Forgotten Fallen Friend

"Look, Barry, the only way to respectfully honor Frank is to completely forget about him."

— Carl, Sausage Party

Heroes often have to be motivated to pick up The Call, or are simply forced to by chilling events. An all too common way for this to happen is to have their friends and loved ones become Friendly Targets and suffer Death by Origin Story to kick start their quest.

They will thrash and wail, swear bloody vengeance on their killer and go on a multi-season quest to avenge... who was it again? Bob? Alice?

This trope is about the tendency of a narrative to have heroes forget their fallen friends and loved ones with worrying ease. This is both mental and emotional; heroes will rarely reflect on these losses, or even use them in an "And This Is for..." speech, and the emotional impact of the loss is rarely ever shown afterward. (And not because they are bottling it up.)

This can manifest as a husband avenging his murdered wife who hooks up with the first Action Girl he meets without the smallest bit of guilt, or an orphaned son who quickly puts his parents' smoldering remains out of mind to have fun with his new Five-Man Band. The hero might even easily forgive the culprit without batting an eye. Depends On The Writer, especially on a Long Runner where there are often loads of them; if the writer can't remember a character, there's no chance in hell that the characters will.

Granted, a character can't be moody and depressed forever, as it would get really old, really fast, but in moderate doses it's actually compelling drama to see them bury their grief and perhaps even forgive (or at least not want to murder) the killer and instead bring them to justice. However, when the dearly departed's loss has all the emotional impact of a Red Shirt or Disposable Woman dying, it can nudge uncomfortably outside of the Willing Suspension of Disbelief Zone.

This trope is also useful for killing a Sacrificial Lamb off in the beginning that the author doesn't want to appear as a main character in the rest of the work, whether to avoid Fridge Logic, or to lessen the burden of the hero on their Heroic Journey. Taken further, the character may be killed off before the story starts and get referenced only in a Troubled Backstory Flashback.

In episodic series, this will always happen to Remember the New Guy? if they die. Just as how they were never mentioned before the episode despite being close friends with one of the main characters, their tragic death will never be mentioned again after the episode.

Contrast Dead Guy Junior, To Absent Friends, He Had a Name and see also Death by Origin Story. When a character simply goes missing, with their ultimate fate unrevealed (to the other characters or to the audience,) yet nobody (in the story) seems to care, it's What Happened to the Mouse? or Chuck Cunningham Syndrome. When it's the villain who can't remember... whoever it was he killed that has made The Hero mad at him, it's But for Me, It Was Tuesday. Compare Present Absence, when this is averted.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Berserk played with this trope during the Conviction Arc. Guts remembered quite vividly what had happened to his comrades who were all killed by demons during the Eclipse and especially to his lover Casca who survived, but was brutalized to insanity. He used their fates as his motivation for his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Griffith, the man who betrayed them, and the Godhand. However, Guts was so embroiled in his hatred and the sadness and grief he suffered that he decided to suffer alone, often forgetting that he was not the only survivor of the Eclipse and that the only other survivor, Casca, was the one he loved the most, but he left her for two years, not sticking around to help or comfort her through the pain she had suffered (which was considerably worse than what he had been through). Godo called Guts out on this, and Guts realized that leaving Casca and forgetting about her pain was his failure.
• In the first episode of Cross Ange, Ange's mother dies trying to protect her when her brother Julio outs her as a norma in public leading her to be sent to Arzenal. Later on, Julio reveals that he had their father executed offscreen for his part in protecting Ange. Neither of these two, nor even the fact he stabbed her in the back, made her life hell, and tried to have her and everyone else on Arzenal killed, come up in episode 13 when she finally turns the tables and is raring to kill him. Just the fact that he destroyed the place considered a living death trap for Norma, because somehow she liked living there.
• Zig-zagged in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School. While certain deaths are remembered throughout the series ( the real Chiaki, Chisa, all non-survivors from Class 78), nobody mentions or searches for Ruruka after she goes missing during a time-out session.
• Zig-zagged in Death Note. Ukita gets killed on live TV, everyone on the investigation team sees it, but it is practically forgotten a few pages later, likely because Souichiro rams an armored car into the TV Station to get his hands on the Kira Tapes. However, his death is mentioned a few times in later episodes, as Aizawa feels as though he couldn't face his dead colleague if he gives up on the investigation.
• Played With in Delicious in Dungeon. The Hero Laios is on a quest to save his sister from being killed by the Big Bad dragon, but is seemingly more concerned with food than her safety and even his own party members mention how off-putting this is. This ends up being a plot point that comes up repeatedly and serves to create the misunderstanding of his character that sets up several conflicts in the future.
• Digimon:
  • In Digimon Data Squad Bancho Leomon pulls a Heroic Sacrifice in an attempt to destroy Yggdrasil, it backfires. We never see him become an egg again, so he probably got Killed Off for Real and after all the mentoring and sacrifices he did, even after Yggdrasil is defeated and Spencer is revived, no one ever mentions him again.
  • Digimon Adventure tri. ends up having the 01 cast not even mention the 02 cast at any moment, even when one of them has seemingly turned evil again with what is seemingly a evil version of his partner. You'd think that at least one of them, Hikari and Takeru included (as they were part of the team), would simply wonder where their friends went. This is played with later on, as they start to show some concern over Ken at least due to his sudden reappearance as the Kaiser, while the others aren't even mentioned. When Taichi and Daigo discover them being held in stasis along with the real Gennai, Taichi outright admits they had no idea they had even been captured.
• Subverted in Fairy Tail, which has had three significant character deaths. Lisanna's death is first mentioned in the Phantom Lord arc, and her siblings are seen going to pray for her near the anniversary of her death about 100 chapters later (not to mention her coming back). Ur's death, which also happened in a back story, plays a large role in Gray's arc, and that she became part of the ocean at the end is actually a significant point 200 chapters later. And of course, the death of Simon comes up whenever Jellal (the one who killed him) is playing a large part in whatever is going on, even if it's usually pushed out of mind when Jellal isn't around.
• Weed of Ginga Densetsu Weed gets over the death of his mother extremely fast. Weirdly, he mourns more when John dies, even getting emotional to the point of trying to go kill the Big Bad all by himself, and he didn't even know the guy. He just met him literally minutes before he dies.
• Exaggerated in Highschool of the Dead. The School Nurse Shizuka manages to forget about Kazu Ishii while he's in the middle of his Heroic Sacrifice.
  Kazu: [holding off zombies] Get out of here!
  Shizuka: I'm sorry...what was your name again?
  Kazu: Are you serious?!
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • In Battle Tendency, Caesar Zeppeli dies fighting the Pillar Men, and his sacrifice helps motivate Joseph for the rest of the arc. However, come Stardust Crusaders, 50 years later, an older Joseph, joining his grandson on a mission to defeat the immortal vampire that killed his own grandfather, doesn't even mention Caesar once. The closest mention(s) of the events of his younger days was informing Polnareff about how he lost his left hand and gained the five-fingered prosthetic in its place, and briefly re-using an old catchphrase of his when defeating a parasitic Stand. Could be hand-waved as it's too painful for him to talk about.
  • Subverted in Diamond is Unbreakable with Rohan Kishibe and Reimi Sugimoto. Reimi Sugimoto was Rohan's next-door neighbor and occasional babysitter, and when he was four she died in a Heroic Sacrifice to protect him from the Serial Killer Yoshikage Kira. When first meeting her ghost in the present day Rohan doesn't remember her either due to the trauma or his young age, but after doing research he rediscovers the events of that night and dedicates himself to bringing Kira to justice alongside the others.
  • In Stone Ocean, aside from one instance of Anasui being inspired by their sacrifice in order to save Jolyne from Pucci, Foo Fighters is completely forgotten about after they die to Pucci in the manga. Averted in the anime adaptation, where they're still prominently featured in advertising for the final episode batch, and a scene is added of Emporio informing Ermes of their death, along with her pouring out a glass of water in their name and promising to avenge them. And unlike the manga, F.F. was included in the final shot of the ending along with the rest of the dead heroes remembered by Emporio in the new universe.
• Megalo Box: Nanbu's former star boxing student, Aragaki went off to war and lost both of his legs in a blast and was presumed dead. When he returned to Megalo city and found Nanbu's gym shuttered, he felt abandoned by the teacher who assumed he was dead and never bothered to confirm it.
• Naruto: Despite being one's lifelong best friend and pledging her support to the other, neither Nagato nor Naruto give a single thought to Konan after she dies. While Nagato had the excuse of having died before her, after he's revived, he still doesn't even ask Naruto about Konan.
• The TV version of Nurse Angel Ririka SOS breaks out of Status Quo Is God with two character deaths - The Mentor Nozomu Kanou and his Sacrificial Lamb butler/chauffeur Shion. Kanou's death traumatizes Ririka and continues to have repercussions many episodes later. In contrast, while Seiya is badly shaken up by Shion's death in the immediate aftermath, the guy is never so much as mentioned again in the story.
• Re:CREATORS has Mamika trying to reason with the Big Bad Military Uniform Princess and, when that doesn't work, she blows herself up in order to stop her (to no avail). Not only is a huge explosion in the middle of a city never brought up, but the other characters more or less never mention Mamika again and, when it's demonstrated that it is possible to bring dead fictional characters back to life (long story), nobody mentions this possibility in regard to her. This despite the implication that another character became more than friends with her.
• Mentioned in Revolutionary Girl Utena. In the final episode, Juri Arisugawa tells the other Student Council members about a time in her childhood when a boy drowned saving her sister from a river. Eventually, both Juri herself and her sister forgot the boy's name.
• Sailor Moon Crystal: Mamoru remembers that the Four Kings of Heaven were knights in his service and the Inner Guardians remember that they and the Kings were lovers in their past lives. When Metalia kills the Kings, the Guardians briefly mourn them and then forget about them and while Mamoru collects their remains to summon their spirits for counsel, he only does it once.
• In the first few episodes of Shakugan no Shana, Yukari Hirai shows Yuji the reality of the world, spurs him to let her enjoy her last days, has her existence consumed, and is never mentioned again. It's justified for everyone (Yuji's being the only one that's weird), considering Yukari never disappeared and Shana just took her place, the denizens and flame hazes wouldn't bat an eye at the disappearance of a torch, and Yuji wasn't really close to her and he gained a Love Interest in her replacement.
• Chor Tempest loses half its members in the first episode of Simoun. Much angst ensues over Amuria and Eri, but the first pair to actually die not only are never mentioned again, they never even get names on-screen.
• In Transformers: ★Headmasters, Sixshot kills several of Chromedome's oldest friends in front of him, yet Chromedome is always back to normal by the start of the next episode. The death of Abel, Chromedome's best friend in the galaxy, was particularly egregious, as he mourned him for all of one minute and then went back to playing with Wheelie and Daniel.
• In Transformers: Super-God Masterforce, Professor Go, the Autobots' human ally, is killed in the second episode of the series when a force of Decepticons lead by the Pretender Blood attack his observatory and destroy it. Despite his son Shuta becoming a Transformer himself (thanks to the titular Masterforce) and having repeated encounters with Blood, Shuta never so much as mentions his father until the Autobot hidden base (built in secret by Professor Go to support the Autobots) is destroyed in episode 33.
• Transformers Victory: Jan Minakaze doesn't hold any sort of particular grudge for the Decepticon Dinoforce, despite them explicitly destroying the spaceship he and his parents were on. Star Saber responded to the distress signal, but the ship had been destroyed long before he arrived, with only one lifepod containing Jan still intact in the debris. Justified because he was only a baby when it happened, and his hatred is for the Decepticons as a whole rather than anyone in particular (a flashback shows him seething as wounded Autobot soldiers stagger back home). It's unclear if his adopted father Star Saber ever actually told him the Dinoforce was responsible, though.

Comic Books

• The Appendix To The Marvel Universe site is loaded with examples of previously important dead sidekicks, teammates, lovers, friends, and relatives (far too many to list here), complete with heroic tears shed, Big No's no'd, and vengeance vowed, who were relegated to obscure footnoteitude once the Revolving Door of Writers made its next quarter-turn. No doubt any other comics publisher with more than a single Story Arc's worth of issues under their belts could draw up similar rolls of "Who's that again?"'s recognizable only to the most scholarly of comic geeks.
• During the "Winter Soldier" story arc in Captain America, the title villain killed Jack Monroe, Cap's former partner Nomad. Though Cap did briefly express anger at Jack's murder, he mostly moved past it pretty quickly. A similar situation happened with another one of Cap's ex-sidekicks, D-Man, who was shot and killed by Sharon Carter after being turned Brainwashed and Crazy. D-Man's death briefly put a strain on the relationship between Sharon and Steve, but they got over it soon enough. And then, because this is a comic book, D-Man came back to life a few years later anyway.
• Jason Todd wasn't mentioned much after his death in A Death in the Family (unless the story had the Joker as the main villain, in which case Batman almost invariably would briefly angst about the villain killing Jason before moving along with the plot, or an issue of Robin where Tim was comparing himself to his predecessor or merely reminiscing about those who previously held the title). Other Batman media didn't even acknowledge his existence. It wasn't until the 2005 Under the Red Hood miniseries that he became prominent in comics again, and then in 2010 he made his debut in the Animated Adaptation, Batman: Under the Red Hood opening the way for other media to feature or allude to him.
• In the indie comic book Dreamkeepers, in the first issue the main protagonist Mace is attacked by a monster, and shortly thereafter finds his little sister stand-in Paige literally ripped to pieces and splattered all over the walls. Despite a trauma that would send a hardened Marine into an emotional tailspin, he barely mentions her twice in the entire time since and shrugs off her death like he was made of iron. Take note, the protagonist is a thirteen year old orphan. lampshaded at the end of volume two where he wonders if he's a bad person because of it. Of course, Lilith has proven to be a good distraction for him.
• One of the elements of Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom's Backstory is that he wants to accumulate enough power to free his mother from Mephisto's Hell stand-in. Many writers seem to completely ignore this, though it was referenced in the original Secret Wars. That is partially because he already did that. Then again, whether or not it happened again depends on the writers!
• This is one of the many tropes parodied in Adam Warren's Gen¹³ story "Grunge: The Movie":
  The Hero (Grunge): For what you did, you're gonna pay, big time! (Psst! H-hey... D'you remember exactly what he did? I kinda forgot...!)
  Shaolin Warrior Nun (Caitlin): [whispering] He wiped out your beloved peasant village and murdered everyone in it, including your beloved bro Bobby, remember?
  "Kiddo" (Roxy): [whispering] Perhaps now would be a good time for a nostalgic flashback or montage sequence of happier times, back in your beloved peasant village?
• A meta example occurs in the Justice League of America tie-ins to Blackest Night. The Black Lantern Doctor Light tells the heroic Doctor Light that once he kills her, the superhero community will briefly mourn but quickly forget about her. He then cites several superheroes (such as Triumph) who were all quickly forgotten about by both writers and fans after their deaths.
  • Rather disturbingly, the villainous Light's words prove true in a different way at the end of Blackest Night. When Hawkman and Hawkgirl are both brought to life, Carter Hall is shocked to discover Hawkgirl's not Kendra Saunders, but Shayera Hall having been resurrected in Kendra's place. Carter is thrilled to be reunited with Shayera, but at no point is it ever commented on that Kendra was basically murdered and had her body stolen from her.
• Addressed in Robin (1993) where Tim finds Batman's "never looking back policy" annoying. Especially in regards to his fallen girlfriend Stephanie Brown (Spoiler/Robin IV) who didn't even get a memorial in the cave like Jason even if he understands the merit of not wallowing in grief and guilt over fallen friends and loved ones. He likes to take every opportunity to remind Bruce of those who have fallen as his allies—like Jason, Stephanie, Harold and Orpheus—despite Bruce's unwritten rule about never bringing any of them up.
• Lampshaded in Runaways; after Victor Mancha learns about the original leader, Alex, he asks Gert why nobody ever seems to mention him. Gert responds that given that Victor is fated to become a supervillain, they don't want him to find out how easily Alex duped the rest of the team.
• Teen Titans:
  • Lampshaded and discussed in the tie-in to Infinite Crisis. Pantha, Baby Wildebeest, and Bushido all end up getting slaughtered to show off how powerful Superboy-Prime is, and Beast Boy laments that nobody is going to remember them since they were all fairly obscure. And this turned out to be true. Superboy, a much more popular character, died in the same event and completely overshadowed the other dead Titans. He was also the only one popular enough to earn a resurrection.
  • Comes up more than you'd think since the group has a record-breaking number of dead members. When Jason Todd was restored to life, he was pretty pissed to find out he didn't have a memorial statue in Titan Tower the way many other fallen heroes did. To be fair to the Titans, Jason was never an official member and only joined them for a grand total of TWO missions when they needed extra manpower.
  • During the Graduation Day crossover with Young Justice Lillith Clay/Omen dies simply for shocking moment to close out the second issue. Afterwards her funeral happens off panel, with only a few people attending, so we're told, is rarely, if ever brought up, and her death did actually stick for a long time, only to be resurrected in "The Culling" another crossover event, but only as a minor villian that pretty much just an easter egg for Titan fans, she didn't get a proper ressurection until the end of the New 52. What makes this example especially egregious is, Donna Troy also died during Graduation Day has her death treated as a Dying Moment of Awesome, even though she didn't even kill the Superman robot they were fighting, gets a two page spread for her funeral, with many heroes show up to pay their respects besides the Titans, who apparently didn't want to attend Omen's, has an epilogue making clear she not really dead, is constantly brought with everybody gushing over how amazing she was while also weeping and wailng over her "sacrifice", and gets a mini-series dedicated solely to bringing her back from the dead and into the main canon again.
• In Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, Chromedome gets called on the fact that he tends to forget his former lovers quickly. It turns out that he's using his memnosurgery ability to give himself Laser-Guided Amnesia in order to erase all memories of them.
• Wonder Woman (1987): The Phil Jiminez run featured Trevor Barnes, who was Diana's love interest for some time. After Jiminez departed, Trevor was killed off, briefly mourned and then never brought up again.

Fan Works

• In Christian Humber Reloaded, the main character tends to forget about many of the people he's lost, such as his parents, his brother, the little girl who took him in and her father.
• This happens fairly often in The Prayer Warriors, such as when Percy Jackson converts Chiron to Christianity, only for Chiron to get killed and eaten by the residents of Camp Half-Blood. After avenging Chiron's death by killing Grover (for the third time), and mourning his death in the next chapter, Percy forgets about him until he returns in The Evil Gods Part II.
• Subverted in The Mountain and the Wolf: Not only does Wulfrik still remember his friend and mentor Sigvatr by bringing him up in conversation once, he sacrifices three elf slaves over the site of his funeral pyre in the Chaos Dwarf lands to keep him company in the afterlife.
• This is deconstructed in Cinders and Ashes: the Chronicles of Kamen Rider Dante, as Charon's motivation to defeating the Avalon Brigade, to avenge the death of a priestess named Lunala, became forgotten later in his campaign against them. What makes this a deconstruction is how he finds out about this from Altair once he enters the real world, realizing that his author made him forget about Lunala. It's later brought up that even Celesia, the heroine of his story, forgot who Lunala was.
• In Death Note: The Abridged Series this trope is invoked by L in the very episode in which Ukita died:
  L: [to Aizawa] Ukita died two minutes ago. You need to move on.
• This has happened so much to Ron in fanfic, probably from authors that weren't interested in having him in the story, that it was noted in Rugi and Gwena's Tough Guide to Harry Potter that killing Ron off "provides an opportunity for tragedy, weeping, and little need to mention him afterwards."
• Defied in Pony POV Series. As one of the main themes is 'there are no background characters', any death is treated very seriously and has long lasting effects on the other characters in intentional defiance of this trope. Most notably, Starlight's death in the G2 Apocalypse causing Patch to spend most of her life in denial over it and Sunset and Ranger's deaths in the Shining Armor arc are continually brought up, grieved, and referenced even a few seasons later. A scene in the Wedding Arc even has the latter two's grave be visited by their surviving friends before they head off to the Final Battle of the arc.
• Inverted in Summer Days and Evening Flames to great effect to show Gilda's Character Development. She watches Officer Sunset, who she considered at best a friendly acquaintance, die from an arrow right in front of her. However, she starts to show Survivor's Guilt when considering Gilda was the intended target, and attends Sunset's funeral for closure.
• The Longest Road has Pikachu reuniting with his dying mother, whom he mourns after she passes. The event is barely acknowledged (by the narration, not the characters) in the next chapter, and not even mentioned or alluded to afterwards.

Films — Animation

• Early on in Injustice The Flash is killed when he is exposed to Scarecrow’s fear toxin leading him to stumble into one of The Joker’s traps where he is sliced by a buzzsaw. His death goes unmentioned for the rest of the film, probably because moments later all of Metropolis is destroyed when Joker had planted a time bomb in Lois Lane’s heart where upon her death it wipes out the entire city.
• A rare example of this trope being justified in-story: Bing Bong in Inside Out. In a heroic sacrifice in the Memory Dump, he fades out of existence. From that point on, he's never mentioned again and Riley forgets him permanently.
• Khumba: Khumba’s mother dies early on, but she is never mentioned again after passing away.
• Littlefoot's mother in The Land Before Time. He mourns for her for a good deal of the first film, but only mentions her a grand total of three times during the following twelve sequels, one of which is just a passing reference. Presumably the writers were uncomfortable about bringing up such a dark topic in a kid's series, but it does give us the slightly worrying possibility that Littlefoot is in serious denial or something.
• Duffel the original pilot for the journey in Strange World is the only member of the crew to die, he is eaten by an energy pterodactyl and is not acknowledged afterwards.
• All of the Autobots who died during the events of Transformers: The Movie who are not Optimus Prime, are hardly acknowledged when they are killed during the Decepticon’s attack on the shuttle and the Battle of Autobot City.

Films — Live-Action

• Taken Up to Eleven in Apaches when every time one of the kids dies in a horrific accident, the others continue playing as if nothing happened.
• At the beginning of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Austin's wife Vanessa reveals herself to be a Fembot apropos of nothing and promptly explodes. His boss drops a response of "Yes. We knew all along, sadly," and the matter is never brought up again.
• Inverted in Back to the Future. Marty is obsessed with getting through to Doc Brown that he will be killed by Libyan terrorists at the time Marty goes back in time.
• Played for serious drama in Bent. By the end of the movie Max has forgotten the names of the people he knew and cared about before entering the camp.
• In the newsreel at the start of Citizen Kane, it's revealed that Kane's first ex-wife and their son were killed in a car crash. They are never mentioned in any flashback that takes place after they died. No one ever suggests that among Kane's many personal problems, losing his only child might be among them.
• The Court Jester:
  • Poor Fergus is never mentioned again after it's revealed that he was tortured to death.
  • On the villain's side, the king seems to forget about the assassination of his three closest advisors pretty quickly.
• Emperor (2020): Shields is horrified when his wife is shot during his escape, but afterward, she's forgotten about entirely outside of a brief nightmare Shields has.
• The supporting cast in the Evil Dead trilogy all tend to suffer this fate as the hero Ash survives each night and moves from one sequel to the next (each movie begins just a few seconds after the last one's cliffhanger ending), with his dead girlfriend Linda remaining relevant the longest. But the most brazen example is his sister Cheryl from The Evil Dead (1981), who was the first one possessed by the demons. Her existence, along with two other friends, was skipped right over by the second movie's opening recap, and a comic book adaptation of the first movie relegated her from his sibling to a friend-of-a-friend whose Demonic Possession merely annoys Ash. The musical's version of the story elevates her back to being his sister, mostly so she can spout off lame puns about being his sibling...
  Evil Cheryl: I'll get you Ash! I'm like a literal Hulk Hogan - I'll get you, brother!
• Exorcist II: The Heretic seems determined to ignore Father Damien Karas, the hero of The Exorcist who sacrificed himself to save Regan. The only acknowledgement he gets is a few references to the three people who died in the original.
• In John Woo’s first film, Heroes Shed No Tears, The first member of the protagonists’ group gets shot at the beginning while they’re capturing the general. Everyone forgets about him soon after.
• In the Peter Pan Fan Sequel film Hook, the mourning period for Rufio is criminally short. Possibly because the Lost Boys — and Peter, before he grew up — don't really seem to comprehend death.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Despite being a prominent character throughout Phase 1, Phil Coulson is never mentioned by anyone after the events of The Avengers (2012), despite his death being the driving force behind the Avengers uniting at the end. While he was resurrected and was the Hero of Another Story in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers themselves never find that out and assume he is still dead, but never mention Coulson anyway.
  • Pietro Maximoff dies near the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and even though his sister Wanda goes on to feature prominently in the subsequent films, neither she nor any of the other Avengers ever mention him. Although Clint Barton's son Nathaniel does have "Pietro" as his middle name, so he's not entirely forgotten. Eventually averted as of WandaVision, where Wanda expels Monica Rambeau from the Hex for mentioning Pietro's death, and Agatha Harkness brainwashes a local Westview resident into acting like Pietro to get under Wanda's skin. A flashback in episode 8 set in between Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War establishes that the memories are just too painful for Wanda to deal with most of the time.
    Vision: Wanda, I don't presume to know what you're feeling. But I would like to know, should you wish to tell me, should that be of some... comfort to you?
    Wanda Maximoff: What makes you think that talking about it would bring me comfort?
    Vision: Oh, see, I read that-
    Wanda Maximoff: The only thing that would bring me comfort is seeing him again.
  • Volstagg, Fandral and Hogun are all killed by Hela in the first act of Thor: Ragnarok. Despite being three of Thor's closest friends and having had sizable roles in the previous two movies, they aren't mentioned by anybody after their deaths.
  • Despite being the impetus for Spider-Man's superhero career, Ben Parker was for all intents and purposes Adapted Out of the series, with the only evidence of his existence being his old suitcase in Spider-Man: Far From Home which gets destroyed with no reaction from Peter.
  • In Avengers: Infinity War, after Loki's death Thor cries at his body, keeps mentioning him while talking to the Guardians, and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge him and the Asgardians. Five years later, in Avengers: Endgame Thor never once mentions his brother nor pauses to look or talk to Loki's past version when he has the chance.
  • In Avengers: Endgame, despite all the effort the Avengers put into trying to save Vision's life in Infinity War, they don't appear to have made any effort to resurrect him in the subsequent five years by using Shuri's research and experiments, or consider how to revive him when trying to undo Thanos's snap; not even Tony and Bruce, who created him. The only mention he gets is from Wanda, and then not even by name. It's then revealed in WandaVision that SWORD took possession of Vision's body, and Tyler Hayward has spent the last five years trying to bring him back online for his own agenda; and that Wanda not mentioning Vision by name is because she was bottling an insane amount of grief (especially after finding out that Vision intended for them to move in together to a house in Westview). His death does eventually get acknowledged in the films, as the Midtown High students' poorly-made tribute to the fallen Avengers at the start of Spider-Man: Far From Home (which is set canonically after the events of WandaVision) includes a picture of Vision. It's also revealed that Vision had written a will to, among other things, specifically prevent being resurrected.
• Bing, Valentine's juggler in MirrorMask. This is lampshaded, and he doesn't even pretend to miss his anonymous violinist for a moment.
• In The Mutilator, Ed Jr. accidentally shoots and kills his mother while fooling around with one of his insane father’s guns when he was a kid, this has no impact on the plot, Ed Jr. never mentions her nor does her death seem to impact or traumatize him.
• Henry VIII takes about five seconds to mourn Jane Seymour's Death by Childbirth in The Private Life of Henry VIII. Then he is back to his cheerful Boisterous Bruiser self.
• Ready Player One (2018) has Wade's home being blown up, along with his family and everyone else living in their stack. The explosion is used as a plot device to showcase how far Sorrento is willing to go to stop Wade foiling his plans. The rest of the film just has Wade and his allies getting on with saving the (virtual) world as if nothing happened.
• Scream:
  • Tatum Riley is barely referenced in the sequels following her death in the first film, despite being Sidney's best friend and Dewey's younger sister. She has a single mention in Scream 2 (much to Dewey's chagrin), Sidney gives a meaningful look upon seeing the bloody garage door on the set of Stab 3 which reenacts Tatum's death in Scream 3, and the opening kill scene of Scream 4 is stylized after her final moments.
  • Hallie McDaniel, Sidney's friend in college and a Ghostface victim in Scream 2, has an even lesser treatment than Tatum, as she's not mentioned at all in the sequels.
  • Subverted with Derek Feldman, Sidney's boyfriend from college. He's not mentioned in the sequels, but Sidney is still wearing the frat necklace he gave her in Scream 3, and it's implied that Sidney never tries dating another man again because Derek's death is too painful for her. At least until Scream (2022), where it's revealed that she has married Mark Kincaid.
• Star Trek (2009): All the cadets not assigned to the Enterprise in the first film and most of Harrison's victims in the second. Starfleet being decimated twice over isn't as important as a handful of named characters' deaths.
• Star Wars:
  • Luke Skywalker at first Refuses The Call. Then stormtroopers kill his uncle Owen and his aunt Beru, the people who raised him. He then "has nothing more for me here" and goes on to start the adventure, but he barely thinks of them or the old moisture farm. This makes their death a case of Death by Origin Story as well.
  • Luke's best friend Biggs Darklighter, whom we meet during the initiation to destroy the Death Star, gets killed by Darth Vader during the ensuing battle, and after a very brief moment of mourning he is never mentioned again. The novel Heir to the Jedi attempts to mitigate this by having Luke mourn his aunt, uncle and Biggs after the events of the movie.
  • Leia seemingly manages to forget her entire PLANET! Although, one could understand why she might not want to talk about it, and even if she personally did, she's also still a political leader with other people's lives and problems to put before her own. (She was very terse during her escape from the Death Star, which could be a sign of repressing feelings.) This is also referenced in the Expanded Universe. This was also raised by Carrie Fisher herself in interviews; she points out that no one seems to offer Leia any space to grieve over the loss of her home planet, or acknowledge what happened at all, but Leia is still expected to be sad at Ben Kenobi's death and comfort Luke while he grieves about it.
• The Suicide Squad: Mocked to hell and back. Milton the bus driver accompanies the Squad into Jotunheim, and is gunned down when they're ambushed. Polka-Dot Man mourns his death, but Bloodsport casually shrugs it off, having not even realized Milton was still with them. Harley doesn't even know who Milton is, having joined the group after they met him, and later mistakenly assumes that Milton is Bloodsport's real name.
• The Transformers Film Series:
  • Transformers (2007): "So sad, Jazz is dead. Oh well, we have new friends!".
  • Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Jetfire didn't get so much as a mention after he rips his own spark out to give Optimus his parts to fight The Fallen and is more or less forgotten after Optimus kills The Fallen.
  • In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Ironhide is barely even acknowledged as having been killed. Even Que/Wheeljack was given a better, albeit brief eulogy by Bumblebee before Bee went back to kicking ass.
  • In Transformers: The Last Knight is implied that Sam Witwicky has died sometime after Dark of the Moon. Despite this, Bumblebee nor any other of the Autobots seem to be deeply effected by his demise.
  • In Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Optimas Primal is momentarily saddened after he's forced to Mercy Kill Airazer, but other Maximals, the Autobots, and the humans present really don't even react to her death and she isn't meantioned for the rest of the movie.
• Visiting Hours: Nurse Wexler is barely mentioned after her death early on despite being a close friend of Sheila's.
• In Wing Commander,
  • The characters deliberately tried to pretend that their comrades who had died never existed.
    Lt. Cmdr. Devereaux: "Who in the hell do you think you are? Let me give you a reality check. In all likelihood, you're going to die out here. We're all going to die out here — but none of us need to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed. Understand?"
  • Later on, after Rosie dies, Blair tries to do this to Maniac, who immediately tells him that it's a bullshit game. In the next scene, Blair tells the same thing to Devereaux, as if he wasn't just playing the same game.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • In X-Men: First Class, nobody comments on The Man in Black’s death or mourns him despite his benign nature and generous actions.
  • In The Wolverine, in Logan's mind, Jean is "all alone" where she is, and wants him to join her... except Logan knows that she loves Cyclops, who is also dead... and Xavier, who, while not her lover, was still a mentor and good friend, who, as far as Logan knew, was also dead. It's a Justified Trope in that if she was an actual ghost, Logan's guilt could have been keeping her from moving on. And if she wasn't, and merely a manifestation of his guilt, then it's perfectly understandable that she would focus on Logan and play on his secret fear that she couldn't move on for whatever reason. Still, the fact that he views his relationship with Jean as being very clearly romantic makes this trope sting a little.

Literature

• In 20 Years After, the heroes spend half the book trying to save Charles I from Cromwell and eventually fail to prevent his execution (the bad guys weren't quite as stupid as they thought). Before the king's death, the musketeers are determined to save him or die trying, since he's such a noble person; afterwards they mourn him for about a chapter.
• Conan the Barbarian never mentions or remembers his lover and partner in crime Belit after she tragically dies along with her crew in Queen of the Black Coast even when his career as a pirate is brought up.
• In Barber Black Sheep, this trope causes conflict between the protagonist and his two siblings after they fail to remember the birthday of their youngest sister who died in infancy.
• Notably avoided in Stephen King's The Dark Tower saga. Roland's defining feature is that he just keeps going, but he frequently angsts about all his companions who have died so he could continue his quest, and when he makes it to the Tower, he shouts all the names of his fallen comrades.
• In the web-novel Domina, Adam comes to the city to go to college with his friend Dale, and promptly forgets about him. Derek (who never even met the guy) angsts about it more. Not that Derek is much better; in Simon's introductory chapter, Simon mentions that one of their oldest friends died in a shootout, and no one offers any more sympathy than "Ooh, that sucks." Probably comes from living in a Wretched Hive.
• Justified in Dragon Lance's Dragons of Summer Flame: when Chaos' shadow demons kill someone, they erase that person's existence from everyone's memory.
• In Emberverse, Odard Liu is one of the nine members of the Quest and travels three thousand miles from one side of the United States to the other, saving his companions' lives and fighting alongside them the whole time. Once there, he makes his last stand protecting his friends' flank, his sword breaking as he kills dozens of enemy fighters, is mortally wounded, and dies in his friends' arms...and then they continue on their way without a moment of mourning and never mention him again.
• In the H.I.V.E. Series, Lucy Dexter is mentioned exactly twice after her death. And both mentions are in the book that immediately follow the event.
• Les Misérables: After Marius loses all his friends at the barricade, only one paragraph addresses his grief, and even that paragraph is more about confused disbelief than pain. For the most part, he just focuses on healing from his own wounds and on his new life with Cosette; even his closest friend, Courfeyrac, he only references with a simple "He's dead" when asked about him. To be fair, it might be a trauma symptom that he can't process the losses enough to properly grieve.
• Double Subversion in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Near the beginning of the novel, a two meter tall black guy named Shorty gets killed by the Warden's guards while helping Mannie and Wyoh escape. Later, while they're lying low in a hotel, Wyoh explains that she hasn't grieved for Shorty yet because she has more urgent things she needs to focus on, and she'll grieve when she gets a chance. Later, Mannie hears her crying in her sleep, presumably about Shorty. He gets mentioned in the novel one more time shortly after that, and never comes up again.
• Justified and subverted, somewhat, in The Program. James and Sloane's best friend Miller kills himself halfway through Part One, and his death looms over the rest of Part One and the first few chapters of Part Two, constantly discussed and affecting James and Sloane. However, since the Program causes Laser-Guided Amnesia, Sloane and James literally cannot remember Miller by the book's end.
• In the first book of Song of the Lioness, Francis of Nond, one of Alanna's friends, dies to the Sweating Sickness, convincing Alanna to use her magic, which she was afraid of, to save Prince Jonathan's life, and to train her healing magic. He is never mentioned again.
• In the versions of The Three Little Pigs in which the first and second Pigs get eaten by the Wolf after he blows down their houses, the third pig never mentions his brothers or apparently learns about their fates.

Live-Action TV

• In episode 3 of American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson, Fred Goldman, the father of murder victim Ron Goldman, expressed concern to Marcia Clark that the media are focused on O.J. and Nicole, and that his son would be reduced to "a footnote in his own murder".
• Characters in American Horror Story tend to have little-to-no reaction to their friends disappearing, presumed dead. Though to be fair, the body count in any given season of AHS tends to be so high that most characters know that someone who's suddenly gone missing is unlikely to be coming back in a form they care to recognise.
• Invoked in Battlestar Galactica (2003). Apollo complains that he is barely able to remember the pilots that have lost their lives over the course of the series. He makes an effort to remember a few but not all. Starbuck cynically retorts that she doesn't remember any of them and doesn't bother trying. Later, she averts the trope and shows she was lying before, raising a toast to fallen comrades and listing every single one until she breaks down in tears and can't continue...
  • Apollo's pregnant fiancée is a played-straight example. He barely thinks about the fact that he left her to be nuked, aside from one episode.
  • Felix Gaeta is never mentioned again after he and Zarek are executed for the mutiny. No one is shown placing a photo on the memorial wall, either, not even Baltar, who was with him shortly before he was executed.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978) has one or two examples as well. Apollo's brother Zac dies in the first episode, and is almost never even mentioned again in later episodes.
• Mitch's mentor is killed in the Baywatch Pilot Movie, and despite the episode ending with Mitch promising to never forget him, he's pretty much never brought up again after this. Complicating things is the fact that the actor who played the mentor later joined the cast as a completely different character.
• Played for Laughs in Blackadder. Whenever a character loses the woman they love, their mourning lasts for about five seconds.
  "Amy! Oh, Amy! ...What's for breakfast?"
• By the second or third episode, Krista in Blade: The Series appears to have forgotten completely that Marcus van Sciver put a bullet in her brother's head. In fact, her whole motivation in the pilot was to put a silver slug through van Sciver for this. Then she gets turned by him and, a few episodes later, starts sleeping with him, her dead brother forgotten. Yes, she's secretly working for Blade, but that's only because she's not too big on the whole "vampire" thing, even though she's one herself (and van Sciver made sure she couldn't be cured by throwing her off the roof after turning her).
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Xander, Willow and Jesse were set up in the pilot episode as childhood best friends, but once Jesse was Killed Off for Real, no one mentions him again. Sure, he's hardly the last casualty of the series. However, even the writers seem to have utterly forgotten about him when Season 3's Alternate Universe What If? episode came around and no mention was made of his existence. ^note Granted, Jesse isn't the only casualty from "The Harvest" to get this treatment, but he's the most egregious. Take a sip. Jesse's form is also never assumed by The First, who worked really hard to dredge up memories of departed loved ones. According to Word of God, his actor Eric Balfour was unavailable and Jesse was planned to come back to hang a lampshade over how his old friends had completely forgotten him. It's not until the Season 9 comics, years after the show had come to an end, that Jesse gets a mention; when Xander helps Detective Dowling stake his vampirized partner, Xander recalls having to do the same to Jesse, and claims that to this very day, all he can see is the face of his friend, not the monster he became.
  • Buffy's original Watcher, Merrick, killed himself in a Heroic Sacrifice to save Buffy from the vampire Lothos shortly before the series began. He's rarely mentioned at all outside of the prequel comics. Ironically, when Faith was introduced in Season 3, her Watcher's death did have a heavy impact on her... and shortly afterwards is also never mentioned again. We never even get her name.
  • At the end of Season 1, Cordelia's boyfriend Kevin is killed with other students by a group of vampires. Although there's the implications that Cordelia dates lots of guys, she had a conversation with Willow about how she was genuinely in love with this one, and is affected when she finds his body. She then never mentions him again in this show or its spinoff, Angel.
  • Season 2 introduces the secondary Slayer Kendra Young. Kendra appears in the "What's My Line?" two-parter before returning to be killed by Drusilla in the first part of the season finale. Her death being pinned on Buffy is one of the factors in the latter leaving Sunnydale at the end of the season and the last time Kendra's name is even mentioned in the entire series is in Season 3's "Faith, Hope & Trick", which introduces her replacement Faith Lehane.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor's companion Nyssa has her father taken over by the Master in the Ass Pull ending of The Keeper of Traken. In the following story, Logopolis, the Master destroys Nyssa's planet and she discovers that he has stolen her father's body. After Four to Doomsday, though, she never mentions it at all. She does, however, have a slight moment of shock and outrage in Time-Flight when she learns that the Master is still alive (having assumed he'd died at Castrovalva). The Doctor even says, "Yes, I'm sorry Nyssa," when she gives her response.
  • Adric makes no direct mention of his brother following the latter's death in Full Circle, the closest he gets being the scene where he tells Romana: "One of my family's died for your lot already." Indeed, the only person to mention Adric's brother by name in any subsequent adventure is the Doctor in Time-Flight, by which time Adric has himself been killed. Apparently, actor Matthew Waterhouse was also upset about this not being brought up at all (his own brother had died by this time). However, there's a subtle hint towards the death for the observant viewers, seen in Earthshock — Adric, aware of his impending fate, is holding onto his brother's belt (given to him after Varsh's death) like a security blanket, as though to reassure himself in his final moments. It's not something everyone would pick up (given the belt looks like a thick rope), but for those that do ... Oh, Adric.
  • The Doctor himself is prone to this. If you're not a companion, he'll be very upset to see you die, but probably have forgotten you minutes (or even seconds) after the fact. It's implied this is a coping mechanism for him to deal with the fact that everyone he knows eventually dies.
  • Even when one of the Doctor's companions is permanently killed off, he or she is not exempt from this trope. Adric, for example, is only mentioned directly in a handful of post-Earthshock episodes, the last being Part Four of The Caves of Androzani, where the Doctor whispers Adric's name moments before regenerating into his sixth incarnation.
  • Extreme example in "The Girl in the Fireplace" where the Doctor has an (allegedly passionate) love affair with Mme de Pompadour. By the next episode she's been forgotten, and is never mentioned again. In "Human Nature" he left Martha with instructions but never said what to do if he falls in love, implying he didn't consider it a real possibility though "The Girl in the Fireplace" was just a year ago. If "Deep Breath" is of any indication, the Doctor barely remembers the events of the episode (although this is more than 1000 years later from his perspective).
• Most of the ER characters who have been killed off have met this fate. They might be mentioned for a few episodes after their demise, but then never again. Understandable for the minor characters, but even Mark Greene, who'd been the central figure of the show for 8 seasons, got only a few referrals after his death.
• Near the end of Farscape, after Crichton finally gets back to Earth, an assassin tortures and kills his two best friends and is only mentioned once after that, when Scorpius asks his Old Master about the assassin's species and origin. Though it's clear that Crichton was having a something of a falling-out with said friends over his sharing of alien technologies. It's not even entirely clear that Crichton ever learned they died; the creature attacked his family shortly afterwards and the crew hightailed it off Earth after defeating it.
• Game of Thrones is normally good at remembering dead characters, even many episodes after their death. A few exceptions include:
  • While Robb and Catelyn are frequently mentioned after the Red Wedding and the surviving Starks and their supporters want to avenge their deaths, as well as the deaths of the other Northern lords killed at the Red Wedding, Talisa — Robb's pregnant wife — is never mentioned again. While it's true that many of the people she was friends with are also killed, and justified for the surviving Starks as they weren't even able to learn who she was, it's still relatively jarring for a major character. The one time a Northern Lord mentions Talisa posthumously, she's referred to as a "foreign whore".
  • Rakharo, Daenerys' bloodrider, is also yet to be mentioned after his death in Season 2.
  • Locke, a good friend of Ramsay Bolton, had successfully faked friendship with Jon Snow and Jon's circle in an attempt to harm or assassinate Jon and his two younger brothers — Bran and Rickon Stark — and Locke is never mentioned again after what the Night Watch characters believe to have been a heroic death. It is justified because shortly after they return to Castle Black, they have other problems to deal with, such as Mance's army and the White Walkers. However, some of Jon's other friends die, and he mourns them. Locke also seems to be pretty tight with Ramsay, but after his death is never mentioned by Ramsay again. You'd think Ramsay would at least bring him up to mess with Jon, but nope.
  • Benjen Stark has hardly been mentioned since his disappearance, despite one of main missions of the great ranging being to investigate the disappearing rangers. Jon fails to ask the wildlings about his uncle while gathering information as a Fake Defector but the claim of his uncle's return is used on Jon by the Watch mutineers to lure Jon outside so they can assassinate him in a mutiny.
  • Subverted by Mycah the butcher's boy. While some viewers might only vaguely remember his unjust death in "The Kingsroad," Arya never forgets and his unjust death remains at the center of her hatred for Sandor Clegane. Arya even brings up Mycah during the Hound's trial in "And Now His Watch Is Ended" and the Hound uses it in his attempt to goad her in "The Children." Arya also remembers Lommy's death and takes revenge on his murderer, killing him the same way he killed Lommy.
• Grey's Anatomy is also doing this with George. He was a main character for five seasons, then after the first two episodes of Season 6, has only been mentioned twice.
• Heroes: Caitlin who? Never heard of any Simone. Yaeko? Charlie? Possible Lampshade/Subversion of Charlie's death in Season 4 Who are these people? Conveniently, with Simone dead, there's nobody to cry for Isaac.
  • There’s possible exception of Alixander Alejandro Dead Twin: the only people who knew of him on the show are Sylar (his killer) and Molly and Maya, the last two having been Put on a Bus.
  • The trope was lampshaded later by Sylar. It went something like this: "What was his name again? Ted...Ted something. Ted... It's on the tip of my tongue." A few moments later... "Sprague! Ted Sprague! That was his name."
  • Matt Parkman reunites with his ex-wife after discovering he has a son, despite her history of infidelity, and apparently forgets all about his deceased girlfriend Daphne Millbrook, whose murder nearly led him attempt to exact Revenge by Proxy on the girlfriend of Daphne's killer Emil Danko and basically sapped him of the will to live.
• Highlander had its share of such problems. While Duncan held rivalries with other Immortals ongoing for centuries, he rarely went after mortals. Regardless of what they did to him or his loved ones. From 1980 to 1993, Duncan's love interest was mortal Tessa Noel. A main character until early in the second season, Tessa was killed by a junkie over some petty change. Duncan never bothers to search for the killer. When Richard Ryan, a student of Duncan, managed to locate the junkie, Duncan refuses to lift a finger against him. Ryan eventually lets the guy go, once convinced the junkie has quit the habit and is now a struggling father. After that Tessa rarely gets mentioned. Similarly, a number of killed lovers or best friends such as Mei-Ling Shen, Brian Cullen or Nefertiri are greatly mourned in the single episode featuring them. Then never mentioned again, even in episodes summarizing the key moments of the character.
  • Actually, the Series Finale features a case of It's a Wonderful Plot in which Duncan finds himself in a world in which he had never existed. What If? all characters live miserable lives or are evil, and Duncan wants to undo what has happened. Until he discovers that in this reality Tessa is very much alive.
  • On the same note, several episodes have Duncan trying to get other Immortals to quit their quest of vengeance against mortals. With several of them having some pretty good reasons to seek revenge. Ceirdwyn going after the people who killed her mortal husband, Kamir killing the people who smuggled India's cultural treasures to American museums, Muhammad ibn Kassim targeting the dictator of his country, Katya of Greenhil struggling to avenge the murder of her adoptive daughter, Jacob Galati hunting the people who butchered his wife, William Kingsley wanting to punish whoever killed his wife and those covering for them, Ingrid Henning going after any would-be dictator and hatemonger in hope of preventing a new Holocaust, and Everett Bellian waging war against the rapist of his adoptive daughter. Apparently they should have all forgotten their foes and let go. Somehow, this would seem rather difficult.
• Archie Kennedy dies a heroic death in the Horatio Hornblower episode "Retribution" ... then is never mentioned again for the rest of the series. Similarly, in the first episode, Clayton sacrifices himself to save Horatio's life; Horatio seems to remember him and mourn his death but Archie, his former shipmate, seems to forget him entirely almost immediately.
  • Another Jamie Bamber character meets this fate. Matt Devlin of Law & Order: UK is gunned down at the end of Season 5, and aside from the follow-up episode which focused on the search for and prosecution of his killer is never mentioned again. Quite glaring considering that he was a surrogate son to his grief-stricken partner Ronnie and in a later episode, when yet another friend of Ronnie's is similarly murdered, no one mentions how similar the two incidents are. The only slight exception is the mention that Ronnie's grandson is named Matthew, obviously in his memory (he was born the day Matt was killed), but even that fails to spark any discussion of him.
• Killing Eve: Villanelle's murder of Bill motivated Eve for probably a whole season and is even one interpretation for stabbing Villanelle at the end of Season 1. However, from Season 2 onwards, Bill's death is never mentioned and it never stands in the way of Eve and Villanelle's relationship.
• In a meta version, Law & Order: LA's ad campaign about the murder of Rex Winters described it as "an event not seen on Law & Order in twenty years," referring to the murder of Max Greevey during the original Law & Order — forgetting the murders of both ADA Alex Borgia (also from the original series) and Criminal Intent's Capt. Danny Ross between the two events.
• In the pilot of Lucifer (2016), the title character witnesses his friend Delilah getting gun down in front of his club. Lucifer then spent the rest of the episode looking for her assassin to get justice for her and meet her therapist Linda who becomes a main character. Neither Lucifer nor Linda mention Delilah ever again afteward. The only mentions she ever gets is in the Alternate Reality Episode where Lucifer is briefly bitter about the police failing to resolve her case.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Daredevil: In season 1, Officer Sullivan, the unlucky rookie police officer who got handcuffed to a column by Matt, and later killed by corrupt ESU officers in Fisk's pocket, isn't acknowledged in any way after his death, and any talk about that incident is instead about the shootings of Detective Blake and two other cops outside the building that were carried out on orders of Fisk.
  • The Punisher: When Karen Page is introduced in season 1, she looks very sad and lonely, which people coming from The Defenders know is because she's mourning Matt Murdock, who was presumed killed in Midland Circle. However, those events are never so much as alluded to outside of Ellison holding a newspaper headlined "Chaos Under The Streets" in Karen's intro episode, or a small shrine in the background when Frank is in Karen's apartment. However, this is averted in Season 2, where Frank is aware of Matt's survival and of Karen forming Nelson, Murdock & Page at the conclusion of Daredevil season 3, and briefly inquires after him.
  • Jessica Jones: Season 2 makes absolutely no mention of the events of The Defenders, and Jessica seems to have completely forgotten about the loss of Matt, who she had grown the closest with during The Defenders, except for an oblique reference to "heroes dying" in an early conversation she has with Trish. The reason for this is that showrunner Melissa Rosenberg had started writing Jessica Jones season 2 before The Defenders began its writing process but didn't film it until after The Defenders had wrapped shooting, which explains why the show feels as if it took place immediately after Iron Fist season 1, and The Defenders never happened.
  • Luke Cage: Played with in season 2. The events at Midland Circle in which Matt "died" are relevant, but more because of how Misty Knight lost her arm there and is now getting adjusted to her new robotic right arm. There's a subtle reference to Matt, though, as Foggy Nelson appears in one scene and, recalling the costume Matt wore in the first season of Daredevil, suggests Luke wear a mask to maintain some level of anonymity. It later turns out comparing Matt to Luke is something of a Berserk Button to the latter, which Claire finds out the hard way.
  • WandaVision: In-Universe, a flashback in episode 8 shows how the Hex came into existence: Wanda went to SWORD seeking to claim Vision's body simply so she could give him a funeral, if only for her own closure, but Tyler Hayward refused to turn the body over to her because he was using Vision's body for Project Cataract.
    Wanda Maximoff: I know you have him.
    SWORD Receptionist: I'm sorry. But like I said-
    Wanda Maximoff: Please. Please. When I came back, he was gone. And I know he's here. He deserves a funeral, at least. I deserve it.
    • Some cut dialogue from this scene had Wanda go on to complain about the fact that of all the Avengers who died during the battle with Thanos (Vision, Natasha Romanoff, and Tony Stark), only Tony's death got any sort of public recognition, while Vision's and Natasha's deaths have been seemingly forgotten about completely.
      Wanda Maximoff: I'm sick of everyone acting like Tony Stark is the only person we lost. Like he's the only Avenger there ever was. Too bad, then, if you're Natasha, but at least she was flesh and blood, right? But where are the memorials for Vision? No moving tributes for the synthezoid?
• Merlin:
  • A number of Knights of Camelot have died without ever being mentioned again. This includes some relatively famous names, including Sir Pellinore and Sir Bedivere.
  • In one episode, Merlin's childhood friend Will is killed saving Arthur's life, and he hasn't been mentioned since.
  • Lancelot dies twice, first at the beginning of the fourth season, only to be resurrected and killed off again in the ninth episode. Each time he died, no one ever mentioned him again in subsequent episodes — which was especially strange the second time around given the ramifications of the Arthurian Love Triangle. Yet instead of referencing him by name, all the other characters only obliquely mention a "betrayal."
• In Misfits, Curtis' girlfriend Nikki is shot by a mugger after he sold the time travel power to Seth. Curtis mourns her and then learns from Seth that his ability has been sold to an old Jewish man hoping to kill Hitler, leaving Curtis unable to help Nikki. She is never mentioned after that, and two episodes later Curtis gets a new love interest. It becomes egregious later in Season 3 when Seth gives Curtis the power of resurrection in order to bring back his dead girlfriend Shannon, and the latter seems to have forgotten that he also has another deceased girlfriend.
• Sheriff Graham in Once Upon a Time fits this to a tee. He dies in the seventh episode, is mourned in the eigth, and then never spoken of again, although his incarnation as the Huntsman occasionally appears in Enchanted Forest flashbacks.
• In the fourth episode of Robin Hood, Roy is killed off in a Redemption Equals Death moment. Despite John mentioning earlier that he was like a son to him and all of the outlaws mourning him at the end of the episode, he hasn't been mentioned since.
• Smallville:
  • In the earliest episodes, the "Freak of the Week" would often be a a longtime friend the main cast would've known for years prior to Kryptonite radiation turning them evil. More often than not, they'd die. The main cast would spend absolutely no time mourning their loss or what they had become even in the episode where they died.
  • In later years this would extend to recurring characters and several cases of series regulars Whitney Fordman, Jason Teague, Davis Bloome, and Jimmy Olsen who'd be Killed Off for Real, might be mourned in the episode they died, and then either never mentioned again or mentioned in only the briefest most casual way for plot purposes. Most egregious examples are Ryan James and Alicia Baker.
  • Grant Gabriel. Lionel does mourn him. For one episode. He is a clone of his biological son. Which is one more episode than Lois ever mourned for him, even though she knew him longer.
  • Gina. Granted the only one who'd care would be Lex, and it's Lex were talking about here. Still, you'd think he'd spend at least a moment wondering who the Hell murdered his most loyal and devoted assistant.
  • Season 2, Clark had a passionately romantic attachment to this Native American shapeshifter with a meaningful bracelet and prophecy saying she was his soul mate, and in the end she tragically dies. Next episode it was like it never happened, except she had been the device for the 'caves' setting to be introduced, and those stuck around. What was her name, anyway? Kyla Willowbrook.
  • Downplayed with Lionel Luthor, who's mentioned quite a bit after his death. However most of his mentions are of the evil bastard he was at the start of the series and not as the ally he became in the show's second half.
  • Downplayed with Raya, the Kryptonian Clark met in Season 6. She helped Clark escape the Phantom Zone in her debut episode and then returned for one more episode in which she was killed off by the villain of the week. She was mentioned three more times, which is more than any love interest Clark had that wasn't named Lana or Lois.
  • The Season 4 episode "Ageless" has Clark and Lana bond with a metahuman whose condition causes him to rapidly age and release blasts of energy against his will. He dies and is mourned by Clark and Lana who never mention him again.
  • Sheriff Nancy Adams made a number of appearances from Seasons 2 to 5 before being killed off rather unceremoniously and was never mentioned after her death until an alternate version of her appeared in a Season 7 episode. After that, the show went back to ignoring her existence.
• In Star Trek: The Original Series, Captain Kirk suffers (in the first episode in which he appears) the loss of a friend he's had for many years, whom he himself was forced to kill. Further along in the series, he also suffers the loss of his brother. And yet, the only death that seemed to affect him long term was the death of main, recurring character Spock (which didn't even stick). Although Kirk has had and lost many love interests over the course of the show, he doesn't seem all that affected by their passing. (Granted, in at least two cases, he was made to forget that they had ever existed, but one would think he would at least remember and dwell upon Edith Keeler from time to time...)
• This happens in Stranger Things to Barb Holland, who, despite being searched for for the majority of the first season by Nancy Wheeler, her eventual death was only mourned for a short moment, and she was never mentioned again. This didn't go over well with viewers, for whom Barb had become an Ensemble Dark Horse, so the writers had to address this in season 2. Nancy and Steve visit Barb’s parents regularly and Nancy’s guilt over Barb’s death leads to her breakup with Steve. Nancy leads the charge in getting justice for Barb by exposing the government agency responsible for her death showing that Nancy, at least, has not forgotten about her friend.
• Supernatural:
  • As far as the main characters are concerned, deceased friends are often mentioned and grieved on the show. However, there are a huge number of one-episode characters who watch their family and friends die in horrible ways, are traumatised for the majority of the episode, and then miraculously recover toward the end. One particularly noticeable example is the body-swap episode, where two teenagers are partially responsible for the gruesome death of their best friend, but by the end of the episode are too distracted by their love lives to remember that his body is still lying in his basement.
  • The Winchesters do react this way in one particularly glaring instance regarding their brother, Adam. Ever since the fifth season finale he's been rotting in hell being tortured by Lucifer and Michael. Dean only mentioned him once but then seems to have forgotten about him completely. Apparently the Winchesters are perfectly content to leave him in hell for all eternity, despite their "family comes first" motto and both of them having been traumatized by their own trips to hell.
    • This was finally acknowledged in the 200th episode, in which Sam and Dean assist in a musical adaptation of the in-universe book series based on their lives. In the finale, when the Winchester family sings "Carry On My Wayward Son", Sam fails to recognize a character and asks one girl who he is. She replies "Oh, that's Adam. John Winchester's other kid. He's still trapped in the cage, in Hell. With Lucifer." Sam and Dean immediately look at each other with discomfort. However, when the Cage is brought back in Season 11, Adam is still not alluded in any fashion.
    • He's finally brought back in the final season though, now having agreed to share his body equally with Michael.
  • Played with when it comes to Jessica. Her death motivated Sam to go back to hunting, but after that, her mentions are few and far between.
  • Many of the Winchesters' one-shot hunting friends fall into this. Perhaps the most glaring case was Caleb and Pastor Jim Murphy. They were infrequently mentioned in the first season by Sam and Dean as friends and allies of their father; Jim even knew the family since Sam and Dean were children, and is implied to have looked after them for John on occasion. When Dad went missing, Sam and Dean turned to Caleb and Pastor Jim for help a couple times, calling them (off-screen) to check if John had contacted them and to gain information on a creature they were hunting. Unfortunately, Jim and Caleb were targeted by the demon Meg, who murdered them in cold blood to get to the Winchesters. The Winchesters were heartbroken to learn of Jim's death, and hearing Caleb die over the phone pushed John to play into the demons' hands (and arguably launched the events of the following seasons, as Dean would not have been killed by Azazel if John hadn't been captured, thus John wouldn't have made his deal, which was what eventually caused Dean to make his deal to bring Sam back — assuming that Sam would have died at all had John still been alive). After that episode, however, neither character is never mourned or mentioned again, with Jim's role in Sam and Dean being retroactively reassigned to Bobby (who debuted the episode immediately after Jim and Caleb's deaths) and Sam and Dean allying with Meg — their friends' killer — in the sixth season.
  • To a lesser degree, two more of the Winchesters' friends and allies, Ellen and Jo (with the former implied to be a mother-figure to the boys and the latter an awkward cross between a little sister and a potential love interest), also qualify for this trope with regards to Sam and Dean's alliance with Meg, as they were also killed by her — only a season before Sam and Dean allied with her. In the first episode of this alliance, Dean did make a token protest about how Meg killed the Harvelles (but still, not of poor Jim and Caleb, which would have only strengthened Dean's case had he remembered them), but after that scene, it was not brought up again and due to on-screen chemistry between demon and angel, Meg was eventually portrayed as simply a quirky character in love with Castiel and loyal to the Winchesters despite their "unfair" treatment of her. Her murder of their friends — not to mention her innumerable other crimes — were ignored to support this characterization. Made all the more irritating when Meg complained about how mean they were to her while Sam and Dean looked guilty, as if they didn't have damn good reason not to like her.
  • Castiel. After confessing his love to Dean to save him from Billie by dragging them both into the Empty, in the last two episodes of the show he barely warrants a mention.
• In full effect on Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. Aside from the sheer number of classmates and recurring characters killed off unceremoniously, regular character Jenny lost her long-time best friend in the third episode, never to mention her again. True to form, after spending a season trying to track down her long-lost father, Jenny seemingly forgets he ever existed after dear old dad dies after using the Book of Pure Evil (co-incidentally in the following season's third episode).
• Janet York, Kim's best friend in Season 1 of 24, is murdered by a terrorist pretending to be her father, though she doesn't recognize him anyway. This reveals that Ira Gaines was also planning to kidnap Teri, not just Kim. Teri, who is murdered by Nina Myers in the season finale, is mentioned in later seasons and it affects Kim's relationship with her father, but neither she nor anyone else even bring up that her best friend was murdered in the rest of the series.
• The Vampire Diaries:
  • Stefan's "Uncle" Zach dies in the fifth episode. While Stefan mourns him in the episode itself, the character very quickly becomes a footnote in the series' history after his death is covered up without anyone finding out the truth. He isn't mentioned again until the sixth season where he is revealed to have a daughter.
  • Subverted with Lexi. Despite only appearing in one episode, she is mentioned by Stefan several times since her death and she appears in almost every season of the show, either in flashbacks or as a ghost. Stefan admits the reason he doesn't talk about her much is that it brings up memories of her death. In the Series Finale, she and Stefan even end up Together in Death (in a platonic way).
  • Anna dies at the end of the first season. She is then not mentioned again. In fact some people who started watching in the second season asked why Jeremy was so unfriendly to his uncle, because the fact that he murdered his girlfriend never comes up. What makes this more bizarre is that a season later Anna returns as a ghost. After she passes on, Elena attributes Jeremy's downward spiral to Bonnie breaking up with him, apparently forgetting they broke up because he was still in love Anna who, as far as Jeremy knows, is still trapped totally alone in the ghost world, unwilling or unable to appear to him again. Not that this is the only death where the dead person is quickly not mentioned again, but it's made particularly obvious because it happens twice to the same character.

Radio

• Poppy's death midway through Series 1 of Bleak Expectations is met with a typically Victorian melodramatic reaction: her siblings and friends are inconsolable with grief (as are the people listening to the story several decades later). But despite dying in the climactic scene of an episode, she's never mentioned once for the rest of the series, and even her parents don't think to ask where she is after her conspicuous absence during their reunion with their other two children. Other than a single, brief mention three series later, her name never comes up again once she's dead. Of course, the show being what it is, this is probably an example of this trope being subtly Played for Laughs.

Theatre

• Les Misérables: Eponine gets her drawn-out dramatic death scene in Marius' arms. As soon as she drops, he's back to mooning over Cosette, and Eponine is never mentioned again.^note In earlier versions of the show, he does mention her when the Thenardiers confront him at his wedding, but these lines were cut when the show's run time was reduced in the late 1990s. They can still be heard on the Complete Symphonic Recording. Even in his Grief Song "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," about the deaths of all his friends at the barricades, he only sings about his fellow student revolutionaries, not Éponine.
• Romeo and Juliet: Romeo is heartbroken about his friend Mercutio's death...at least during the scene where Mercutio actually died. After Romeo kills Tybalt to avenge him, Mercutio is pretty much forgotten. Romeo expresses far more grief over Tybalt's death than Mercutio's.
• In A Very Potter Musical, Cedric dies at the end of the first act. Nobody cares enough to mention it after the first five minutes of Act Two. His sickeningly sweetheart Cho Chang cries for a minute, but then Neville Longbottom pantses Draco and she says, "That made me feel better." About her dead boyfriend.

Video Games

• In Bravely Default, it might seem like Tiz quickly gets over his Doomed Hometown and dead brother, but it's actually brought up multiple times over the course of the game. In Chapter 3, he can't get any sleep due to nightmares about it. Later, he meets Egil, a kid who reminds him of his brother, and does everything to help him. Eventually, Tiz resolves his problems by bringing Egil to Caldisla, where he safely takes over Tiz' duties. Until the "Groundhog Day" Loop, where Egil is absent, yet hometown is still destroyed. Tiz realizes the great chasm can never be averted, then finds that he died in place of Til at that point. In the next loop, he actually meets Til... but nobody survived in the subsequent loops. It's even worse when Tiz finds out that he and his party were the ones destroying the village in each new world. Yeah, this game isn't kind to him.
• While the Criminal Case series tends to avert this regarding the deaths of its main characters, its secondary characters usually don't get such luck, as they generally never get brought up again after meeting their demise.
  • Criminal Case: Grimsborough has Rachel Priest and Madison Springer, with both of them being prominent characters and major allies during the arcs they appear in (Financial Center and University, respectively) and even driving up parts of the plot at times, yet no main character mentions them after their deaths in the climax of each district. The former is especially egregious, as she's established early-on as Jones' potential Love Interest, yet he only mourns for her death during her murder investigation. Afterwards, Rachel is out of his mind for good.
  • Criminal Case: Pacific Bay has Colonel Spangler. Despite having a rocky start with the police department at the beginning of the game, the Rhine Canyon arc has him eventually developing into their ally (as unwitting as it might be) and even gaining some sort of mutual respect with one another. Then he dies in the penultimate case of the district, is briefly mentioned in the next one due to his death being a plot point, and never gets brought up again.
  • Criminal Case: The Conspiracy has Tony Marconi. Just like Spangler above, a good chunk of the game's first half focuses on the police department and him learning to set their differences apart and work together in their quest to bring DreamLife down, to the point Marconi arguably transitions into a full-fledged Anti-Hero and secondary protagonist... only for him to die at the end of the Misty Grove arc, get a single line of mention at the beginning of the next district, and never have his name spoken by the heroes again.
• Crysis:
  • This happens to Alcatraz, an entire player character. Made even more glaring by the fact that Alcatraz was actually still alive (sort of) before a series of minor retcons in the third game..
  • Justified with Gould. His fate is left ambiguous, but even if he was provably alive he's not actually relevant to the story thanks to the Time Skip.
• Defied in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc Makoto promises to remember both Sayaka and Leon, even after it turned out that they'd tried to kill each other and frame him for it- the latter killed the former, but failed to get away with it- as well as everyone else who dies, even though Kyoko points out that it's more painful than simply forgetting about them. He takes it very seriously, and Danganronpa 3 shows him having a nightmare about everyone who'd died in the first game, with the exception of Junko and Mukuro, which is understandable since those two were the prime movers behind both the Tragedy and the killing games, so it's no wonder he doesn't regret their deaths.
• Deep Rock Galactic: Inverted with Karl. The dwarves remember him very fondly, miss him at many turns and are eager to avenge him every time they head out into the mines and start killing bugs. But the player never, ever knows who he even was in the first place, not even by memorial pictures or recordings; if it wasn't for the dwarves' rememberances, you wouldn't even know Karl existed.
• Fallout and 2, mostly because none of your potential party members are important to the plot in the least, and because everyone is so inured to the killing. There's not even a single line about, even if the victim was a friend, spouse or loyal dog.
• A very odd example occurs in Final Fantasy VII, though it's ultimately subverted: Due to trauma and a compromised mental state, Cloud literally no longer remembers Zack, his friend who died for him at the end of Crisis Core to keep him out of the hands of Shinra. However, Zack's dying words were to pass on his legacy to Cloud, and it turns out that Cloud internalized that to such an extreme degree that he began to suffer the delusion that he himself was Zack. So while he doesn't remember Zack as a separate entity, Zack's memory is still very much present.
• Exaggerated in chapter 7 of Fire Emblem: Awakening. Chrom introduces some guy known as the Hierarch who apparently assisted, and took care of his elder sister in her younger years. Minutes later, the Hierarch says he needs to take care of some personal matters, where we see he gave some info to the enemy, and then gets killed. While the player knows the Hierarch is a traitor thanks to their omniscient viewpoint, the characters in the game never find out, and the last they heard just left to take of some personal points. Sure, considering how quickly the Plegians attack they probably assumed he got ambushed and killed by them, but it's still noticeable they don't mention him again.
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Ryder, who, in spite of his faults, was still one of CJ's childhood friends. Unlike Big Smoke, Ryder is almost entirely ignored after his betrayal, and he gets killed in the middle of the game without so much of a conversation with CJ. When CJ shows genuine remorse for killing Ryder, Cesar tells CJ that Ryder tried to bang Kendl (something that was randomly brought up with no evidence whatsoever), and Ryder is never mentioned after that.
• Guild Wars 2 is guilty to doing this to any named NPC you grow attached to. As soon as you finish that part of your personal story, (usually) they're never brought up again. The most well know example, and part people get the most pissed off about, is when your Order's mentor sacrifices themselves to get you to warn Lion's Arch that Claw Island had fallen. After that they brought up about twice in the next mission and never heard from until the the second-to-last boss.
• Invoked in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days: Xion, a being made from Sora's memories, must merge with Sora to complete the restoration of his memories, though it also means that everyone's memories of her will vanish entirely. While she's aware of this, she pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure that her friends continue to live safe and sound. However, it's all but outright said at the end of the game and subsequent games in the series such as Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] that everyone's memories of Xion are still there, even if most of them don't realize it.
• Like a Dragon: Averted. Kiryu never forgets Nishiki, and in spite of everything that happens between them after the events of the first game, he will still speak warmly of him as a beloved and missed friend throughout the series. Over a decade, and five games, after Nishiki's death, Kiryu expresses a hope that he can re-unite with Nishiki in the afterlife, such as singing a karaoke song in Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza 6, and Yakuza Kiwami 2 that has him reminiscing about the good times they had in Yakuza 0.
• Both Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals and Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals have characters move past Dekar's Heroic Sacrifice rather quickly. Granted, Guy's belief that Dekar is too dumb to die turns out to be entirely accurate.
• Through Laser-Guided Amnesia, the bad ending of Mega Man X5 has the title character losing his memories of Zero who just died in the same game. There has been no explicit reason given for why this happened, and can be treated as a Shoot the Dog on the part of Dr. Light, X's creator.
• Metal Gear:
  • The franchise is usually good about avoiding this, but dropped the ball between Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid's half-Continuity Reboot by making Snake grieve the deaths of Gray Fox and Big Boss, but completely forget about the deaths of Gustava Heffner and Kyle Schneider, whose deaths were shown to badly affect him in game. (It's possible to infer that Snake's line about not wanting to see any woman die in front of him is supposed to refer to Gustava.)
  • Snake never mentions Master Miller again after his death in Metal Gear Solid, even though he was supposed to be Snake's mentor and one of his best friends, and to rub salt in the wound the Miller Snake had been speaking to all game was in fact Liquid posing as him, meaning he never even got to say goodbye. Miller's increased prominence in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Metal Gear Solid V makes this stick out even more.
  • Despite being important for the plot of the prologue chapter Ground Zeroes, Chico, who was also an important character in Peace Walker, is hit with a downplayed version that skirts around the edge of being played straight in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Despite the plot Ground Zeroes being all about saving him and Paz, he ends up getting Killed Offscreen at the end of that story, and neither him nor his untimely and very tragic demise is ever mentioned at any point during the plot of The Phantom Pain, even though said death should be at the forefront of many the reasons why Snake is hellbent on revenge against XOF and Skull Face. In fact, the only place Chico's fate is disclosed to the player is in a single completely optional cassette tape, and there Snake just more-or-less brushes his death off as a case of They Knew the Risks.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption: Subverted. There's never any real mention of Rundas, Ghor and Gandrayda after Samus is forced to kill them. That is, until the ending cinematic in which Samus silently remembers her fallen comrades while watching the Elysian sunset.
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle: Subverted. Bishop's murder, while setting off the whole plot, quickly falls by the wayside for most of the game. Aside from one cutscene about two-thirds through the game, it's hardly mentioned again— until the final boss fight, where it quickly thrusts itself back into the forefront.
• When the Bunker gets destroyed in Route C of NieR: Automata, Operator 6O gets no more mention from anyone after. This is because 2B is the only one of the main three androids who is at all close to her and dies herself not long after. As for the other two, 9S didn't know her on a personal level and A2 has never met her.
• Persona 3 averts this with Shinjiro Aragaki. After Akihiko's persona evolves, one of his battle end quotes is "Did you see that, Shinji?" and brings him up sporadically after his death. He's also listed as being a member of the Nyx Annihilation Team, which isn't even created until almost three months after his death.
• Phantasy Star:
  • Drastically subverted in three of the games, all of which have the main character losing someone they love early in the game: Alis in the first, Rolf in the second, and Chaz in the fourth. While the technological limitations of the 8-bit Phantasy Star meant not a lot of cutscenes, no one ever forgets Nero is the reason Alis became a heroine. Alys' death in IV is not only honored with an actual grave, her left-behind house and belongings in it and her entire hometown noting her absence, the people closest to her reference her death and the meaning of what she taught while she was alive, and one of the later possible wise-mentor figures actually uses her image to manipulate her student. Nei's death hit Phantasy Star II and its fanbase so hard she became a legacy character whose name or image appears in every Phantasy Star game since then. And all of them were honored in a cutscene in the fourth game, specifically to remind Chaz of the worth of their cause.
  • Played straight in Phantasy Star III: if your third generation character is Sean (son of Ayn and Thea), then he loses his entire family as his chapter of the story begins. He mourns them for about ten minutes, then goes about his business.
• Sadly the case in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2, as Arthur Morgan was the only person in the gang who supported John and his family all the way to the end and even gave his life to help them escape in the ending of II, and yet never got a mention in the first game because he wasn't conceptualised back then. Possibly subverted in that the epilogue for II suggests that John actually thinks about Arthur all the time, but it is too painful for him to actually talk about him. His wife Abigail cries every time his name gets mentioned as well.
• Subverted in Rudra no Hihou. Rostam and Huey, Sion's best friends, are killed off on day one. They're immediately forgotten and never mentioned again... or so it seems. Not only do they get a gorgeous optional cutscene all the way at the end of the story in which they give Sion one of his best weapons, they also get used by Surlent as his temporary host bodies for a huge chunk of the plot.
• The Saboteur is one of those rare games that don't follow this trope: Jules' death is the entire reason Sean does what he does, and one of his battle cries when shooting Nazis is "That was for Jules you bastards!". Sean regularly mentions Jules' death and his ensuing desire for revenge.
• Happens to a named unique NPC in the course of Saints Row 2 when the Brotherhood of Stilwater takes revenge on the Saints disfiguring the Brotherhood's leader with tainted tattoo ink by dragging young Saints lieutenant Carlos nearly to death. The Boss tries to rescue him, but has to Shoot the Dog and give Carlos a Mercy Kill to free him of his suffering. Especially poignant because previously the Boss treated Carlos like a younger brother. Due to the non-linear nature of the game this can happen early or late in the narrative, but it's more jarring early on as the rest of the game takes place without them and no one seems to mention their absence. Then you can get Zombie Carlos as a homie. Everybody else still fails to notice.
• Especially bad in Sands of Destruction, since the whole reason Kyrie's village doesn't exist any more is because he destroyed it himself, along with the only family he had ever had. Apart from one passing mention several hours after the fact, he never even reflects on the matter, though it's somewhat implied that he was deep in denial (and when it finally hits him that he's really the one responsible and that he can't be rid of these powers, he decides suicide is the best option).
  • Elephas Rex eventually becomes one for Rhi'a when his views come into opposition with the Front's new goal. Even though it's established that she highly respects him, after his death she never comments on it again. Of course, given her Psychic Powers, she likely knew how he would die long before it ever happened, and given that she's 300 in a world of human-length lifespans, she's likely seen a lot of death.
• Gamma from Sonic Adventure falls under this category. After learning to feel emotions, freeing the flickies trapped in his robotic brothers and sisters, and self destructing to release the last one trapped in him...No one remembers him. Most, if they do, would just remember him as some other badnik.
• At the end of his arc in StarCraft: Brood War, Raynor makes an impressive speech vowing to hunt down and kill Kerrigan after her final betrayal and murdering of Protoss warrior and fellow ass-kicker, Fenix. Come StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Fenix is not mentioned (not even in passing), and Raynor's anger at Kerrigan seems to have subsided into a mixture of terror and confused longing. Of course, 4 years have passed (in-game) and StarCraft II's story was only a third complete at the time, so this could very well change come the Kerrigan/Zerg-centric Heart of the Swarm. Also, Zeratul, the one who wants Kerrigan dead more than Raynor, tells him that Kerrigan is vital for the survival of the sector, thus rendering the whole vengeance thing as something... suicidal, to say the least.
  • Fenix gets a mention in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm during a cutscene where Jim discovers Kerrigan has reinfested herself in order to avenge his alleged death. And he almost kills her for it too.
• A minor example exists in Story of Seasons (2014). Edna, your sweet Granny Classic neighbor, dies during your first winter. The entire town turns up for the funeral and seems deeply saddened by it. No one ever mentions her again afterward.
• Many a videogame hero ends up this way. Tyrian, for example, hung a lantern on it when the hero stopped to reminisce on how the assassination of his best friend was what threw him in the middle of his galactic warzone hell.
  "Dang. Can't even remember his name now."
  • He actually tries to quit fighting after this.
• The Walking Dead is usually good at averting this, although it has fallen into such territory a few times. Specifically with Chuck in Season 1, who is never even mentioned after Lee finds his body in the sewers, and with Nick and Sarah in Episode 4 of Season 2. Both of which are only mentioned very briefly after their respective deaths. To be entirely fair though, Nick was a determinant character at that point and had already had two possible death scenes and one Disney Death and Sarah's death was somewhat overshadowed by Rebecca giving birth literally seconds afterwards.
• In Wing Commander II, Christopher Blair doesn't dwell on the death of Elizabeth "Shadow" Norwood, his wingman from Caernavon station, much after her death at the end of the Gwynedd missions. She wasn't in the game much in game time, but she was one of the few friends he had since he was blamed for the destruction of the Tiger's Claw.
• In Xenosaga, Jr.'s cat, Gaignun, died posthumously but was never mentioned again even in the in-game encyclopedia; even though the cat was the inspiration behind his alias.

Web Animation

• In Sonic for Hire, no matter who gets killed or dies, there is hardly any remorse from everyone in the show that immediately brushes off that particular death. Ironically, Sonic's death ended up triggering world peace the moment he died.
• It's pretty rare in Teen Girl Squad for anyone to acknowledge the many deaths that occur over the series. Pretty much the only time they've ever expressed regret is in the first episode, where What's-Her-Face lackadaisically mentions missing So-and-So, but gets her name wrong despite her having died less than thirty seconds ago.

Web Comics

• In Commander Kitty Zenith is transformed from malfunctioning Big Bad to enthusiastic assistant-slash-fashion designer as easily as rebooting her in "Safe Mode." She's rewarded for trying to repair the damage she caused (and making a spiffy new outfit for one of the characters) with a Logic Bomb that fries her brain completely. No one has yet to acknowledge the overall dickishness of this, or the fact that "Good Zenith" is now little more than an ambulate robot corpse.
• Lars of Girl Genius dies protecting Agatha and is given a Jäger funeral, with Maxim donating his hat. The next time he's mentioned is when Agatha meets the other members of the circus again, in England. This is about a month later for her, but three years for everyone else — and fourteen years later in real publishing time.
  • The print-novel adaptations do a somewhat better job - Agatha grieves over the death when she's allowed a spare moment, and later tells Tarvek to get out of Castle Heterodyne because she doesn't want anyone else dying for her.
• Homestuck has this appear to be the case for Feferi and Nepeta, who both haven't been mentioned or seen in-universe for a while.
• I Love Yoo: Parodied in Shin-Ae's Imagine Spot.
  Imaginary!Yeong-Gi: "Fufufu... She fell right into my trap! Now I will follow that cab and find out where she lives so that I can harrass her about paying for my uniform for the rest of her life! And also avenge my pal... The german guy... I forgot his name..."
  • Until Fefetasprite is created, and then dies around 20 pages after her introduction.
• The Order of the Stick: The Order of the Scribble seems to regard Kraagor as this. The dwarf barbarian was killed saving the world from a god-killing supermonster and his soul presumed lost. In order to protect the seals they placed on the monster, their mission, and Kraagor's bravery, have been sworn to secrecy, with only a monument in his honor, engraved with "Sacrifice Forgotten," left to honor him.
  Liran: Dearest Kraagor... your brave sacrifice will not be forgotten.
  Girard: Actually, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what will happen.
• Sluggy Freelance is usually pretty good about this (Val and Alt-Zoe have been referenced a fair bit after their deaths), but this applies in full force to anyone who died during the Horror parodies "KITTEN" and "KITTEN II." Unless their ghosts come back to haunt their main characters, any friends who fall during those stories seem to be completely forgotten. Well, Dex is remembered a little:
  Riff: Gee, Zoe! Sorry your boyfriend got eaten by kittens!
  [Riff and Torg snicker]
  Torg: It's funny when he says it.
• Whenever a character dies in Sonichu, someone says something to the effect of "I know it's sad, but we have to move on" and everybody goes about their business like nothing even happened. Most likely because the webcomic's author does the same thing.

Web Original

• In Escape the Night season three there was Teala, a guest who was so useless, the group simply pretends she doesn’t exist. No one bothers to ask what happened to her after she dies, simply ignoring the fact that she existed. She’s only mentioned ONCE after her death, as a Take That! by one of the other guests in the finale.
• In Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk, the protagonists rarely refer to their fallen comrades (but if you tell them their friend died, they'll tell you he was not their friend). In the novel, when the elf dies, even the inner monologues show us that they remember about one of their fallen friends, while the narrator remember both. It is actually used to lampshade the fact that in Seasons 1 and 2, the characters zig-zagged Death Is Cheap and Killed Off for Real, but after this, any dying protagonist will get better.
• In the final episodes of Omega Guardians second season, three characters end up dying. Walker, Andy, and Brandon. While the former two are mourned and cause at least one character to have a Heroic BSoD, the latter is quickly forgotten by all except his father.

Western Animation

• In an episode of American Dad! a contrived scenario leads to the Smiths to believe Steve and Roger died in a thunderstorm. They spend the whole duration mourning Steve and not saying a single thing about Roger (though they eventually lose track of even the former when they decide to use his college savings and sell his possessions to go on vacations). Lampshaded afterwards.
  Stan: Steve! We thought you were dead! [the family runs up and hugs Steve]
  Roger: What about me?
  Stan: [disinterested] We thought you were dead too.
• Near the end of Avengers Assemble Season 2, Arsenal performs a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy Ultron once and for all. Iron Man is devastated at the time, as it was made clear throughout the season he cared a great deal for Arsenal. However, when Ultron returns in Season 3, nobody mentions Arsenal, or the fact that his sacrifice turned out to be in vain.
• Beast Wars:
  • There must have been dozens of Stasis Pods that were never recovered, but they're rarely mentioned in Season 2 and afterwards. They were all shown to have just dropped out of the sky in the Season 1 finale (or Season 2 opening). Most of them were severely damaged upon impact, while most of them held only blanks (i.e: no sparks). Silverbolt and Quickstrike were two of the lucky ones, while Transmutate showed us how horribly messed up they could have been even if they had made it out alive.
  • While "friend" is pushing the term, no-one on the Predacons seem upset at Scorponok and Terrorsaur's fiery deaths, much less mentions them afterward. Meanwhile, with the Maximals, Tigertron and Airazor are completely forgotten after they get teleported off-planet by the Vok.
• Played straight in Ben 10: Alien Force when Grandpa Max blows himself to nonexistence in front of Ben. Ben protests the move beforehand but after the fact he basically says "Let's get on with the mission" and leaves it at that. They visit the effect of Max's death later, but only with Gwen; Ben doesn't seem to care at that point. Then again, Max got better, so it's ultimately moot.
  • It's arguably worse in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Grounded," each of which features one of Max's sons. They don't seem particularly concerned that their father supposedly died — despite the former episode's events being triggered in part by just that.
• Heavily mocked on Clone High with Ponce de Leon. What makes it more ridiculous is that no one mentioned Poncey before his death either.
• Defenders of the Earth has Flash Gordon's wife become a Forgotten Fallen Friend after her death in the opening episode. Though Flash and Rick vow to avenge her (as do Mandrake and Lothar, neither of whom met her while she was alive) she is only mentioned in two episodes after this. Admittedly she does live on through the Defenders' super-computer, Dynak-X, whose personality core is a crystal containing the life essence of Flash's wife, but even this is not acknowledged after the early episodes.
• Spoofed in Drawn Together when Captain Hero becomes friends with Popeye: after the latter dies of AIDS, Hero wants to mourn him by "winning" the AIDS awareness marathon (that is, killing all other participants). At the end of the marathon, Hero looks up in the sky, seeing an image of Popeye, and doesn't even recognize him.
  Captain Hero: I did it Popeye. I did it for you!
  [Popeye's face appears in the clouds]
  Captain Hero: Who the hell is that asshole?
• Family Guy:
  • Mixed with Motive Decay: Peter's favorite teacher from Junior High is fired after Peter convinces him to go off his medication. When Lois, running for school board, says she agrees with the firing, Peter vows to run against her in order to get his teacher's job back. Eventually though, Peter's competitiveness dominates the campaign, to the extent that when the teacher is brought up later, Peter doesn't remember him. Interestingly, a post credit sequence implies that the teacher did get his job back, but was then killed by the ED-209 Hall Monitor droid Peter installed.
  • In "Life of Brian", the eponymous dog dies. The Griffins buy another dog, Vinnie, and they quickly find peace. Only Stewie is outraged, and he keeps Brian's memory alive by sharing his feelings with Vinnie.
• Futurama: Lampshaded in "The Beast with a Billion Backs" after Zoidberg gets snatched up into the tentacle-based Hive Mind, and Farnsworth mourns him briefly before clarifying that he doesn't miss him that much.
• During a recap of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride in the finale of The Lion Guard, Kovu glosses over the death of his and Vitani's brother Nuka. While they were enemies, he had met the Guard earlier, and is obviously not present in the episode.
• In an episode of Loonatics Unleashed, Ace and Rev supposedly perish in an accident, leading to Lexi to give a Rousing Speech and even shed a tear. It is directed pretty much entirely towards Ace.
• In the first episode of Pacific Heat, Maddie befriends a stripper named Angie who is murdered by the episode's villain, and she is upset when her teammates can't even be bothered to remember Angie's name. After that episode, Angie is never mentioned again.
• For five seasons, Kenny was South Park's Ever Forgotten Ever Falling Friend.
  • Lampshaded in "Cherokee Hair Tampons", where Stan is weeping over the fact that Kyle will die if he doesn't get a new kidney. Kenny, aware of Stan's complete apathy to his own deaths, storms off offended and meets his usual elaborate death just a few steps prior. Stan completely ignores it and continues sobbing over Kyle.
  • Also, when a character's Killed Off for Real (such as Chef, Cartman's Grandma, Ms. Crabtree, etc.), they are often never referred to again after their death episode; people who hadn't seen the respective death episodes could assume these characters just disappeared.
  • Parodied in "Kenny Dies", where Kenny dies of a muscular illness (in which he was originally intended to be Killed Off for Real). Unlike previous episodes, everyone is genuinely devastated and dumbfounded by his death. This actually carries on for several episodes, though predictably the boys soon get over it, and even callously use their friend's death to manipulate people. A season later, Kenny returns, to the nonchalance of everyone.
  • Eventually it is revealed that there is a mystical nature to Kenny that induces this. His parents were involved with a Cthulhu-worshipping cult years prior, and have a form of curse upon them; as a result, whenever Kenny dies, his mother gives birth to him again and his parents redress him. Meanwhile, aside from them and Kenny himself, everyone else has their memories of Kenny’s death erased on the spot, even if it happens right in front of them. This causes no end of angst for Kenny himself, who furiously reprimands the others for never once remembering his many agonising deaths.
• Teen Titans (2003) has Terra, who died in a Heroic Sacrifice at the end of Season 2 only to never be mentioned again by her former teammates save early in Season 4 when Slade shows up alive and well despite having apparently died from falling into lava as a partial result of said sacrifice. At least not until her sudden return in the show's final episode.
• The Venture Bros.: After the original Blue Morpho's death, Jonas brings him back only to put him to work as a robot butler. When this doesn't work out, he puts him out with the trash. Team Venture seem truly surprised when he reappears in the present, and it seems only Kano kept respecting his memory.
• Narti ultimately falls into this trope in Voltron: Legendary Defender. After Lotor kills her for being an Unwitting Pawn, her teammates are visibly upset by this and apparently defect over it... Only, she's never mentioned again in the following seasons, and the rest of her squad eventually goes back to following Lotor.
• Morph's death hits the other characters hard in the 2-part series premiere of X-Men: The Animated Series, after which he's not mentioned again until the Season 2 premiere (which reveals he was brought Back from the Dead).
• The team's reaction in Young Justice (2010) episode "Failsafe" when all of the Justice League are killed within the first 10 minutes. Of course, they knew it was only a simulation and not real (at least until the simulation goes Off the Rails).

Real Life

• This may also be a bit of Truth in Television. It doesn't seem that unlikely that a crusade started for one reason may continue on its own momentum. See some people's feelings about the post-9/11 wars, or The Onion's story in Our Dumb Century where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was found alive and World War I was called off as a result.
  • The actual Crusades began when the Byzantine Empire asked for Western help against the encroaching Muslim Turks. A little over a century later, the Fourth Crusade attacked and heavily damaged the Empire, and nowadays Turkey still controls Byzantium (Istanbul).
  • Also, there's a pretty good chance that the person whose friend/relative/whoever died could be subconsciously using the crusade as a substitute for their fallen friend, which prevents them from feeling the full impact of the loss, or even thinking of the person at all, even though the bottled up grief will keep them going. Remember that keeping themselves occupied so that it gives them something to do other than mourn is a quite common occurrence among people who have lost loved ones.

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