, makes people forget about their life prior to entering the barrier. Different characters seem to recover their memories at different rates after leaving.

Web Videos

• Deconstructed in Freeman's Mind. After getting knocked out by soldiers, Gordon needs a few minutes to remember what happened due to a mix of stress, a prior history of drug usage and binge drinking, and previous head trauma. Even after, he winds up thinking the Resonance Cascade was caused by a satanic ritual for some reason.
• 7-Second Riddles: One riddle involved a butler who killed his master, but somehow passed a Lie Detector when claiming he didn't commit the murder. The solution was that he'd hit his head afterward, conveniently forgetting he committed a murder.
• Wormtooth Nation might as well be Easy Amnesia: The Series. The titular wormtooth gas will "nix" anyone who breathes it in, and pockets of it are everywhere in the underground city.

Western Animation

• Archer: In the fourth season premiere, Archer goes into a fugue state after his mother gets remarried and forgets his identity. Doctor Krieger tells the rest of the ISIS crew that they need to ease him out of the state and can't just "whang him on the head with a frying pan" to snap him out of it. Archer's memory slowly starts to seep back in, but Lana gets impatient after they're caught in a shootout and whangs him on the head with a frying pan. Despite Krieger's objections, it actually does snap Archer out of his amnesia and sets him back to normal.
• In As Told by Ginger, Hoodsey develops amnesia after falling off a swing and landing on his head. He changes his name to "Rob" and becomes best friends with Brandon after deeming Carl too gross. It is treated a little more realistically since at the end of the episode, Hoodsey is shown still trying to recover his memories. He is shown to have made a full recovery by the next episode though.
• The Babaloos: In "Unidentified Flying Object", a mysterious flying disc-shaped Babaloo is unable to remember who or what he is after bumping his "head" in a crash landing. Another blow (courtesy of Hammer) allows him to remember his name: "Frisbee".
• The Banana Splits: This occurs in the episode "The Coronation of Bakaar" from the show segment The Arabian Knights when Farik is hit on the head by a crossbeam.
• Bruce Wayne goes undercover as an unemployed drifter in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Forgotten". He gets walloped in the head with a 2×4 and forgets both that he's Bruce Wayne and Batman. Fortunately for him, he doesn't forget how to fight like Batman.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: Beavis gets this after hitting his head from falling off Anderson's roof in "Roof".
• In the Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "A Twist of Fate", Wheeler hits his head during an earthquake, loses his memory, and he has to live the life of a poor child in an anonymous Latin-American city.
• Done in an episode of Chaotic, although probably justified, as it was caused by a plant that produces memory-erasing venom.
• Code Lyoko: One early XANA Attack of the Week uses memory-erasing nanobots to spread an amnesia epidemic.
• Count Duckula: In "Amnesiac Duck", Duckula loses his memory and regains it multiple times. By the end of the episode, everyone has amnesia.
• An episode of Cow and Chicken involves amnesia being granted by inhaling steam, of all things.
• Danger Mouse: A blow to the head gives Danger Mouse amnesia in "Public Enemy No. 1", and Greenback proceeds to brainwash him into thinking he's a criminal called "The White Shadow". DM regains his memory after slamming his head against the open bonnet of his car.
• Dick Dastardly gets amnesia after a blow to the head in the Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines episode "Who's Who?". He regains his facilities after suffering a similar blow, only for Zilly and Klunk to go through amnesia themselves after a similar blow.
• Denis and Me: In "Santa Who", Santa forgets who he is after Denis' recliner accidentally launches him head-first into a vat of cookies Sir Meows-A-Lot left to catch him.
• One episode of Donkey Kong Country, "Ape-Nesia", has DK lose his memory after slipping on a banana peel and bumping into the elevator which then falls down and crashes taking him with it. It gets worse when his enemies convince him that he's working for them. DK gets his memory back when Candy shoves DK into a coconut tree, causing DK to get hit on the head by multiple coconuts.
• Family Guy:
  • Taken to the extremes in "Big Man on Hippocampus". Peter hits his head in a fight with Richard Dawson at Family Feud, and he develops amnesia. Then an [adult swim]-style Ad Bumper appears: "Yes, they're actually doing an amnesia story." He not only forgets his identity, but he also seems to forget what sex is! He eventually regains his memory after the Giant Chicken hits him several times — luckily, as Peter notes, he had an odd number of objects.
  • Another episode has a mass bout of this, as Peter, Brian, Joe and Quagmire all lose their memories in a car accident. However, the whole thing turns out to be a virtual reality simulation done by Stewie to see if Brian and Peter would still like each other without the pet/owner relationship. They do.
• In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode "Sight for Sore Eyes", Bloo goes after a kid, thinking he's an imaginary friend owner who he and Mac are looking for. It turns out that he isn't, and he has his big brother beat Bloo up for chasing him. After smashing into a trash bin, Bloo has a concussion and can't remember anything up to the point when he's playing with his friends when they find him, which leads to a misunderstanding between friends. Bloo might have gotten those memories back when Mac explains everything.
• Fred and Barney Meet the Thing has the Thing lose his memory in the Thing segment "The Thing Blanks Out" when he lifts a bridge to prevent Ronald's yacht from crashing into it, only for the bridge to hit him hard on the head after he lets it go. He doesn't recover from his amnesia until an acorn falls on his head.
• Futurama takes this to the extreme on the parody soap opera "All My Circuits" in the episode "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television".
• Gasp!: In "Amnesia", the pets must teach Gasp how to be himself again when a bump on the head gives him a case of amnesia.
• Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law sends up the bonk-on-the-head routine when Harvey defends Fred Flintstone on racketeering charges. By the end, Fred is getting whacked on the head over and over, with a new personality emerging with each hit.
• In Hey Arnold!, Helga accidentally gets hit in the head with a baseball by the titular character. Though it wears off after a good night's sleep, she keeps the illusion going to get more attention from Arnold.
• In the Jake and the Never Land Pirates episode "Captain Who?", Captain Hook catches a whiff of a "Forget-Me Flower", which causes him to forget who he is. His memory is eventually restored by an encounter with his nemesis, the Crocodile.
• Kim loses her memory in the Kim Possible episode "Clean Slate", but her memories quickly begin returning with the exception of the fact that she's dating Ron. Her father uses her amnesia as a slightly ethically dubious way to get her to like his favorite TV show.
• In Krypto the Superdog, Krypto gets amnesia from Red Kryptonite, leading to a pack of bad dogs to convince him that he's one of them. Luckily, Red Kryptonite's effects last only a day.
• The New Adventures of Batman: In the episode "The Pest", a professor who invented a water-powered car got a bump on the head when he was grabbed, causing him to temporarily forget what might cause his car to explode with the force of a nuclear bomb.
• In an episode of The New Adventures of Superman, Clark forgets that he's Superman. His family are summoned and tell him, but he doesn't remember how to use any of his powers either.
• The Popeye cartoon "I Yam Wot I Yamnesia" takes this to ridiculous extremes. Popeye, Swee'Pea , Wimpy and Olive all get hit on the head by each other, but instead of losing their memories, they exchange personalities and voices which Wimpy diagnoses as being amnesia.
• Sheep in the Big City parodies this in "Here Goes Mutton", in which Sheep gets amnesia from Farmer John lightly bonking him on the head and spends the episode wandering around in a daze acting like different animals and objects because he can't remember who he is. Eventually, Sheep, General Specific, Private Public, and Farmer John start hitting each other on the head, causing each other to repeatedly lose and regain their memories. The episode ends with the narrator complaining of how unrealistic a tap to the head causing amnesia is, only to accidentally give himself amnesia when he tries to demonstrate that memory loss doesn't work that way.
• The Simpsons:
  • Mentioned in "The Homer They Fall" when Homer is about to box Drederick Tatum; Bart tells him to make sure he gets hit an even number of times to avoid amnesia.
  • In "Regarding Margie", Marge suffers from amnesia after the fumes from her cleaning products cause her to lose consciousness and hit her head on a stool. She remembers everyone in town after each speaks a word she normally associates with them... except her own husband, Homer. Her sisters, Selma and Patty, take advantage of this by setting her up on a date with another man, but Marge ultimately remembers Homer in the end, by beer.
• In the South Park episode "Cow Days", Cartman falls off a bull, hits his head, and gets amnesia, which for some weird reason makes him think that he's a Vietnamese prostitute named Ming Li.
• Spoofed in an episode of Stripperella when rival stripper Kat repeatedly discovers Stripperella's Secret Identity, only to constantly lose her memory of the event because she keeps getting hit in the head.
• In the Filmation Superboy episode "Forget Me Not, Superdog", Krypto the Superdog loses his memory when he's hit on the head by a Kryptonite meteor. He regains it when he's caught in an explosion.
• The TaleSpin episode "The Old Man and the Sea Duck" has Baloo lose his memory of his flying skills. Thankfully, rather than the usual (not to mention dangerous) second bump on the head, his memories return when a mysterious flight instructor reintroduces him to the joys of flying.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987):
  • One episode has Shredder lose his memory due to a head bonk. He wanders around the city, somehow gets a job at a fireworks factory, and bemusedly decides to detonate a bomb at city hall just For the Evulz. When the Turtles confront him, Shredder even remarks that "Shredder" is a stupid name, and he gets his memory back when Vernon gets in the way and causes an accident.
  • It happens again in the episode "The Four Musketurtles", but this time with Leonardo thinking he is in 17th century France and that he and his allies are Musketeers after a hit on the head. He gets better near the end of the episode after a fall.
  • "Blast from the Past" has Splinter lose his memory, but regain it later on in the episode.
• Zigzagged in an episode of Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. Chumley is hit on the head and thinks he's a rich businessman; once Tennessee finds out what's wrong with him, he takes the smart option for once, and attempts to take him to a doctor. However, Chumley resists his attempts, and after Hilarity Ensues, he knocks himself on the head again and is cured.
• A stock plot of Tom and Jerry cartoons: Tom takes a whack to the noggin, forgets he's supposed to hate Jerry and thinks he's a mouse himself. Hilarity Ensues and Tom keeps getting hit on the head and bouncing back and forth between personalities.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • It turns out that when Ratchet hit Arcee with his EMP, it worked exactly like an amnesia ray, wiping her entire memory of everything. Alternatively, a smaller blast from the EMP has little effect other than being a knock-out ray.
  • According to the Allspark Almanac 2, they were going to revisit the amnesia concept with Cosmos, an adorable little astronomer who looks like a young boy but is Really 700 Years Old. He had scanned a B-Movie flying saucer prop, and then... loses his memory in an accident. "Hilarity Ensues".
• Zigzagged in one Underdog story when Simon bar Sinister's Forget-me-Net causes the hero to forget who he is and think he's an apple peddler. When Sweet Polly realizes this, she and several citizens try to hit him over the head to cure him, but seeing as he's invulnerable, none of it works; even attempting it with a steam shovel only breaks the machine. Eventually, Polly accidentally invokes the flaw in Simon's device (which is simply, saying his name when he can hear it) and he snaps out of it.

Real Life

• The disappearance and reappearance of John Darwin is a subversion. He apparently faked his own death as part of an insurance scam, and then walked into a police station some years later claiming to have lost all memory of the intervening time. Needless to say, the true story didn't take long to emerge.
• A soccer/football player suffered a minor fall, and suffered severe retrograde amnesia.
• Similarly, college basketball player Kayla Hutcheson suffered a head injury during practice. A short time afterward, she had lost all of her memories up to that point.
• Very common in dreams. Barring the rare lucid dream, most people have no recollection of their real life circumstances while dreaming (with some exceptions, such as their family members and close friends) and easily accept even the most implausible events as "real", as the brain uses REM sleep to go through and categorise memories and stimuli, turning off the Weirdness Censor to examine this information more thoroughly. Conversely, only a small percentage of dreams can be recalled on awakening.
• A girl in New York was found in October 2009 with no memory whatsoever of what happened or who she is. She was later identified as Kacie Aleece Peterson, a resident of Washington state.
• Those suffering from concussions often don't remember much from just before and a certain amount of time after being hit on the head, among other side effect. This is particularly jarring in car wrecks, where it is common for one person to honestly say that they have no memory after turning off the highway five minutes before, making assigning blame for the wreck difficult.
• Highway hypnosis is a curious phenomenon which crosses this trope with the phenomenon of automaticity - the ability to perform a learned action effortlessly and correctly without needing to consciously think about it. Drivers affected by highway hypnosis can drive great distances, responding to everything on the road in the correct and expected way, only to have partial or complete amnesia about what they were doing during this time after they snap out of it. It's generally believed that this comes about from a combination of boredom, fatigue, and a sort of 'self-hypnosis' caused by driving in monotonous situations with very little hazards or sudden changes to contend with.
• People with epilepsy often have blank spaces in their memory from where their seizure began. They may also have blanks in their memory for several minutes after they wake up. Some of them can pinpoint it almost to the moment where the seizure began, since that is where the blank space in their memory is.
• As You Know, it's mostly hard to remember what happened while you were drunk or shortly before (particularly while the hangover kicks in), mostly due to the alcohol inhibiting nerve activity in parts of the brain.
• "Benjaman Kyle" is a very famous and very strange example. He "was found without clothing or identification and with injuries next to a dumpster behind a fast food restaurant in Georgia in 2004." There was evidence of blunt force trauma to his head, and he remembered very little about himself, including his name, his relatives, and how he ended up in Georgia. Despite an extensive and widely publicized search (aided by what should have been helpful details that he did remember, such as his birth date, and details about several places he'd lived), it took over 10 years to figure out who he was, and the breakthrough was made with genetic detective work rather than anyone recognizing him. His real name is William Burgess Powell. To this day he has very few memories of his past, while the ones he does have he is often unable to describe in words.
• A condition called Transient Global Amnesia exists that is probably the closest real-world analogue to this. A person loses the ability to make new memories, appears lucid, and may or may not be able to recognize familiar people. The duration is usually short and patients recover within a day or less. Its cause remains unknown.
• People with ADD/ADHD can sometimes experience a limited form of this, because their brain's internal sense of what stimulus or information is needs to be stored in the long-term memory is often muddled; their brain basically thinks of everything as equally "important" and may discard parts of memories seemingly at random or fixate on trivial or unrelated details. A person with ADHD might, after having an important meeting with their boss, only vaguely recall the content of the meeting itself, but remember in exact detail what kind of tie their boss was wearing. In extreme cases, people who experience this forget the details of the conversations they're currently having.
• A common cause of anterograde and retrograde amnesia is Korsakoff Syndrome, a neurological condition found occasionally in gastric cancer and bypass patients but very commonly in alcoholics: one in eight long-term alcoholics will develop it. Moderation in everything, folks.

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