I Remember It Like It Was Yesterday

Professor Monkey-For-A-Head: I remember it as if it were yesterday... yesterday... yesterday...

Psy-Crow: It was yesterday.

Professor Monkey-For-A-Head: Quiet! I am setting up a flashback! Yesterday... yesterday...

— Earthworm Jim

A Stock Phrase that at one point was the cue for wavy lines and harp music to ensue.

Now, it's just as inevitably a cue for the punchline, "It was yesterday." or in more extreme cases "It was today."

Several variations occur but they usually all go, "I remember it like it was—", "It was—".

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Happens in Episode 23 of Naruto: The Abridged Series.
  Asuma: What happened back there?
  Kakashi: It was horrible. I remember it like it was yesterday...
  Kurenai: It was seven minutes ago.
  Kakashi: Yep, Yesterday....
  • For him, it lasted 3 days.

Comics

• One Garfield cartoon has Jon reminiscing about the time that Garfield got stuck in the curtain, and Jon and Odie got stuck in the curtain as well trying to get him out as if it was yesterday. Not only had it been yesterday, they were still stuck in the curtain (This was the central point of a multi-week comic arc which this was the first Sunday strip of).

Film - Animation

• Used for irony in Anastasia: a young woman claiming to be Anastasia uses the stock phrase before rattling off a list of facts about Anastasia's childhood in an effort to prove her identity to Dowager Empress Marie. The viewer of course already knows that she's lying, and furthermore that the real Anastasia doesn't remember anything about her childhood.

Film - Live Action

• Back to the Future Part II, when Marty and Doc return to 1955, Doc points out that from Marty’s perspective, he really was there yesterday:
  Marty: This is heavy, Doc. I mean, it's like I was just here yesterday.
  Doc: You were here yesterday, Marty. You were! Amazing, isn't it?

Literature

• Death of Discworld has a creepier variation when he tries to drink to forget in Soul Music:
  POOR OLE ME. I REMEMBER EVERYTHING. AS IF IT HAPPENED ONLY TOMORROW. EVERYTHING.
  • It's also a Shout-Out to two Meat Loaf songs: Paradise by the Dashboard Light and Wasted Youth, both of which play the trope straight.
• In the book Our Dumb Century, one story plays with the tendency of war veterans to wax wistful by suggesting that the American soldiers in the D-Day landing were "Crippled by Nostalgia", finding themselves on the beaches experiencing flashbacks and saying "Yes, I remember landing in Normandy like it was just five minutes ago..."
• In Blunted Lance by Max Hennessy, at the end of the First World War retired Field Marshal Goff reflects on how he's become old and decrepit "but it seemed like yesterday that he'd been thundering down the North Valley at Balaclava after that ass, Cardigan." That scene is depicted at the start of the first novel in the trilogy (which follows the Goff family from the Charge of the Light Brigade to the end of WW2). Shortly after thinking this, the Field Marshal gets a telegram that his son had died of injuries received in the final attack of the war and dies of shock.
• A Song of Ice and Fire. Ser Barriston thinks it feels like only yesterday he received the white cloak of the Kingsguard; again this is to highlight how old he's feeling.
• In The Stainless Steel Rat for President, it's mentioned the dictator has been taking anti-aging drugs to extend his life. When an aristocrat the Rat is working with mentions this trope about one of the dictator's broken campaign promises, the Rat thinks that clearly the dictator is not the only one to be taking those drugs.

Live Action TV

• From Arrested Development:
  Lucille: I remember it like it was yesterday.
  Michael: It was this morning.
• Inverted in Dharma & Greg:
  Abby: Do you remember our first date?
  Larry: Like it was yesterday.
  Abby: What happened yesterday?
  Larry: Hey, no fair!
• Father Ted has done this with the "It WAS yesterday" reply.
  • It was then followed by Dougal saying that that was the reason why he said the line.
• In How I Met Your Mother, Barney says "Hey, remember that time Lily kicked Korean Elvis in the nards?" immediately after it happens.
• Kenan & Kel, after foiling a robbery at Rigby's, Kenan, Kel, and Chris are asked by a police officer for their stories of how they brought the notorious robber to justice:
  Chris: I remember it like it was yesterday.
  Kel: (butts in) It just happened today.
  Chris: Who's telling the story?!
  Kel: (annoyed) You are.
• Frequently mocked on Late Night with David Letterman. “I remember it like it was something we taped earlier today...”
• Lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  "It was ten or fifteen seconds ago... I remember it like it happened yesterday."
• Psych: Shawn uses the phrase when talking about the case that just happened to Jules.
• Wings:
  Brian: My my, our little girl dating already. They grow up so fast. Seems like only yesterday I was pelting her with snowballs.
  Helen: It was yesterday.
  • Helen then proceeds to smash a snowball in Brian's face.

Video Games

• Ace Attorney:
  • The Phoenix Wright Musical Project has this in one of Larry's sung testimonies, with an exasperated Phoenix reminding him that the event occurred last Tuesday.
  • Actor Will Powers says this in reference to the murder of his co-star, then immediately corrects himself.
  • Actually played straight (seriously, not for humor) when Apollo tells Phoenix, Athena and Trucy what his late friend Clay was like back when he was alive (he was murdered four days earlier, though).
    Apollo: It seems like only yesterday... Clay was a guy who lived for his dreams. We used to talk about it a lot. He was going to be an astronaut, and me, a lawyer. We'd talk well into the night, and even then, we never grew tired of it.
• Sam & Max Hit the Road has a character doing it all alone:
  It all started the day before today... I remember it like it was yesterday.
  • This gag was reprised in Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse
  It seems like it was just yesterday when Sam Jr hatched...which is weird, seeing as it was just a few hours ago.
• Variant in Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People:
  Strong Bad: Come on, The Cheat. You KNOW the good times we've had. Remember back when we stapled that grilled cheese to Homestar's chin... this morning?
  (Homestar walks past in the background with a grilled cheese sandwich stapled to his face, which wasn't there five minutes ago)
• Undertale
  • Papyrus says this when you inspect a box of bones in his room.
  Papyrus: HEY, THOSE ARE ALL THE ATTACKS I USED ON YOU.
  Papyrus: GREAT MEMORIES, HUH?
  Papyrus: SEEMS LIKE IT WAS ONLY YESTERDAY…
  Papyrus: EVEN THOUGH IT BASICALLY JUST HAPPENED.

Web Comics

• A variation occurs in Adventurers!; Karn mentions he has a feeling of deja vu, and Ardam insists it's not deja vu because the event that prompted it has actually happened before.
• In Wendy by Jackie Lesnick, the following exchange occurs between Wendy and Yumi:
  Wendy: Do you remember that time when you said "let's have lunch! I made chicken salad sandwiches" and I said "cool let's eat!" Do you remember that?
  Yumi: Uh huh, that was thirty minutes ago...
  Wendy: But it seems like only yesterday!
• Concerned does the usual parody version, when Frohman tries to surmise why the antlions are suddenly so aggressive (which doesn't explain it to the guys who asked, because he doesn't actually narrate what he's remembering):
  Boy, it seems like it happened an hour ago... probably because it happened an hour ago.

Web Original

• Homestar Runner
  • Parodied in the Strong Bad Email "the paper".
    Strong Bad: Why, I remember the day you were born like it was about to happen in a wavy flashback.
  • Also seen in the song "The Cheat Is Not Dead", from the SBEmail "caper".
    Strong Bad: The Cheat, man... where did we go wrong? It seems like just yesterday we were setting fire to Strong Sad's underwears.
    Strong Sad: That was yesterday!
• Happens in Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles
  Caboose: It's growing up so fast. Seems like just yesterday he was born.
  Church: Well actually, that's because he was born today. Like, an hour ago.
• Parodied in Les Chevaliers du Zodiaque : La Série Abrégée:

  Shiryuu: Shun-rei.... I remember our first encounter like it was six years ago...

Western Animation

• The Fairly Oddparents has an episode with this as a running gag. Both the Flashback variant and the Analogy Backfire variant.
  • In one particular episode, Cosmo repeatedly uses the phrase to pull up related flashbacks. It was an Analogy Backfire gag - but that wasn't revealed until The Stinger.
• As part of a Cutaway Gag in Family Guy, Peter talked about an event that had happened mere hours before like it was something in the distant past (partially as cover for his own idiocy).
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  Bubbles: I remember as if it happened yesterday.
  Blossom: It happened today!
• The Simpsons: In "Children Of A Lesser Clod", when Homer's hospitalized with a torn ACL after playing basketball, Dr. Hibbert asks how exactly it happened, and Homer says the trope name and Hibbert answers with "It happened today." And Homer gives a completely inaccurate account of it because he's high on morphine.
• Rugrats, "Let Them Eat Cake":
  Chazz: I can't believe Didi's little brother is getting married. It seems like only yesterday, he was running around in short pants, screaming.
  Stu: That was only yesterday, Chazz. Remember the bachelor party?
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy features a garbled, Shaped Like Itself variation uttered by Billy's dad as he begins a flashback...
  Harold: I remember it like it was something I'll never forget!
• Done in at least two Looney Tunes the first being "The Old Grey Hare" in which an elderly Elmer Fudd shoots an elderly Bugs Bunny with a ray gun and Bugs reminisces about the first time they met as babies, and in "Feather Bluster" in which an elderly Foghorn Leghorn and Barnyard Dog tell their grandsons about what they did to each other when they were young.
• Done in Angela Anaconda when Angela tries to get Gordie to confirm her story about inventing a swing technique that Nanette had taken credit for.
• Parodied, of course, in Tiny Toon Adventures, with Bugs Bunny's line "I remember it just as if it was... a flashback!"
• A Capitol Critters episode featured cockroaches with a score to settle with a rat. When one of them claimed to remember it like it was yesterday, it was pointed out it was yesterday.
• Rather uniquely parodied in ¡Mucha Lucha!, where El Fundador remarks about a big wrestling match: "It was many years ago, though I remember it like it was many, many years ago.
• Near the end of the I Am Weasel episode "My Friend, the Smart Banana", Weasel lies by his dying banana friend as he remembers their meeting like it was yesterday. Baboon reminds them it was yesterday.
• On The Boondocks when Robert is visiting the funeral of a friend he had fallen out with, one of the other attendees tells Robert how much he liked insulting him, and says that he remembers it like it was last week. Then he says that it actually was last week. Specifically, on a Tuesday.
• As quoted on the top of the page, the Earthworm Jim episode "Bring Me the Head of Earthworm Jim" sets up its Whole Episode Flashback with this line.
• "Doug Can't Dance," the pilot episode for Doug, begins with our hero penning in his journal: "You know, the school dance seemed like it happened a long time ago, but I remember it like it was only yesterday. It all began, well, this afternoon."
• Hamster & Gretel: In the episode "An Arthouse Divided", Arthouse cues up his flashback to film school with "I remember it like it was three months ago." The flashback begins with a caption reading "Two months ago (His memory is really bad)".

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