Let Us Never Speak of This Again

Sometimes, you don't want to know all the bare details of a story.

Jesse: You know how you have those experiences you remember and reminisce about for the rest of your life?
Axel: Yeah?
Jesse: This isn't one of those. Let's never discuss this ever again.

— Minecraft: Story Mode

A character must perform an act that is either against their nature or which they have vehemently and constantly protested against doing. Said action can also be just plain humiliating or all of the above—to all parties, perhaps. When this act is aided or witnessed, a character insists that either they must all never speak of this again, ever; or that a specific person who is guaranteed to ride them never hears of it.

Or to put it another way, "What happened here stays here."

This trope can be used to introduce a Noodle Incident, with one character reminding the other they promised never to speak of that again. Alternatively, they may have just completed the action, make some passing reference to how unusual or interesting it was, and then pull this line.

Subversions can occur when the character(s) kept in the dark reveal themselves to have known all along or if the character who would have used the incident as ammunition, against all expectations, chooses not to do so. Sometimes that somebody will bring it up again, earning the reaction "I thought we agreed to never speak of it again" or something close to that.

It can be parodied by the person(s) who are told to never mention it again being genuinely unaware of what happened for whatever reason, leading them to ask something like "Speak about what again?", which is then taken by the person wanting the secret kept as a joke implying compliance with their wish.

Prequels occasionally resort to this trope as a way to justify their events not being mentioned in works that were written earlier, but set as a later date in-Verse.

Will often be Played for Laughs (as the thing that will never be mentioned was usually something funny/embarrassing) or Played for Drama (especially if the event was something that happened between two characters who may or may not end up together.

Compare You Didn't See That, Never Say That Again, That Didn't Happen, May It Never Happen Again, and Big-Lipped Alligator Moment.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Fairy Tail: Soon after the guild is reformed in X792, various members talk about what they had been doing in the year-long interval. After Juvia learns that Laxus and his Raijin Tribe had spent the year at the Blue Pegasus guild (a guild that has a reputation for performing "escort duties")...
  Juvia: Did Laxus actually do (shivers)..."hospitality work" there?
  Evergreen: Once in a while...and those occasions were quite amusing.
  Laxus: Mind your own business.^note The dub used the variant, "What happens in the guildhall stays in the guildhall."
• Free!: In episode 10, the swim club is having lunch at Goro's place when his stack of swimsuit magazines gets knocked over. As he picks them up, he looks them over and realizes that Miho Amakata is his favorite model, Marin-chan. He starts going all, "Oh my god, I was your biggest fan!" Miho gets very angry (she is not proud of her past as a model) and orders him to drop the matter and never mention it again.
• Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: Kenichi and Miu have been alone at the dojo for two weeks; they almost kiss when the Elder bursts through the main gate. Thus began the legend of The Night That Never Happened.
• In the Naruto anime filler episode where Shino laughs and displays his sense of humor, he informs the title character in no uncertain terms to not mention it to anyone.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Asuna says this to everybody after an unfortunate incident involving The World Tree that turns Negi into "the kissing Terminator" who forces her into a french kiss... for so long that she nearly suffocates. Negi is still totally unaware that this happened.
  • It happens again later under very similar circumstances, only this time the kisser was a Negi duplicate gone out of control, and the victim (and person saying it) was Akira.
• Nyaruko: Crawling with Love!: The Pretty Freeloaders are setting up their own rooms and Mahiro goes to see how they're coming along. He walks into Cuuko's room and sees it's a Stalker Shrine to Nyarko...and Cuuko herself is in the middle of humping a body pillow with Nyarko's picture on it. Mahiro silently backs out, closes the door, and says "I'll just pretend I didn't see that."
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Seto Kaiba in the dub sums up the Noah filler arc as a "complete waste of [his] time and effort, so let's move on and pretend that nonsense never happened."
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: In the dub of episode 20, Elemental Heroes Sparkman and Avian realize they were brainwashed into loving the Maiden in Love.
  Avian: What was I thinking? I didn't want to get married!
  Sparkman: Oh boy. Sparkwoman's never going to forgive me.
  Both: Guy pact — this didn't happen, okay?
  Burstinatrix: How about you two guys get over here right now or I'll tell the entire deck!

Comic Books

• Chaos War: In issue #3, while under the influence of Venus's magic song, Amadeus admits to Thor that he loves him. Thor says he loves him too, and then says not to speak of it ever again.
• Empowered: The Chloroformaster is a D-List villain who knocks out women with chloroform soaked rags, then takes pictures of them and masturbates to them before leaving them unharmed. One time, he knocked out the male superhero Major Havoc. Havoc woke up with a note asking that this be kept quiet.
  Dear Major Havoc:
  Thought I'd try chloroforming a guy for once, but it just felt really gay. Sorry.
  Yours truly,
  The Notorious C.F.M.
  P.S. Please don't tell anyone about this.
• Fables: Prince Charming and Beauty are working in an office during a heatwave. Nearly delirious, they briefly make out. They awkwardly agree never to bring it up again, especially not in the presence of her husband, Beast.
• Ms. Marvel (2014): Wolverine would very much like to not talk about Kamala carrying him on her back when he was wounded, but she unfortunately already uploaded the story on the internet.
• Invader Zim (Oni):
  • Issue 40 is all about Recap Kid getting sucked into the world of the comic and having to wander The Multiverse to get back. Come the Previously on… section of Issue 41, and they clearly want the reader to pretend that all that never happened.
  • In Issue 49, the Tallest are shocked when Zim (actually an Alternate Universe version of him) shows up, acting strangely competent, and briefly takes over the Armada. Afterwards, they order everyone to forget it ever happened and to wipe all records of the event.
• Iron Man: Infamous Iron Man opens with SHIELD agent and Action Girl Maria Hill being kidnapped and interrogated by El Diablo (a D-List villain), only to be promptly rescued by, of all people, a reformed Doctor Doom. Upon saving her, Doom immediately promises to never tell anyone about this incident to preserve her reputation.
• Paperinik New Adventures: One of the short stories had the time-traveling criminal the Raider take his son Trip and go back in time to keep George Washington from chopping down the cherry tree and avoid him being forgiven for telling the truth being used against him while he's trying to educate Trip, only to accidentally destroy the tree himself and Washington claiming he chopped it down because his father would have never believed the truth. Once they're home, the Raider lifts the punishment for Trip dismantling his robot maid as long as nobody ever hears of it.
• Scott Pilgrim:
  • A panel featuring these exact words appears in volume 4, after Scott discovers a drunken Knives and Kim making out.
  • Volume 6 had Scott and Knives making out, after coming to terms with the end of their relationship. It was horrible. For everyone. And that includes you!
• Spider-Man:
  • Ends of the Earth features Doctor Octopus briefly using versions of his Octo-bots to take control of the Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye and Red Hulk). After Spider-Man, Black Widow, Silver Sable and Mysterio have managed to knock out Cap, Spider-Woman and Hawkeye, Mysterio recalls that he still has an EMP device he used in a previous fight and uses it to disable the control devices on the remaining three Avengers, prompting Iron Man to observe that it will never be noted in the Avengers files that they had to be saved by Mysterio of all people.
  • In The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, Mary Jane drops in on a couple of kids in the middle of bullying while in costume. She lets them off with a warning, but the bullies get one last shot by calling her "Spider-Mom". In true Parker Luck fashion, MJ slinks off in embarrassment, her mental thoughts proclaiming this trope.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage): Played for Drama during one time-travel adventure where the Turtles spent some time stuck in medieval Japan, and Raphael passed the time by teaching ninjitsu and other ninja abilities to a pair of Ronin warriors. After the adventure is finished and the Turtles headed back to their own time, the Ronin decide to put their new skills to use...
  Ronin: We must never again mention the strange shelled creatures. And as every journey begins with a single step, so we shall call ourselves The Foot!
• Thunderbolts: Flash's reaction to teaming up with Deadpool against Ross's mustache in Thunderbolts (2012) #22.
  Agent Venom: I'm going to try to forget this ever happened.
• Transformers: Animated: In Transformers Animated: The Arrival #2, after Professor Princess blackmails Starscream into not attacking her (by threatening to broadcast an image of him in a wig and makeup◊ around the galaxy), a rather perturbed Starscream says this and flies off.
• Wonder Woman: Black and Gold: Superman's request at the end of "The Acquaintance" when Diana turns him back into human after Circe turned him into a guinea pig.

Fan Works

• Aurora Falls: Selkirk attempted to tamper with JUNO's AI to make her friendlier, resulting in the Seamoth's infamous "I love it when you come inside me". Selkirk is very ashamed of it.
• In this The Most Popular Girls in School Hurt/Comfort Fic, after Brittnay and Mackenzie open up to each other during the former's illness-induced emotional breakdown, then agree it never happened.
  After a minute of staying in the same position, they loosened their grips and laid down on the bed side-by-side.
  "This never happened, deal?" Brittnay said after a few moments of silence.
  "Deal." Mackenzie said, giggling to herself.
• Advice and Trust: In chapter 8 Misato brings up several old incidents where a severely intoxicated Ritsuko kissed her and flirted with her when they were college students. Ritsuko cuts her off, reminding her they were not supposed to speak of it again.
  Misato: Take her out for drinks next time instead of me and Kaji? [...] It's not like you've never kissed a girl before. Or done even m-
  Ritsuko: And you promised that we'd never speak of it again, and that it was only because we were both hammered out of our minds and hadn't had a guy in months.
• The LDD-fanfic, Bridge to Terabithia 2: The Last Time, have a scene where Leslie, now a teenager returning to Lark Creek after being presumed dead for 5 years and ending up in Jess' bedroom with Jess' sister, 12 year old Maybelle, the latter who decides to snoop around in Jess' room while he's still in the shower. When they end up uncovering Jess' personal collection of dirty adult magazines he had hidden under his bed (he's a teenage boy, what'd you expect), the two girls' reactions are somewhere between the lines of this trope.
• In the Marvel Cinematic Universe fic Multiverse of Madness: The Clea Cut, when America Chavez sends Peter Parker, Wanda Maximoff and Doctor Strange through various alternate realities, they each end up witnessing embarrassing worlds for all three; a world where Wanda and Stephen are married and doing a stage magic show, a world where Wanda is basically a cartoonish villain, and a world where Spider-Man is a Broadway show known for the dancers having accidents. All three agree to the others' request that everyone act as though they never saw that.
• Higher Learning: After their accidental kiss, Asuka and Kaoru apologize to each other and agree that it never happened and they will not speak about it ever again.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Movie gives us this exchange, acknowledging the movie as a cheap cash-in and agreeing to pretend it never happened:
  Yugi: Well, it's the end of the movie. All in all, it was kinda disappointing.
  Téa: I can't help but feel it was all just a cheap cash-in made to promote a bunch of cards.
  Grampa Moto: It's almost like this whole story was thrown together at the last minute.
  Pegasus: I agree. So, from now on, let's pretend it never happened.
• Dragon Ball Abridged:
  • In Episode 16, Freeza has one of these after an awkward conversation with Zarbon after the latter mentions his girlfriend while Freeza had thought he was gay.
    Freeza: Oh... and all this time I could've sworn you were— ...never mind.
    Zarbon: What? You thought I was single?
    Freeza: Well, no, I just... I thought you were into... you know, it really doesn't matter.
    Zarbon: Well it matters to me, because, frankly it sounds like you thought I was—
    Random Minion: Lord Freeza! Vegeta's broken out of the healing—TAAAAANK! [dies by ki blast]
    Freeza: Oh no, that minion died. Could you go fix that? We'll continue this conversation never.
  • In Episode 37, Piccolo is mentally looking for help while in the grasp of Android 20/Dr. Gero. He finds Tien singing "Cat Loves Food" advertising jingle in his head.
    Tien: You heard... nothing.
• Several times in Farce of the Three Kingdoms. Zhang Fei and Cao Ren agree never to talk about the time they caused a really bad Cliffhanger Copout.
• Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] Abridged has a preemptive example in Episode 6. Archer offers to help Shirou recover from a Heroic RRoD, but he demands that if does so, the others must "immediately erase this from your memory" because Rin has used a Command Seal to make him request permission to get close to Shirou in a very embarrassing manner: "Mista Shiwou, big tuff muscle myan, would it be okay if wittle ole' me mosey'd on over dere for a byit?"
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanworks:
  • My Little Pony: The Mentally Advanced Series: After the Mane Six realize Prince Blueblood hired Pinkie to set fire to the castle to commit Insurance Fraud and blamed it on Applejack's completely separate grease fire, and there's no point in trying to get him arrested for it because the only pony with the authority to do so, Celestia, might have been in on it Twilight declares they will never speak of it again.
  • Post Nuptials: When Fluttershy and Iron Will are walking through the Canterlot hedge maze during the wedding reception, they stumble across Octavia and Vinyl Scratch making out and quickly walk away.
    Iron Will: Did you see...
    Fluttershy: No.
    Iron Will: Me neither.
  • In Magnetism, after Angel launches Rainbow Dash (and, by accidental extension, Fluttershy) into the Everfree Forest, and the two pegasi work their way out, the two hug, and:
    Their glares communicated much to the other and while the majority of their exchange consisted of varied insults and death threats, the one message they both shared for the other was, "Let us never speak of this again."
  • Hard Reset: Twilight and Spike have this as a standing arrangement regarding her time as an Emo Teen.
  • Happens in The Legend of the Enchanted Spatula in regards to a past Noodle Incident.
    Luna: You can't blame me for what happened. I don't even know where the cultists found that much jam living inside a volcano, much less how they kept it from going bad.
    Celestia: You could have warned me about the ferrets, at the very least. And then to top it all off this "epic artifact of immense power" turns out to be—
    Luna: The book didn't mention that! I don't know what the Order was thinking! I don't even know how you'd do that to a spatula! Those poor, poor quiches. Their sacrifice shall never be forgotten.
    Celestia: Oh, yes it will. Because we are never going to speak of this again. Ever. Especially not to Twilight. Do you understand?
  • Ultra Fast Pony:
    • In "Purple Party Pooper", Twilight and Rarity accidentally mention humans. Humans are apparently the Elephant in the Living Room, with some dire but unstated consequences for acknowledging them. Twilight and Rarity both panic briefly, then agree to just pretend that the entire conversation never happened.
    • In "The Cheesen One", Scootaloo has to fill the vacated village idiot position while Rainbow Dash is on vacation. Afterwards she does not want it mentioned. Ever:
      Rainbow Dash: Thanks for covering for me while I was gone, Scootaloo.
      Scootaloo: Don't ever mention it. Ever.
  • Shadows of Giants: Rainbow Dash bursts into tears when she is turned into a human since she doesn't have wings. When she calms down, she tells her friends not to tell anyone that she cried.
  • The Maretian: On Sol 234, Starlight doing a test with the magic batteries to create a temporary magic field results in a spontaneous song for the Equestrian castaways, and Mark Watney gets caught into it. After the song ends, the human is rather amazed, but Starlight and Fireball inform him that they don't talk about it — ever. And that means, stop talking about it.
  • RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: The events of the story "Foalish Misadventures", according to the non-cannon story "Nighmares Yet to Come", were under a sort of blanket ban in Ponyville due to embarrassment (due to every adult in town getting drunk due to cursed booze and wrecking the town) until they realised that having to explain the situation to the repairponies required talking about it a little. Henceforth, they refer to it generally as "the Incident".
• Harry Potter fanworks:
  • A Door Ajar, Harry and Sirius Black agreed not to speak of Sirius being given a flea dip:
    Harry: Don't make me give you another flea dip, mongrel.
    Sirius: We agreed to never speak of that again.
  • In Lightning and Thunder Remus mentions the time they were playing indoor hide-and-seek and hid in McGonagall's classroom, which he and Sirius swore never to bring up again.
    Sirius: We swore we wouldn't bring that up again!
  • In The Search for Life and Death Remus teases Sirius about an accidental encounter with love potion, an incident that earned itself a nickname.
    Sirius: The Great Potion Blunder of fourth year was never to be brought up again!
  • In Family Bonds Harry teases Snape about getting lost in a forest on his own property.
    Snape: I thought we had agreed not to mention that ever again!
  • In The Cursed Ron, while enthusing about Harry's first-year flying skills, mentions how close he and Neville were to being turned into a pancake.
    Neville: I thought we had agreed never to talk about it ever.
  • In Tempest of the Fae one of the wands Luna tries turns a table into a talking puppet which runs away before anyone can change it back.
    Ollivander: I believe we should all agree not to speak of that again.
  • In Cold Blood Fred and George discuss their earlier, more dangerous inventions, some of which shudder to this day.
    George: Oh yes. I still shudder thinking back at the Spineless Suckers.
    Fred: We agreed to never talk about that, again! I almost tried one of those, myself!
  • In The Harry Potter Home for Wounded War Heroes Snape and Lucius Malfoy are forced to share a bed.
    Snape: We are never speaking of this. Ever.
  • Make a Plan: It is agreed to never speak of an invention gone awry and then lost, for fear of being sent to Azkaban, Dementors or no Dementors.
    Harry: Oh...well. Uh, we made a battery. Except, it seems it's actually a death ray. We don't have a trampoline anymore. Oh...and the death ray is still bouncing around in there. It's okay though. It's just the one. I managed to shoot the tube, just as Hermione got the containment shield up. That reminds me. We need to write this down.
    Barty: Haha, yeah. You're not writing down that you accidentally made a death ray. In fact, let's never speak of this again. I don't care if the dementors are gone, I'm not going back to Azkaban.
  • The Price is Right: Justin would rather not mention how an incident with a "dog straight out of hell" resulted in a case of Bring My Brown Pants.
    Dean: Harry... I'm all for doing cool stuff, but that dog was straight out of Hell, mate. I almost wet myself, I was so scared.
    Morag: Justin did wet himself.
    Justin: I thought we agreed we'd never speak of it!
  • In Like a Red-Headed Stepchild this is Harry's reaction after he and Ron get The Talk from Mr. Weasley.
  • In This Means War, Remus reminds Sirius of how he once humped McGonagall's leg as a dog. Sirius replies that they took an oath never to speak about it, only for Remus to fire back that Sirius was the only one that took that oath - and proceeds to attempt to blackmail him.
• Taniguchi and Kunikida decide to do this in Chapter 31 of You Got HaruhiRolled! after they learn that Itsuki has Single-Target Sexuality for Kyon.
• Taken to a very dark and emotional extreme in Uplifted: Last Days when Joachim Hoch, with the assistance of Heinz Heydrich, Hans-Gerd von Rundstedt, Claus von Stauffenberg and Admiral Zorah saves ten children from Buchenwald Concentration Camp. He does not want this act to be exploited or used to prove he's changing in fears that people will assume that it was a token gesture.
• In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Hobbes and the MTM decided to do this when a void they spent the whole episode trying to stop closes itself up at the last second.
• In the Horseshoes and Hand Grenades sidestory Month of Sundays, this exchange occurs, following a ninja assisting a samurai when that is not typical.
  Taira: A ninja (Ibuki) helping a samurai. Don't tell this to my parents.
• Ruby says this to her sister Yang in React Watch Believe Yikes after the younger girl accidentally lands on her sister's assets.
• Within the Pokéumans Fan Verse, not talking about the spinoff titled Chosen which broke almost every single rule the group had has become a sort of group meme.
• In the Supernatural/Bleach crossover Death's Secret Army, Dean Winchester flirts with Nanao Ise and despite her annoyance, eventually persuades her to lie next to him in his bed while they talk. As she lies down, she glares and says, "Tell no one."
• Ripples: Will (who's been rejuvenated and trapped in the past Meridian) first meets a younger Prince Phobos while skinny dipping in one of the Castle's garden ponds. When she becomes his companion, she casually mentions that incident, making him forbid her to mention it again.
• This Bites!:
  • In Chapter 19, while waiting for Tashigi's restraints to melt, Cross tells her the story of why Zoro wants to become the greatest. Both agree that the conversation never leaves the house they were in.
  • In Chapter 34, when Cross learns that the secret of Luffy's speed-eating is a Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know in the form of B.R.O.B. informing him that it had to step in and erase that piece of time from existence to prevent the watchers from the fatal results, Cross quotes this trope exactly, and the crew agrees.
  • The whole incident with "Magical Girl Inferno Aniki" in Chapter 33 is so disturbing for the crew that they ask Chopper to cook up a potion to erase their memories. Except for Luffy, who somehow forces the memory out of his mind.
  • The entire crew represses their memories of Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island, as the only way to cope with how traumatic it all was, convincing themselves it was just a collective nightmare.
• In a video reimagining Game of Thrones as a romantic comedy, Tyrion's short-lived marriage to a prostitute is alluded to using this trope.
• In the Kim Possible fanfic Vacation from the Norm, Kim and Bonnie get into a discussion of their sex lives with Ron and Senor Senor Jr. respectively. After discussing Ron and SSJ's length, girth and duration, the two stop talking suddenly and Bonnie asks, "Why are we comparing our boys' junk?" Kim and Bonnie hastily invoke this trope, almost verbatim.
• In the Cropped Scan Theater rip of Yami no Matsuei, the first filler chapter which had no relevance to the rest of the plot was ended by this exchange, starting a Running Gag of thereafter, every filler or otherwise irrelevant chapter is ended by the narrator saying "...And they never did.":
  Tsuzuki: And all's well that ends with shoujo bubbles and the acceptance of mortality. Now let us never speak of this again.
  Matsushita-sensei: And they never did.
• In Beyond the Veil Volume One: Arrival Deadpool uses a magic remote to suck Harry and some of the X-Men into the television.
  Kurt: Let's never speak of this mission ever again.
• In Kicked in the Side Poison Ivy pulls her Vamp routine on Xander only to learn after he's already groping her that he's her nephew. She promptly injects him with the antidote to her pheromones and they agree to pretend it never happened.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim:
  • Zim and Dib apparently have this understanding regarding the canon episode "Bolongius Maximus" (the one where they're turned into boloney).
  • Dib and Viera quickly come to this understanding in Season 1 Episode 21, with him never bringing up her dream illusion presenting her as an anime magical girl in exchange for her not questioning how he's so experienced with the Dream Walker spell.
  • At the end of Season 2 Episode 7, Dib and Viera make it clear to Steve that they do not want to discuss the fact that their counterparts from the Mirror Universe they just visited were a couple.
• Neon Metathesis Evangelion: During the Israfel training week, one night, Rei notices Asuka in a pretty shaken state, after the redhead just had a nightmare. Without comment, Rei cleans up for her, tells her to sit and prepares a tea for her. Then she promises she won't ever speak of this, not even to Asuka herself. When she in fact keeps her word, Asuka begins to reconsider her.
• In the Steven Universe fanfic Earth Customs, after Blue and Yellow Diamond have their First Kiss, while Blue is eager to learn more about what they just did, Yellow wants them to never speak of this incident again. Blue goes on ahead to tell Steven anyway.
• In My Huntsman Academia sidestory "Mystery Meat", Weiss', Pyrrha's, and Nora's attempts to make chicken curry end up producing a green, furry mess that may or may not be moving. Team MNVW unanimously agrees to never speak of it again, even though it would haunt their every nightmare for the rest of their lives.
  Izuku: We shall never speak of this again.
  Pyrrha, Weiss, and Nora: Agreed. [Pyrrha uses her Semblance to dump it in the trash can]
• In Amazing Fantasy, Izuku and Peter encounter what they think is an unidentified life form while clearing a fridge of an angry raccoon and rotting food. They agree to never go looking for it or speak of it again.
• A Possible Encounter for a Phantom:
  • Danny and Kim both agree to never remind each other of being stuck in the box, with the heavy implications Kim was feeling something from Danny that wasn't his pen.
  • Ron and Rufus agree to never speak of when Kim made a Stalker Shrine for Danny under Ember's spell ever again.
• Fates Collide:
  • After Jeanne tells a story of the time Jaune tried to pierce his ear and it got infected, Jaune reminds her they had agreed to never talk about that.
  • Jaune falls into some black goop, and tells Pyrrha and Jeanne not to tell anybody.
  • After Mercury gets his ass kicked by Bazett, he asks Cinder and Archer not to tell Emerald.
  • Musashi tells about a time Cleopatra flirted with a man online and decided to meet him face to face, but he turned out to be really fat. Cleo angrily said they had agreed to never talk about that.
• Zim the Warlord: Irken Reversion: After Zim accidentally touches Gaz's cheek and comments on the sweet taste (as he can taste through his palms), there's a moment of awkward silence, and then she tells him that they'll never speak of it.
• The Last Prayer: One of the conditions to Ino forgiving Choji for accidentally drugging her is that he can never mention it happened.
• The Victors Project: Gloss and Cashmere try hard to forget an ugly argument they once about Victor "duties," which ended with Cashmere calling her brother a whore and throwing a vase at his head after he said it was no big deal.
  • Most of the various victors (particularly the Rebel ones) do their best not to bring up what they did in the Games in front of each other thanks to both the associated trauma and because of the circumstances of survival in the Games means that normal standards need not apply. A good way to piss a Victor off is to defy this rule and degrade them for something that happened in their Games; Blight did this frequently, which led to many of his fellow Victors (mostly Careers, as Blight hates them) hating his guts and wanting to kill him.
• In One Girl with Ten Brothers (a Loud House Rule 63 fanfic), the Loud siblings have all agreed never to discuss a Noodle Incident concerning how the boys reacted to Linka getting her first period.
• In Sora and the Princess of Power, Mermista throws up in Sora's favorite shoe after getting sick. When she tries to talk to Sora about it later, Sora insists no one has to mention anything about it.
  Sora: Don't. Say. Anything. No one has to mention anything about it.
• Jon Snow in A Song of Fire, Ice, and Hearts made a promise to himself to never speak of the time he failed to lose his virginity: when Jon was about to bed the girl, he accidentally tripped on her and landed face first into her stomach.
  It was a mortifying experience for him and he didn't pursue the girl ever since. And he promised to never speak of that incident ever again.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Pikachu reveals to Ash how, back in the old timeline during the events of the second movie, Misty had to perform CPR on him after he almost drowned, and made Tracey (the only human who witnessed it) swear he'd never tell anyone or else, especially Ash himself.
• The J-WITCH Series: Ratso paraphrases this trope to the other Enforcers regarding him touching the rear of Uriah, a minor, to take Ikazuki's mask off (which he's very uncomfortable with). And at the end of the chapter, the whole J-WITCH team agree to never discuss how Uriah ended up soiling himself after getting knocked out by Uncle.
• In Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Makoto invents a technique to destroy armor called Armor Break, but when he uses it for the first time, it ends up destroying the opponent's clothes as well, i.e. Dress Break. When Koneko asks if his strategy for beating his next opponent will also involve stripping clothes, he responds, "We are not speaking of that again."
• In It All Started with an OSHA Violation, Monster says this to Lila , swearing her to secrecy on pain of death after she witnesses him killing Pump's dad:
• In the Fire Emblem: Three Houses fic An Eagle Among Lions, when Edelgard and Hilda from an Alternate Timeline briefly return to their original bodies after Alternate Hilda dies fighting Thales and Nemesis in Shambhala, they immediately start making out upon seeing each other again. The original Edelgard and Hilda still don't get along after being on opposing sides in the war, and are confused and disgusted by their alternate selves being Sickeningly Sweethearts. When the alternates disappear and the originals realize that they're still kissing, they pull away from each other and vow never to do anything like that again.
• In the Facing the Future Series, Danny and Sam are temporarily turned into toddlers. After returning to normal, they make Tucker promise not to show anyone the picture he took of them. He ends up showing Valerie, who is unable to contain her laughter when she sees Danny and Sam.
  Danny: (Flatly to an unamused Sam) He showed her the picture.
• Goin' KABOOM!: When Pinky brings up the time he and the Brain used to live with Elmyra, the Brain reminds Pinky that they agreed to "never speak of that again".
• Danny Phantom: Stranded: In "Envied", when Misty's mom asks if she's "trying out for cheerleading again" after hearing her jump, Misty reminds her they "agreed to never speak of that again".
• In chapter 18 of Crimson and Noire, Tikki gets sick and instructs Adrien to take her to the massage shop where the Guardians Fu and Marianne are staying and to tell them that she is a cat needing spiritual healing. Unaware that the old couple knows who he and Tikki are and doubting that they would believe Tikki was a cat, he tells them that she is his pet naked mole rat, much to her annoyance when she gets better. Later in chapter 29 when Crimson Beetle and Lady Noir meet the guardians, Fu brings up the incident by referring to Crimson's Miraculous as "the Miraculous of the Naked Mole-Rat", Tikki says they will not speak of it again, and hisses to Crimson not to tell Noire when she asks for some context.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles: Kei recalls when Miho allowed Yuko to feel her up. Miho then panics and tells Kei that the latter promised her to never mention it again and that it didn't happen. However, Kei is confused and says "I... did?!"
• Cheating Death: Those That Lived: The Fifty-Seventh Hunger Games are such a disaster (with a schizophrenic Victor being the least of its issues) that Snow refuses to acknowledge they ever happened for the rest of his life, to the point that he doesn't bother stationing anyone to watch over the arena, like he does with the others. This backfires when Trevy and his gang use it to hide out themselves and Wattzon during the Second Rebellion.

Films — Animation

• In Monsters, Inc., after Sulley and Mike help CDA Agent #1 (Roz) uncover Waternoose's conspiracy and return Boo home, she tells Sulley and Mike "None of this ever happened, gentlemen. And I don't want to see any paperwork on this."
• Crane says this to Po in Kung Fu Panda after Crane helps him out of an uncomfortable position.
  Crane: Don't mention it. Ever.
• A variation in Ice Age: The Meltdown: After Diego and Sid are easily beaten up by two possums:
  Diego: If anybody ever asks, there were fifty of them. And they were... rattlesnakes."
• Hey Arnold! The Movie: This may be what Arnold was going for in The Movie after Helga confessed her love and kissed him.
• In Penguins of Madagascar, Skipper invokes this after the team dress up in lederhosen to distract the octopi.
  Skipper: We take this shame to our graves.
  Kowalski: Agreed.
• Teen Titans Go! To the Movies: As Starfire asks the Justice League if they had their own films, Green Lantern (John Stewart) states that there was a Green Lantern movie. Then he says that they don't really speak of it.
• The prologue to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has Peter Parker's Old Shame: the emo dance from Spider-Man 3.
  Peter: We don't really talk about this.
• How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World: The Light Fury gleefully knocks Hiccup off of Toothless, who then swoops down to save him. When next we see Hiccup:
  Hiccup: [as his companions snicker in the background] Not a word.
• Spies in Disguise: During their escape inside a submarine, Walter hugs Lance (in pigeon form) so tighly, that he suddenly lays an egg and says this to Walter after uncomfortably finding out.
  Lance Sterling: What happens in the submarine, stays in the submarine.
• Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe: When the characters exceed the speed of light, reality breaks down to its primal essence- the storyboards, and then Dan and Swampy pitching the scene. When the scene returns to normal, they are deeply weirded out.
  Ferb: We should never speak of this again.
  Phineas, Isabella, Buford and Baljeet: Agreed.
• A Bug's Life: After Flik is revealed as a liar, the queen insists that the colony hides all this and pretends it never happened, and the bugs were never here. It doesn't last.

Films — Live-Action

• The Starsky & Hutch film has this in spades. After Starsky (Ben Stiller) and Hutch (Owen Wilson) have to do some fairly embarrassing things to get information out of a con, Hutch starts to talk about it in the car ride back, and Starsky shuts him. "No! No! Let's not talk about it. In fact, let's never speak of this again." Of course, when they get back to the station, it's been recorded and is playing in the Captain's office with all of the other officers watching.
• In the film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Gimli tells Aragorn use him in a Fastball Special (a reference to a scene in the first movie in which he objected to being thrown by Legolas). He asks Aragorn not to tell Legolas. Aragorn promises not to say a word.
• In The Hobbit, Dwalin threatens to rip a child's arms off if he ever tells anyone how they snuck into Bard's house via the chamber pot.
• Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, the incident with Freakshow and his hot wife.
• An oblique variant in Spaceballs: after watching the painful footage of being catapulted into the bulkhead of Spaceball One, Dark Helmet says "No, no, no, go past this, past this part. In fact, never play this again."
• The Hunt for Red October. After Admiral Greer fakes the torpedoing and destruction of the Red October, he tells the torpedo control officer of the frigate he's on:
  Admiral Greer: Now, Commander... that torpedo did NOT self-destruct. You heard it hit the hull, and I... was never here.
• Just One of the Guys: When Denis agrees to pose as Terry's prom date, she conditions this on Terry never telling anyone.
• In the end of Zathura, Lisa says this to her younger brothers, mainly because the Astronaut she thought was hot turned out to be a future version of Walter. They bring it up anyway.
• Burt Gummer says this after surviving being swallowed by a Graboid in Tremors 3: Back to Perfection.
  Burt: I would prefer... we keep this... to ourselves.
• Wild Wild West: When Jim West gets stuck to Artemis Gordon's belt buckle, he tells Gordon to make sure and leave that part out when retelling the story. Artemis responds with a very emphatic "Oh don't worry."
• Pulp Fiction:
  • A less funny example: after Butch saves him from Zed's... attentions, this is the first of Marsellus Wallace's demands before letting him go:
    Marsellus Wallace: Don't tell nobody about this. This shit is between me, you, and Mr. Soon-to-Be-Living-the-Rest-of-His-Short-Ass-Life-in-Agonizing-Pain Rapist here. It ain't nobody else's business.
  • Earlier, Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace both agree not to tell anyone, especially Mia's husband Marsellus, that she almost died of a heroin overdose and Vincent had to inject adrenaline directly into her heart to keep her alive.
• In Without a Paddle, the boys are stranded in the woods in their underwear. They take shelter from the rain in a cave and are forced to share body heat to survive. They all agree, "This never leaves the cave."
• In Pixels, Violet shoots a dancing pixel smurf, because it creeps her out. To her teammates' shocked stares she says:
  Violet: Please don't tell anyone I shot a Smurf.
• The Martian, at the very end, when Mark Watney is addressing a class of new entrants to NASA's Astronaut Candidate Program:
  Watney: Yes, I really did survive on Mars by farming in my own shit, and it was even worse than it sounds so let's not talk about that ever again.
• In Justice League (2017), Aquaman accidentally sits on Wonder Woman's Lasso, and as a result, blurts out several things like how he thinks they will all die on their mission and that he thinks Wonder Woman is hot. Embarrassed, he tells Flash, "If you tell anyone about this, I'll bring every piranha I know after you." Flash says, "I stopped listening after 'We're all gonna die'."
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: An imprisoned Yondu and Rocket have tasked Baby Groot with retrieving the prototype control fin for Yondu's arrow. Cue a montage of him constantly grabbing the wrong things, including an entire desk, Vorker's prosthetic eye, and finally a freshly severed human toe.
    Rocket: ...Tell me you guys have a refrigerator somewhere with a bunch of severed human toes. [Yondu shakes his head] Okay. Then let's just agree to never discuss this.
  • Ant-Man: Sam "The Falcon" Wilson gets his ass kicked by a guy called Ant-Man who's only power is to shrink to the size of an ant, and who constantly apologizes for fighting him. Afterwards, this gem happens:
    Falcon: It's really important to me that Cap never finds out about this.
• In 102 Dalmatians, when the clinic that cured Cruella discovers that their brain altering therapy is reversed by the sound of Big Ben's bell, they immediately vow to disavow any knowledge of Cruella's treatment.
• Played for Drama in The Town, as Doug asks James for help with essentially nothing to go on. James agrees immediately.
  Doug: I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people.
  James: ...Whose car we gonna take?
• In Madame Web (2024), after learning about Ezekiel from her mother's notes, Cassie wonders if she can climb walls like him. She tries and fails miserably, and then tells the stray cat she occasionally feeds that they shouldn't share it with anyone.

Literature

• Animorphs: after recruiting David into the group, the Animorphs are forced to deal with the consequences when the kid goes rogue and tries to either kill his former friends or sell them up the river. Eventually, they are able to defeat him by tricking him into transforming into a rat and luring him into a trap. Unwilling to kill him but unwilling to let him get away with his crimes, they wait for Shapeshifter Mode Lock to set in, then abandon him on a desolate island with no hope of rescue. Deeply shaken by what they've just done, Ax comments that he never wants to speak about what happened ever again.
• Bring Up the Bodies has a serious example with Henry VIII's near-fatal jousting accident, in which he was unconscious and thought dead for hours and the court began splintering into factions for another civil war. He tells Cromwell that the events of the afternoon must never be mentioned, for the stability of the realm and to keep foreign powers from getting ideas, and Cromwell agrees—the official story will be that he was out for ten minutes at most and it was no big deal.
• Captive Prince: When Prince Laurent's party is intercepted by soldiers while deep in enemy territory, he gets Disguised in Drag offscreen; not only are the soldiers fooled, one quietly says that "Lady Jokaste" is just as beautiful as the stories say. Damen tells a bemused Nikandros not to think about it.
• Discworld:
  • After the events of Sourcery, the surviving wizards of the Unseen University swear blind they weren't there, but away visiting their relatives in far-off countries. All except for Archchancellor Ridicully, who really wasn't there.
  • Lords and Ladies: No one should even mention the Stick and Bucket Dance. Not ever. At least, not once the Lancre Morris Men are done using it to kick elven ass.
  • In Witches Abroad, after the witches take part in it, nobody mentions the Thing With The Bulls ever, ever again. At least not around the men.
  • Strongly implied to have happened at the very end of Night Watch between Vimes and Dr Lawn, who happens to be the only living person besides Lord Vetinari who could testify to the main plot of the book having happened, with an extremely large sum of money changing hands to seal the deal.
• A Hole in the Fence: The reason why people know nothing of or refuse to talk about the Forbidden Zone beyond of Courquetaines is that a part of the country's population decided to abandon their cities, seclude themselves in the High Country and live like farmers in a restored and healthy environment forty years ago. So a high fence was built, and both parties agreed to never talk again about the fights, strife and social which led to that situation.
• Joe Pickett: Spoken by an assassin named Whip to his driver in Stone Cold when he's being driven away from the scene of a hit he just performed and the victim turns out to still be alive and sits up (whilst in the body bag) in the back seat, prompting Whip to unload another few slugs into his head for good measure.
• Journey to Chaos: Team Four went on a mission to Najica between A Mage's Power and Looming Shadow, and it was so embarrassing for Tiza and Nolien that they both agreed to forget it. Basilard, however, will not let them forget it because it involved some serious disciplinary action.
• At the conclusion of Myth-ion Improbable, Aahz, Skeeve and Tananda promise never to reveal what they've witnessed on Kowtow or even discuss it among themselves. This conveniently explains why the events of this Interquel didn't rate a single mention in the dozen-odd books to follow.
• In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the Bennet girls come across a zombie mother and infant and find themselves unable to kill them. Afterward they swear never to mention it again.
• Redwall: A very serious example: by the end of Martin the Warrior, Martin is so overcome by the events of the novel that he vows never to bring them up again and pretend they never happened. This is, out of universe, because the book is a prequel, and there's no mention of these events in the books set later on featuring Martin.
• A serious example appears in Fire & Blood, a prequel to A Song of Ice and Fire. Both the Grand Maester Benifer and the Hand of the King Septon Barth decide to keep mum about the death of Princess Aerea Targaryen after her trip to unknown lands— though not before informing King Jaehaerys I, prompting him to ban any sort of travel to Valyria. Considering the horrific manner of Aerea's death (turned into a breeding nest for some sort of Xenomorph-like horror), one can scarcely blame them.
• Star Wars Legends: In Scoundrels, the Caper Crew agrees to never mention the job to anyone when it's all over, given the unusual outcome. For a book that takes place just after A New Hope, this neatly explains why, say, Han and Winter act like they only know each other through Leia in The Thrawn Trilogy, or Kell never brings up the fact that he's met Han (who is at that point far superior to him in rank in the New Republic military) in the X-Wing Series.
  Han: By the way, that thing about never mentioning this to anyone? That goes double for Her Highness.
  Winter: Absolutely.
• Warrior Cats: In Midnight, a human girl has picked up Feathertail, who is unable to escape the girl’s grip without hurting her. Squirrelpaw decides to act cute to try to distract her, which works. She then informs the others that she’ll claw them if they tell anyone she purred at a Twoleg.
• The Wheel of Time: Part of the Aiel honor code is that it's dishonorable to remind someone of an old debt of honour after it's been paid. As such, there's a scene where Egwene confesses a lie to her Aiel mentors, submits to a painful and humiliating punishment, and everyone moves right on afterwards.
• The Savannah Reid Mysteries: In Killer Honeymoon, Savannah's gang gets in a fight with a guy and they're losing when it's five against one. They're saved by Granny Reid and a taser. Dirk announces afterward that they should never speak of that humiliating moment again.

Live-Action TV

• In the Babylon 5 episode "The Quality of Mercy", after learning the secret of the "tentacles" Londo was using to cheat at cards, Lennier decides to swear an oath of silence on the matter.
• The Big Bang Theory:
  • After returning from a research grant in Antarctica, Leonard, Sheldon, Howard, and Raj repeatedly talk about how they weren't going to talk about "the night the heat went out." Sheldon, being Sheldon, brought it up anyway. (They huddled together naked.)
  • In one episode, Penny got a new chair that she had found thrown out at the curb. Sheldon freaked out over the chair, telling Penny to get rid of it, with Penny dismissing his concerns... until she and Amy discovered that something was crawling around in the chair's lining. As the two girls raced out of Penny's apartment screaming, they agreed not to let Sheldon know he was right.
• In Black Books while reminiscing/complaining about their terrible holiday, they stumble on one part they weren't supposed to bring up.
  Fran: And remember when those tribesmen thought Manny was a god?
  Manny: Yes, it'll be quite some time before I want to sacrifice another monkey.
  [Bernard lunges across the table and seizes Manny by the shirt]
  Bernard: WE SAID WE WOULDN'T TALK ABOUT CANADA!
• The first episode of Black Mirror, "The National Anthem", plays this trope for severe drama. The episode's Twist Ending reveals that the Mad Artist who kidnapped Princess Susannah actually released her half an hour before the Prime Minister was forced to have sex with a pig on live television; this was part of his larger point about how horrible people are, as he correctly guessed that they'd all be too obsessed with watching the act to go outside and find her. When the Home Secretary finds out about this, she promptly tells her officials to "lose that page of the report", implying that no one can ever know the secret. The episode ends about a year in the future; since nobody is discussing the truth, it's implied that the gag order was successful.
• One skit for the "Music" episode of Blue Collar TV featured Jeff Foxworthy and the gang (including special guest Drew Carey) going for a hunt in the woods. Instead, it turns into the four of them doing increasingly-corny musical performances. At the end, Jeff proposes:
  Jeff: I think we make a deal right now. What goes on in the woods...(everyone else, including the audience joins in) stays in the woods!
• Buffyverse:
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • From "Real Me":
      Buffy: How bored were you last year?
      Giles: I watched Passions with Spike. Let us never speak of it again.
    • In "Empty Places", Spike and Andrew have an exchange on their mutual love of onion blossoms while en route to a mission, ending with:
      Spike: Yeah. [beat] Tell anyone we had this conversation, I'll bite you.
      Andrew: Right.
    • In "The Initiative", a vampirized Harmony meets Xander and decides to feed. They apparently regress to their grade school enemy stage (since both of them can fight better), and they're so ineffectual that they eventually just give up. They agree it never happened, and both leave.
    • In "The Freshman", Xander after telling Buffy he was once roped into working as a male stripper. "...and no power on this Earth will make me tell you the rest of that story."
  • Angel played it for laughs in "The Girl in Question". The head of Wolfram and Hart's Rome branch used it several times.
    CEO lady: [spit] We will speak of it no more!
• Control Z: Following Susana's accidental death, Sofía, Javier, Raúl, Pablo, María, Alex and Claudia make a pact to cover up their involvement and not speak of it ever again.
  [from trailer] Raúl: We'll all make a pact. We're not saying a word to anyone, okay? We'll never talk about this again. And we live our lives as if none of this ever happened.
• CSI: NY: After the death of a colleague, Stella and Adam have a one-night stand. Later at work as things are a bit awkward, they hastily agree that it must never, ever happen again.
• Doctor Who:
  • At the end of "The Crusade", a bunch of Crusaders agree this to prevent being branded insane after they see the TARDIS dematerialise.
  • Played for drama at the end of "The Curse of Peladon", where King Peladon, distraught over Hepesh's failed coup and subsequent death, orders the day's events to be scrubbed from the kingdom's official history.
  • "Army of Ghosts": The Doctor, when the head of Torchwood finds out that the woman he'd claimed was Rose Tyler is actually Rose's mother.
    The Doctor: Please, when Torchwood comes to write my complete history, don't tell people I travelled through time and space with her mother.
    Jackie Tyler: Charming!
  • "The Shakespeare Code": Two of William Shakespeare's acting troupe agree to this after inadvertently (and thankfully, temporarily) summoning a Carrionite while reading aloud the Words of Power inserted into the play's script by the Monster of the Week.
  • "Twice Upon a Time" averts it. After hearing Bill Potts call his future self an arse, the First Doctor threatens her with a smacked bottom if he hears language like that again. An utterly mortified Twelfth Doctor begs Bill to pretend that never happened. Bill however rejects this, as she wants them to spend years sharing a laugh over that one, because she's just happy to know the Doctor is alive and to be working with him again.
• Friends:
  • Ross and Richard are having a sleepover at Rachel and Monica's. At one point they bump into each other in the living room, wearing their girlfriends' bathrobes. After a few awkward seconds they attempt small talk, but then Richard cuts to the chase and says "Let's never speak of this again." Ross says "You got it." and they move on.
  • Also in "The One Where Joey Loses His Insurance", Joey thanked Chandler for helping him take a shower when he had a hernia, and Chandler freaked out and said, "Now, is that never talking about it again?!"
  • And there's the time that Monica is stung by a jellyfish. A friend who will pee on you is a friend indeed.
• Grey's Anatomy:
  • Invoked almost verbatim by Cristina in the episode "Complications of the Heart", after a surgery wherein both she and the more experienced Dr. Altman forgot how to perform a very basic procedure and ended up needing the nurse to bail them out.
  • Also nearly word by word in the episode "Physical Attaction… Chemical Reaction", during one of the many "awkward sex" scenes, when Izzie and George try fantasy to revive their chemistry. It does not end pretty.
    George: I think I chipped my tooth.
• Heroes. Just so there are no misunderstandings, Nathan can fly:
  Matt Parkman: [after riding Nathan Petrelli to Texas] We never talk about that again.
• iCarly:
  • Between the Shay siblings, notably, Carly's No Periods, Period in "iDate a Bad Boy" and Spencer's attempt at giving Carly The Talk in "iSpeed Date".
  • Sam and Freddie's agreement about their First Kiss. When Sam's drugged slip-of-tongue reveals it to Carly, Hilarity Ensues.
• JAG: When Admiral Chegwidden receives a mysterious tape with no return address in his office, he has Petty Officer Tiner play it. It is a video of the Admiral's fiance dressed seductively holding the roses he sent her quoting Shakespeare and inviting him to a very special dinner. The Admiral cuts the tape off midway and tells Tiner to never speak of this again. Tiner wisely claimed nothing happened.
• This causes problems in Longitude during a field test of Harrison's chronometer. He determines that the headland in sight is a particularly dangerous one, while the admiral has insisted that it's a different place, and it takes some effort to convince the ship's captain the truth. Though the fleet is prevented from hitting the rocks, the captain and the admiral hush up the fact that they nearly made the same deadly mistake that started Parliament's efforts to fix The Longitude Problem, leaving Harrison at the mercy of hostile bureaucrats until the ship's master delivers his own private testimony.
• A common occurrence on The Love Boat as the crew will spend the episode on some zany adventure and when it's done, agree it's best not to let the Captain know about it and never mention it again.
  • When Gopher complains about seeing Isaac's aunt in a horrible play and it being the worst shore leave experience, Doc states he had a worse time with his second wife. "But per our divorce agreement, I'm legally prohibited from ever discussing it."
• The Mandalorian: The titular character is at one point forced to show his face, the one thing his clan's creed absolutely forbids, while infiltrating an Imperial base. He's disturbed to the point of near-catatonia for abandoning his peoples' most solemn oath, although his ally on the mission tries to comfort him by saying he did what he needed to do, and tells him "I never saw your face." It provides him very little personal comfort, though.
• In the Merlin (2008) episode "The Changeling", Gaius is adamant that Merlin never mentions again how he (Gaius) has to flirt with Abhorrent Admirer Grunhilda (a pixie disguised as old maid) to lure her into the vaults and imprison her.
• In the series 5 episode 1 of Misfits, Alex develops the power to remove the powers of others by having sex with them. Meanwhile, Finn gets possessed by the devil. Alex has to use his new power to get rid of the devil. Afterwards, Alex and Finn try to get the group to agree never to speak of this again. Rudy, being Rudy, keeps bringing it up.
• Abby from NCIS mentions that the team agreed to this regarding her Caff-Pow-drinking record: "It got ugly."
• Almost verbatim on The Peter Serafinowicz Show. Upon making a breakthrough deduction in a case, Sherlock Holmes becomes so sexually aroused that he forces himself on Watson. In post-coital reflection, Holmes says "We shall not speak of this again."
• The crew of Red Dwarf went so far as to erase their memories and bury the blackbox after an incident where Lister gave Rimmer some memories of one of his ex-girlfriends.
• Rome:
  • Cleopatra wants to use The Baby Trap on Caesar, but knowing that Caesar has no sons, (and possibly needing a distraction from her withdrawal symptoms after Going Cold Turkey) she decides to increase her chances of pregnancy by sleeping with one of the legionnaires that Caesar sent to escort her to him. She first orders Vorenus to sleep with her, but Vorenus (despite being sorely tempted) refuses due to fidelity to his wife and Roman sexual attitudes to the idea of being "used" for sex. Vorenus then orders the other legionnaire, Pullo to "Report to Princess Cleopatra and do whatever she tells you to." Cue a prolonged and noisy bout of sex, much to the discomfort of Vorenus. When Pullo returns, they have the following conversation:
    Pullo: Gods, that was something, let me tell you.
    Vorenus: I don't want to hear about it. If you're wise, you'll never speak of this again.
    Pullo: Why? I was only obeying orders. Bloody good orders, too.
  • When the youthful Octavian comes home after being kidnapped in Gaul, then rescued by Vorenus and Pullo, his rather shallow mother fusses over him. "Was it very horrible?" (Octavian opens his mouth) "Of course it was, we shan't even talk about it. Let's put it totally out of our minds."
  • Played for drama when Pullo and Octavian discover that the wife of Vorenus has had a child with another man. They murder the man responsible and swear never to speak of it to anyone. Unfortunately Octavian relates the story to his sister, who tells it to someone involved in the conspiracy to murder Julius Caesar. They use the tale to lure Vorenus away from Caesar's side on the day of the assassination.
• In one episode of Scrubs, Dr. Cox invokes this trope after Dr. Kelso gives an all-too-graphic description of his and Mrs. Kelso's recent sexual encounter.
• In Seinfeld, George dates a woman who looks like Jerry. George tries to come up with things that the relationship can be 'about' so as not to deal with the idea that he might harbour homosexual feelings for Jerry. The woman gets gum in her hair and cuts it out, making her hair short like Jerry's. George runs away screaming. Later, at the coffee shop, George and Jerry are talking about the incident and George says 'We must never ever speak of this'. Afterwards Jerry awkwardly asks George if he wants to go and see a movie. George refuses, instead saying that he's 'going to take a few days off', which Jerry agrees is probably for the best.
• Stargate SG-1: Way back in the first season, the Goa'uld Hathor took over Stargate Command and used pheromones to control the male population. Several seasons later, Dr. Fraiser is going over O'Neill's medical files.
  Fraiser: He had his shoulder punctured by an alien time capsule device. Erm... three knee operations... [puts aside a large stack of folders] and that's the whole Hathor incident which he's asked me never to discuss.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • The episode "The Naked Now" features all sorts of weird events when the Enterprise crew falls under the influence of a virus that basically makes everyone more than a little drunk (including Data). One scene features Data meeting up with Tasha Yar in her quarters, where they end up having sex. After the virus has been purged and everyone is sober again, Tasha and Data are back at work on the bridge, where she tells him, "I'm only going to say this once: It never happened."
    • In "Skin of Evil", Tasha's funeral speech was supposed to include an apologetic "Data, it did happen." It's clear to see where it was supposed to be, as they left in Geordi's reaction shot. Subsequent mentions seem to differ on whether or not this line was in effect.
    • During Data's trial to determine whether he is a full-fledged person with rights in "The Measure of a Man", Data is reluctant to reveal what happened between them, telling Picard that he "gave [his] word", and Picard has to convince him that Tasha would understand given the circumstances, suggesting that Data still believed that Tasha wanted him to keep it a secret.
    • On the other hand, the incident is also alluded to in Star Trek: First Contact, which leans towards suggesting that he did get the message that "it did happen". However, this is also after the Borg Queen had put him through the wringer emotionally (including messing with his emotion chip), so it's equally possible that he would never have revealed it normally, but was so overwhelmed by the situation that he inadvertantly let it slip.
  • Star Trek: Enterprise: "In a Mirror, Darkly" features this darkly amusing exchange between Mirror Tucker and Mirror T'Pol:
    Tucker: I did you a favor once.
    T'Pol: We agreed never to discuss that.
    Tucker: And I haven't.
    T'Pol: I'd hardly call it a favor. You enjoyed yourself.
    Tucker: Several times as I recall. So, how many years is it 'til your pon farr comes around again?
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Averted when B'Elanna Torres tries this in "Blood Fever" after a similar Mate or Die is barely averted. Tom Paris stops the turbolift and insists they do talk about it, as they're going to be stuck on the same ship for years.
    • Played straight in "Counterpoint", where after Janeway subjects the villains to a Humiliation Conga, they decide to erase all records of their interactions with Voyager so their superiors won't learn of how badly they screwed up.
  • Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery ends with the titular starship being sent over 900 years into the future to prevent a rogue AI from using her to carry out the apocalypse. Afterwards, everyone involved with the incident is sworn to never speak of it under penalty of treason.
• Dean invokes this in Supernatural when he has to talk Charlie through flirting with the male security guard with Sam listening in. Sam never does mention it again, but that doesn't keep him from laughing his head off all the way through it.
• Taxi: Latka is furious at Alex for sleeping with his (Latka's) mother and—more to the point—not agreeing to marry her and become Latka's new papa. According to him the only way they can get past it is his country's tradition of "globnik", meaning "to pretend or assume some event or occurrence never took place."
  Alex: You think that would do it? I mean, just pretend it never happened?
  Latka: Pretend what never happened?
  Alex: (beat, smiling) Beats me.
  Latka: Me too.
  Alex: Well, back to work.
• In an episode of Victorious, Tori prompts this to Kat after seeing on the news they accidentally set an actress's house on fire and got the person injured and sent to the hospital.
• The West Wing lampshaded its frequent use of the Walk and Talk by having Sam and Josh walking through the crowded hallways having a conversation as usual. At the end, they both came to a stop and asked each other where they were going. Turns out they were both following each other.
  Josh: Let's not tell anyone about this.
• In White Collar episode "Power Play", Neal and Peter have to swap identities. This leads to Peter asking the whole office to go along with it.
  Peter: Listen up, everybody. For the next hour, and only the next hour, you will call Mr. Caffrey Special Agent Peter Burke. No questions, no laughing, just do it. And never speak of this again.
• In an episode of Would I Lie to You?, Neil Morrisey, voice of Bob the Builder, had as one of his "facts" that he once had a builder working at his house who was in fact named Bob. David Mitchell said that if that was true, it was completely unremarkable, and the conversation probably went, "Do you know, I'm actually a builder called Bob." "Right. I do the voice of Bob the Builder." "Right." [short laugh all around] "Let us never speak of this."
• In Riget, after once particually chaotic night at the neurosurgical department where Dr. Mortensen shot Dr. Helmer in the leg for spurning her, the "deceased" Dr. Krogshøj turned out to be Only Mostly Dead and has returned to work like his "death" never happened, and the hospital priest was very brutally and messily killed by the satanic powers at play at the hospital, Dr. Moesgaard resolves to only mention all these events with a short comment each during the daily morning briefing and then immediately follows up by telling everyone present that he doesn't want to discuss any of these events in any kind of detail, and either should they.

Podcasts

• Quoted during RiffTrax's take on The Last Airbender after they see The Pebble Dance.
• In the Thrilling Adventure Hour, Sparks Nevada and Croach are in rare agreement that they will never speak of the Sparks having to stimulate Croach's egg sacs to show his feet to the Space Crazy Preacher.

Radio

• Our Miss Brooks: A series of mistakes in "Dress Code Protest", gets Mr. Conklin stranded in his office pantless and forced to wear Miss Brooks' badly-torn skirt to coverup. Mr. Stone, head of the Board of Education, finds him dressed this way. To get him out of trouble (and get back at Mr. Conklin for, earlier in the episode, claiming only Miss Brooks ever gets into ridiculous situations, Miss Brooks claims Conklin is playing a native girl in a school play. Mr. Conklin dances a hula while Miss Brooks sings "it also happens to you" to the tune of "Aloha Oe". The scheme works. However, later that night, Mr. Stone asks Miss Brooks when the school play would be performed. The entire school board wanted to see Mr. Conklin sing, wear the skirt, and do the hula! Miss Brooks dryly informs Stone that Mr. Conklin wouldn't be doing the hula or dressing in a skirt ever again!

Roleplay

• Agent Supernumerary of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum game is quite specific about the fact that when he says it's "unspeakable," that means he does not want Agent Suicide to keep talking about that little incident with a reality-warping typo and some very surprised goblins.

Tabletop Games

• In Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, saying this outright is one of the way to write off a break from reality.

Theme Parks

• In the former Special Effects Stages at Universal Studios, after one of the volunteers got mauled by Fluffy the robotic werewolf, the host would say this to the volunteer's family.

Video Games

• In HarmoKnight, Master Woodwin, after talking to you once you beat the Final Trial level, tells you to never talk about him losing his staff again. Because, as he says, that would press the princess's Berserk Button.
• Psychonauts: There's a Mental Phlebotinum Breakdown in Sasha's mind, and a horrible mutated monster comes up and proceeds to pound the living daylights out of Sasha in a highly embarrassing fashion. Raz saves Sasha's life, for which Sasha grants him his merit badge. This conversation then occurs:
  Raz: So, is this the part where I get a speech and learn another lesson...?
  Sasha: No. Here is your merit badge. Let us never speak of this again.
• Persona:
  • Persona 3:
    • The Love Hotel Incident, in which the Lovers Arcana Shadow tries to make the party get intimate with each other. In the male route, a humiliated Yukari threatens him into silence. In the female route, Akihiko or Junpei take it in better stride, but find it too awkward to ever bring up again. Presumably, the same thing happens on Mitsuru's end, as when you find her with Junpei, Akihiko, or Yukari, she'll flush and angrily deny anything happened.
    • The aftermath of Mitsuru's "Execution" during the Kyoto class trip. Akihiko is very insistent about this point. Even if you avoided being executed, all characters involved agree to never admit to anything, lest they incur Mitsuru's wrath.
  • Persona 4:
    [the team's gathered in a classroom to discuss the case]
    Yosuke: But man, seeing [Kanji] here kinda reminds me of the school campout.
    Kanji: I thought we were all gonna forget about what happened...
    Yosuke: Oh... Sorry.
    [all three guys look depressed]
• Dragon Age:
  • Dragon Age: Origins:
    • Sten says this to Leliana when she sees him playing with a kitten and picking flowers.
    • Also comes up after the threesome/foursome with Isabela in The Pearl.
      Zevran: I don't mind never speaking of it again, as long as we could do it again.
      Leliana: There's a thought...
  • Something of a Running Gag in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
    • Varric claims that this is what the Qunari said about the Arishok's unauthorized invasion of Kirkwall in Dragon Age II; Varric assumes that this is pretty much the closest they'll get to an official apology from the Qunari.
    • If the Inquisitor is a human mage, the First Enchanter of the Ostwick Circle of Magi said this in response to something bizarre that happened during the Inquisitor's Harrowing.
    • If the Inquisitor is a Qunari, one of the other members of their mercenary band said this to a donkey after an Escort Mission apparently went south.
    • After the player finds Cassandra reading "smutty literature" that had been written by Varric she asks that you pretend you don't know that about her.
• In Fairune 2, upon rescuing the Red Fairy, she freaks out over the heat of the lava caves she was imprisoned in, and bolts for the exit teleporter. Upon reuniting with her at the Entrance, she has this to say:
  Red Fairy: I must have made a terrible impression there. PLEASE, FORGET ALL ABOUT IT.
• In Cave Story, one of your fights with Balrog begins after you almost trick him into helping you with a feat that requires great strength. When you win, he yields and assists you (this is one of the hints dropped to you that he isn’t really such a bad fellow; he's just doing his job). He entreats you, however, not to tell anyone he did it.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Abe Lincoln Must Die! has Sam and Max take a date test to find the perfect match for each other. The result gives... Sam to Max and Max to Sam. Both agree never to speak about it again.
• One of the categories for the third annual Neopies on Neopets is named after this trope.
• Dawn of War II agrees with fans' opinion of the previous Soulstorm:
  Cyrus: Kaurava was a huge mistake... I will not speak of it again.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, this is, word for word, one of the dialogue choices available after you let an apprentice mage practice a spell on you.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • Suggested with the In-Universe Marketing for Jarate.
    You may say, "But I don't HAVE any enemies!" Well, do you have FRIENDS? Are they on FIRE? Right NOW? Jarate them to a non-on fire state INSTANTLY! Being on fire is horrible! They'll never want to talk about your Jarate rescue ever again, but you'll have their secret undying gratitude!
  • On the Special Delivery mission, once the rocket lifts off and immediately crashes the Announcer might have this to say:
    Announcer: Gentlemen, this never happened.
• In the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC, it is possible for an un-romanced Female Shepard and Javik to end up in bed together after the party:
  Javik: It turns out there is one thing primitives are good at.
  Shepard: Not. A. Word.
• Saints Row:
  • Late in Saints Row: The Third, you need to impersonate Cyrus Temple, the STAG commander, to rescue the kidnapped Shaundi, who is being held in a STAG carrier chock-full of enemies. While following the second-in-command, Kia, the Boss tries to make some chit-chat. If you've chosen the "Cockney" voice, she'll notice and call you out on your sudden British mannerisms. The Boss handwaves this by saying that he must have picked them up from a stint in Britain. When she says that there's no record of Cyrus having ever been stationed in Britain, he'll cover for it by claiming he's probably said too much, and they should probably just forget they ever had the conversation.
  • In Saints Row IV, after being rescued from a Zin simulation, Kinzie warns the Boss to never speak of the fact she was forced to wear a poodle skirt. The Boss, being, well, the Boss, attempts to bring it up anyways...and promptly gets punched so hard by Kinzie that they immediately respawn before they can even finish the sentence.
• Vegeta while being revived by an ally in Dragon Ball Xenoverse.
  Vegeta: This never happened, understood?
• Dunban will invoke this in a certain post-battle conversation in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, as it's a better alternative than acknowledging and talking to Reyn about a pun.
  Reyn: You can't have a rainbow without Reyn, baby!
  Melia: Dunban, I think you need to have a talk with Reyn.
  Dunban: No, let's pretend it didn't happen.
• Cooking with Machias in The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel and getting a peculiar dish has him respond with a word-for-word recitation of the trope name.
• In RuneScape quest "Diamond in the Rough", Ozan requests that you never mention what happened in the Kalphite Nursery to anyone, ever, especially Leela.
• In Minecraft: Story Mode the first episode features a scene in which the main protagonist, Jesse, and their friends go through many near death experiences while riding through the Nether in minecarts. The conversation following this scene provides the page quote.
• Played for Drama at the end of the "Time and Fate" level of Call of Duty: Black Ops II. The mission is capturing Raul Menendez, but Manuel Noriega lets him go and he goes on a rampage concurrent with the CIA raid. The mission ends back at the hotel Menendez and his sister had been in, as Frank Woods, crazed from the sorts of torture Menedez performed on him, throws a grenade. As they get clear of the rubble and Menendez and his sister are dragged away in a body bag, the player's commanding officer informs them at "from this point on, today never happened." Turns out, however, Menendez survived his encounter, while his sister did not; it was this incident which spurred him to start the Cordis die movement and begin plotting the downfall of Western civilization to avenge his sister.
• Shantae:
  • Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Mimic tells Shantae they are going to do this once she finds the magic seals because they're supposed to be secret. Of course, considering what happens at the end of the game, that is easier said than done.
  • In Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, this is Sky's reaction to the events of Tan Line Island, where the girls got mistaken for a princess and put in some...interesting outfits.
• In South Park: The Fractured but Whole, after the battle against Jared in the police station, regardless of whether the New Kid either farts him into unconsciousness or spares him from being farted on, Human Kite's (AKA Kyle Broflovski's) response is to ask everyone that it's best to forget the encounter with Jared and never talk about it again.
• Played for Drama in Stellaris. Encounters with the universe's more disturbingly eldritch powers can result in an empire's leader and their scientists agreeing to destroy all data regarding the encounter and take the secrets to their graves.
• Invoked in Animal Crossing: New Horizons: The game has fun with the idea that all the Mystery Islands are randomly-generated. We mean, they have a heckin' ball with it.
  Wilbur: Also, there's one redline item you need to memorize like your latte order: Anything you leave behind stays here. We don't come back to these places. Ever. I actually burn the flight plans afterward. Security reasons. Can't explain more than that.
• Lonely Wolf Treat: In the second game, if you complete the sidequest for Eleni but bail out at the last second, Mochi and Moxie both agree to never talk about what they saw.
• In God of War Ragnarök, Mimir tells Kratos that he heard that he participated in a tournament, then clarifies that it involved "beasts, scoundrels, princesses, the undead, automatons and... the world's greatest musician", suggesting that PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is canon. Kratos just mumbles out "I would not speak of this" and Mimir drops it.
• In Don't Starve Together, WX-78 and Maxwell share this sentiment if they were transformed into Wonkey and then changed back.
  WX-78: S-SYSTEMS NORMAL. WE WILL NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN
  Maxwell: Nobody. Bring this up. Again.
• The first Galaxy Angel videogame has an event where, due to an accident involving zero gravity in the Elsior's storage room, Tact and Ranpha end up kissing each other by accident. Surprisingly, Ranpha doesn't get mad at Tact for it, but makes him promise they won't let anybody else find out about this, and the incident doesn't get any further callbacks even on the route Tact pursues a relationship with her.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, the Warrior of Light and Krile finds Alisaie and G'raha asleep in a gazebo by the Studium. While G'raha flails once he wakes up, Alisaie hops up, faces the Warrior of Light, stares them down and declares that they will not say a word of this.

Visual Novels

• Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Case 2:
  Trucy: I can still remember that moment... You brandished those bloomers on high, and shouted... "Objection!"
  Apollo: ...Here's what I want you to do, Trucy. Take that memory, gently lock it away deep in your heart, and never speak of it.
• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: In an optional event, Shuichi quickly tells himself to keep quiet at all cost after taking a peek at the girls while they were putting on swimsuits.
• After the protagonist of Double Homework and his classmates escape from the avalanche on Barbarossa, they all know that the avalanche itself was an attempt to kill all of them, and what can happen if they talk about it in the future.
• Melody:
  • Subverted if the protagonist and Isabella have a one-night stand in Tim's house. They both agree that they’ll have one night together and move on from it, but Isabella can’t, and she asks the protagonist for more. And if the two of them become an official couple and ask for Tim's blessing for their relationship, Tim will reveal that he heard the whole thing anyway.
  • Melody and Sophia previously agreed to have sex once and then leave anything sexual alone, but Sophia brings it up again, which can lead to the two of them experimenting further.
• In Policenauts, if you fail the Bomb Disposal sequence and choose to continue, Jonathan and Ed will tell each other to pretend that their prior explosive deaths didn't actually happen.

Webcomics

• 8-Bit Theater:
  • The trope image comes from this webcomic, after... some shenanigans caused by the nightmare-inducing poison the Light Warriors had recently unwittingly ingested.
  • Black Mage also insisted that they should never speak of the werewolf encounter again, on the grounds that — since the werewolves had thoughtfully decided to start bickering and ignore them — it was the most pathetic battle ever and not worthy of remembering.
  • Drizz'l also invokes this trope after he and the other four Dark Warriors end up sleeping (and spooning) inside of a yeti corpse for warmth.
• Bar'd: Vas uses his change of gender to quell the rage of one of the more violent patrons by... stuffing her face into his new rack. It takes a bit for this to register with him, though.
• In Blue Yonder, after Lena tricks them into fleeing a cellphone, one attacker tells another, "No one has to know."
• Brawl in the Family: In strip #495, Mega Man really does not want to talk about his stint in the Captain N: The Game Master cartoon.
  Pit: Hey man! Haven't seen you in a while. Now we just need to get Simon—
  Mega Man: SHH! Don't bring that up!
  Pit: Bring up WHAT-icus?
  Mega Man: AARGH!
• What happened in Bruno the Bandit after Numth'kul took a cross-dressing Maledict on a date.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Elliot seeing Tedd without his glasses while being gender bent (and potentially bisexual) gets this reaction. Not that it stopped them from speaking of it again.
  • Grace's suggestion that Elliot turn into her to be sexy in front of a mirror seems doomed to a similar fate.
  • In another instance, Grace and Sarah attempted to prank Tedd by using a transformation device to make Sarah look exactly like Grace. Unfortunately, when Tedd encounters Sarah as Grace, he immediately kisses her. While there is no dialogue in the comic itself, the commentary states that they decided to never speak of it again.
• Everyone Is Home: When the cast revives Dark Samus, Sora guesses that she's "a super gnarly and disturbing alien skeleton" underneath the suit, as in Metroid canon. Unfortunately, he's dead wrong, because she's an attractive grey-skinned lady beneath the suit.
  Samus: The Internet can never know about this.^note Unfortunately for her, Sora then takes pictures of unarmored Dark Samus and uploads them into the Internet, much to Samus's frustration.
• Evon Invoked by Evon in the wake of meeting her half-brother.^note Who was her first lover, before she found out who he really was. For the record, he didn't know either at that moment.
• In Girl Genius, Gilgamesh orders that his hat should be hidden in a safe place—and never spoken about again.
  DuPree: I heard there was a hat!
  Gil: You're delusional.
• Grrl Power: After a mfm threesome with Blue-Skinned Space Babe Cora (heavily implied in the strip, confirmed by the author's comments), Math and Hiro mutually agree to never speak of this again. To Dabbler's frustration, since she'd like to know every little detail.
  Math: We must never speak of this again.
  Hiro: You're breaking the rule!
  Dabbler: [putting arms on their shoulders] Tell. Me. EVERYTHING.
  [they both leave without a word]
  Dabbler: But... but I tell you guys everything! No matter how much you beg me to stop!
• Homestuck:
  • Karkat takes this to the logical extreme by trolling John backwards, so that they'll never be able to talk about the first conversation (from Karkat's perspective), where Karkat accidentally reveals his hatecrush for John. Needless to say, it's hilarious.
  • Karkat and Sollux apparently once had a chat conversation so embarrassing that they both agreed to permanently delete it from their computers' history.
  • Dave also does this early on in the strip, after royally screwing up his fetch modus and losing the beta in the process, despite there being no one around to have seen him.
    Dave: No one can ever know about this.
  • "Let us never speak of ACT 6 ACT 5 ACT 2 again."
• In Housepets!, Peanut Butter and Grape happen to see Fido and Sabrina do... something, in this comic. Afterward, Grape tells Peanut^note who took a picture of the "something", though the viewer never gets to see it, "We never speak of this again."
• In Northern Edge (a spin-off of Fred Perry's Gold Digger), Sheila just want to forget all about she and two companions being spanked by tentacles. Fat chance of this, though, since there was a rune artist present on the scene to immortalize it.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • While being interviewed for the Lawful Good afterlife, hero Roy Greenhilt stops the deva interviewing him before she can mention a Gender Bender incident within earshot of his father, who is standing not ten feet away.
  • During that very incident, Roy also insisted Belkar not know. Subverted in that Belkar knew it was Roy all along and was comfortable enough with his masculinity to hit on Roy purely to mess with him.
  • And during Azure City's New Year, Belkar gets drunk and kisses Vaarsuvius full on the lips. Afterwards, Belkar forgets it entirely and Vaarsuvius insists that, if the one witness to the kiss (Durkon) ever has to discuss it again, it will be referred to it as "the Event". And they never talk about it again.
  • When Belkar and Hayley's father Ian unleash a dinosaur in order to save two gladiators from execution, Belkar warns Ian not to tell Roy it was his idea, otherwise he'd find a sharp way to make sure Hayley stays an only child. Ian retorts he's been as sterile as a mule for ten years ever since he accidentally triggered a poison needle trap.
  • When Vaarsuvius is rescued from the Semi-Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing, they mention that there were some adventures before they got there.
    Belkar: Maybe we'll see that as a bonus story in one of the books!
    V: Maybe we shall never mention it again.
    Belkar: Yeah, probably that.
• Questionable Content:
  • In #447, Marten and Marten's mother, who is a professional dominatrix return to his apartment to find Pintsize wrapped up in bondage gear, which prompts this line to be spoken.
  • Played straight and later averted in #3885 when Roko meets Beepatrice for a job interview and they end up oversharing about Roko's bread fetish and Beepatrice's job at a sex toy factory. Beepatrice begs to rewind and start over, to which Roko emphaticaly agrees. After some inane chatter and an awkward silence:
    Beepatrice: Can we go back to the first draft? It was more interesting.
    Roko: I have to admit I am curious about the hydraulic press.
• Sam & Fuzzy:
  • An early strip has Sam win a free cake, which he shares with Fuzzy while gleefully touting what a great friend he is for sharing his cake with him. One bite of said cake both silences him, and shows why it was free in the first place.
    Fuzzy: I thought I was your friend!!!
    Sam: [eerily calm] We will never speak of this cake again.
  • Also during the Noosehead arc, Earl, Noosehead's manager, is trying to figure out how to make lead singer Sid go back to his old bitter, angry self rather than the nauseatingly happy person he has become. His secretary suggests the cause might be the litter of kittens Sid has been playing with (in reality Butcher, the pet cat of Sam, and her kittens). He then asks if Earl hadn't already tried to get rid of them once. Earl did in fact try to remove them, but was attacked by Alonso, the father of said kittens, and an intelligent talking cat.
    Earl: NO
    Secretary: Really? Because I'm almost certain you-
    Earl: NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN
• Schlock Mercenary: Ennesby to Schlock, after a particularly unpleasant moment. Only for Schlock to bring it up again 15 seconds later.
• In Shortpacked!, when Leslie questions Robin's claim that Ethan represents the average voter, one of the things she references is the Canon Discontinuity "Second Eaton" storyline. Robin reminds her that they all agreed that never happened.
• Sluggy Freelance has a great one
  Crystal: My head is killing me. Does anyone remember what happened after the tequila shots?
  Riff: Let's see. We're charred, we have twigs in our hair and we're covered in ducks.
  Bun-bun: I vote we all go home and never speak of this again.
• In this Two Lumps comic, Eben and Snooch lurk in darkness behind a door, preparing to attack a dustbunny as part of Snooch's lessons... only to be blinded by sunlight because they gave their eyes no time to readjust. When Snooch asks if the blinding is part of the lesson, Eben says no and to not speak of the incident again.
• The Wotch combines this with The Unreveal regarding a past incident between Katie and Jason here. They discuss the last time they were alone together which still haunts the former. Their dialogue, however, is covered up by that of their science teacher and his student assistants dealing with an explosion and resulting fire ocurring off-panel. By the time the fire's out, they've agreed to forgive, forget, and never speak of the original incident again.
• xkcd: Invoked in the title-text of strip #41 "Old Drawing": "I don't want to talk about it"

Web Animation

• Camp Camp: In the second season finale episode "Parents' Day", Max, in a very uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability when David takes him out for pizza after learning the reason for his parents being a no-show at the titular event, gives David a split-second hug. He then immediately informs David, "That never happened." And threatens him with murder should his friends ever learn of it.

Web Original

• Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG: Lives up to the trope by only telling us what can't be talked about, but no real details.
  1708. No bringing up the time we were nearly TPK'd by a jerboa.
• A double G.I.R.L. on bash.org provokes this reaction from the participants. Subverted. Since it's on bash.org and all.
• Jon Bois: In "The Search for the Saddest Punt in the World" from Chart Party, Jon goes over an ineligible entry where a 4th down play deep in enemy territory embarrassingly ends with a desperate pooch punt. Jon doesn't have a clip, and reasons that the NFL drove the footage of the play to the desert and buried it.

Web Videos

• In CollegeHumor video "Luigi Finally Snaps", when Luigi is bringing up on Mario's popularity, he brings something up that Mario did not want to hear again.
  Luigi: Why do you always get everything, even the Mario Brothers movie?
  Mario: [slaps Luigi] I told you. We'd never talk about that! It never happened!
• A Running Gag throughout the Mario Party TV group's first playthrough of Mario Party 9 is agreeing that they'll finish this run, set the game aside, and act as if it doesn't exist. In later playthroughs they insist they're playing a game that doesn't exist.
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: Invoked by Sketchbook in the first episode. After the CREATIVITY EXPLOSION, the puppets are sitting around, confused as to what the hell just happened.
  Sketchbook: "Now let's all agree/To never be creative again." [falls over, exhausted]
• Sonic for Hire: In Season 7, after managing to rebuild the entire universe, Sonic is surprised at how it was able to be finished in a week, with Tails stating that he's glad they both agreed to never speak of the logistics of how it was done, giving an Aside Glance.
• Todd in the Shadows insists, after watching St. Elmo's Fire in order to better explain its one-hit wonder theme song, that nobody ever speak of it again. He breaks his own resolution several times during the episode to rant furiously about how bad the movie is.
• On Outside Xbox, they take on the Hitman (2016) Patient Zero missions. Mike, who plays 47 as a Mad Bomber who thinks the first commandment is "thou shalt go loud on a regular basis", ended up spending the finale in a ridiculous mass-murder bloodbath that nearly depopulates the level, and comments, "Probably best if we don't speak of this ever again, Diana."

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • At the end of the "Family Land" episode, the Smiths have managed to liberate the Family Land theme park after a weeks' worth of forced imprisonment, which caused untold deaths.
    Francine: So, are we just going to ignore all the truly horrible things that took place in the last week?
    Stan: Gosh, Francine, I think we are.
  • Another episode has Barry question everyone just returning to the status quo after a night's hijinx had lead to several deaths.
    Barry: So are we not reporting any of the murders we witnessed tonight? I'm cool with it, I'm just asking.
  • In "The Vacation Goo", the Smiths go on a cruise that turns disastrous, with them getting hunted like animals and having to eat a dead cruise director in order to survive. Afterwards Francine remarks that there's nothing like sharing a Dark Secret to strengthen a family's bonds, and they all agree to forget it ever happened.
• Amphibia: In the episode "Cracking Mrs. Croaker", Mrs. Croaker tells Anne, Spring, and Polly not to go talking about her fight with Jonah.
• Archer: On his birthday, Archer walks into the office lobby and announces "Paging Dr. Boy! Dr. Birthday Boy!" When he realizes no one is around and a security camera recorded him doing that, he reaches behind the receptionist's desk, takes out the security camera tape and smashes it on the counter.
• As Told by Ginger: In Wicked Game, Dodie and Macie conspire with Miranda and Mipsy to break up the new relationship between Ginger and Darren—the former because they feel left out by Ginger's preoccupation with Darren and the latter because they're petty, jealous, often reprehensible people. Ginger eventually finds out about it, stops talking to Dodie and Macie, and the episode ends on a rather sour note, but afterwards the three of them act as if it never happened. It's implied that they decided to deal with it by just never talking about it.
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Iron Fist and Luke Cage agree not to let anyone know that they lost a battle against a bank robber who wielded Ant-Man gear.
• The Cleveland Show: Cleveland's dad, Freight Train, had sex with Donna's surrogate mother, Auntie Mamma. He later finds out Auntie Mamma is actually Donna's uncle in drag. When Freight Train finds out, this exchange occurs:
  Cleveland: You-
  Freight Train: [vomits profusely]
  Cleveland: Had sex-
  Freight Train: [vomits profusely]
  Cleveland: With a man.
  Freight Train: [double-long vomit shot]
  Cleveland: You can not tell Donna about this.^note Referring to Auntie Mamma's real nature
  Freight Train: Yeah, I'ma be playing this one down in general.
• Danny Phantom:
  • In "Reality Trip", Sam wonders how Danny convinced her parents to let her go on a cross-country trip with him and Tucker, and the explanation is thus:
  Sam's Mother: [being overshadowed by Danny] You know I think the Fentons are wonderful, Sam should take a cross-country trip with them.
  [Danny pops out of her, and overshadows Sam's father]
  Sam's Father: And I agree with you! Let's never speak of this again.
  • In "Boxed Up Fury", when Danny saves Skulker from a bunch of monstrous unicorns that Box Ghost had unleashed on him, we get this exchange:
  Skulker: I won't talk about this if you don't.
  Danny: Deal.
• Family Guy:
  • Meg gives her brother Chris advice on how to cajole their father Peter... that might work for a well-loved daughter:
    Meg: Okay, look. Dad is really easy. All you have to do is sit on his lap, give him a big kiss on the cheek, look him right in the eye, and he's butter.

  Chris then attempts this. It does not have the intended effect.

  Peter: [beat] Chris. I'm going to stand up. Walk out of this room. And we will never speak of this again.

  The best part of the exchange is that the tone of Peter's voice makes it clear he is VERY freaked out by the whole thing.

  • Also the time where Peter is blind and accidentally gets into Chris's bed at night...
  • At the end of the episode where Peter is temporarily turned gay:
    Meg: So, this is one of those things we just never talk about again?
  • Lois encourages Chris, in one episode, to find a job. When she finds out that he's has been working as Quagmire's assistant, she is very creeped out by the things he's been doing. Finally, she tells Chris she has $1100 hidden in a paint can in the garage. He can go and take that and they'll never speak of anything that's happened again.
  • In another episode Peter is in Chris' room and Meg walks in wearing nothing but a towel to inform Chris that their bath is ready.
    Peter: I... uh, I don't... I don't know what to do now. I... I don't have the parenting skills necessary to deal with this.
    Meg: I say we never speak of this again.
    Peter: I... I might move.
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman: The Season 2 finale, minus the stinger at the end, ends with Ruff and the kids promising to never talk about the incident ever again.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In "Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained", after Dipper and Mabel discover the bizarre truth about "Lefty" (that he's a Mobile-Suit Human piloted by little aliens who all committed suicide after being found out), Dipper tells Mabel "I think we might want to burn this tape."
  • In "Northwest Mansion Mystery", after Pacifica hugs Dipper from getting caught up in the moment, she then proceeds to pay him to forget it ever happened.
  • In the series finale, the Mayor of Gravity Falls passes the "Never Mind All That Act", forbidding anyone from discussing the events of Weirdmageddon with outsiders on pain of being tasered by Blubbs and Durland. However, Dipper, Mabel, and Grunkle Stan will be remembered as heroes for their deeds therein regardless.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: At the end of the episode "My Fair Mandy," Mandy, Billy, and Grim are turned into The Powerpuff Girls, sort of.
  Grim: We keep flying, we never head back, and we never talk about this again.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • Whenever Phoebe ends up involved on something involving Helga's crush on Arnold, Helga always tells her this at the end.
    Helga: This whole thing? It never happened.
    Phoebe: Forgetting!
  • In "The Flood", Helga is attempting to sneak out of the school and runs into Principal Wartz dancing in a sombrero shaking maracas...for some reason.
    Principal Wartz: Are you attempting to leave the school grounds without permission, Miss Pataki?
    Helga: Are you attempting to dance the flamenco, Principal Wartz?
    [Beat]
    Principal Wartz: This moment never happened.
    Helga: Gotcha.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Ratso on having to remove an Oni Mask from Finn's rear end.
  Ikazuki: Well? What are you waiting for?!
  Ratso: Uh, well, this is kinda awkward.
  Ikazuki: Simpleton! Do as you are told!
  Finn: What he said.
  Ratso: Okay! But we are never gonna bring this up again.
  Chow: I'm not even here.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, after an episode ends on a particularly disgusting note, Jimmy and Beezy agree "This never happened."
• In the Justice League episode "This Little Piggy", we get to see how far Batman will go to save Wonder Woman here.
• Kaeloo: In one episode, Kaeloo, a hermaphrodite, and Stumpy, a boy, both enter the girls' bathroom. They both find each other there and ask what the other is doing in there. After an awkward silence, both of them silently agree not to ever speak about it again.
• An episode of Kick Buttowski involved Kick and his Big Brother Bully Brad going camping, but after Hilarity Ensues and they get lost in the woods, it ends with Brad saying to the title character that him confessing his affection to him earlier never happened.
• In the All Just a Dream episode of Kim Possible, Kim saves villains Drakken and Shego from an exploding device. After Shego realizes how awkward it is, Drakken declares this trope, to which Kim replies "Fair enough".
• King of the Hill:
  • Years ago, Hank, Dale and Bill "borrowed" Boomhauer's car for a joyride and drove it into a flooded quarry. The three then agreed never to mention it again. Hank had no choice but to break the agreement when the quarry was about to be drained, since they left clues linking them to the case.
  • When Hank is sexually assaulted by a dolphin, he and Luanne agree to never mention it again. Luanne doesn't quite understand the concept and asks what he meant.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "The Return of Harmony, Part 2": Rarity says this word-for-word to her friends about the fact that she was brainwashed into thinking a large boulder was a giant diamond. Of course, Applejack brings it up very shortly afterwards, when they try to de-brainwash Rainbow Dash.
    Rarity: How in Equestria could she think that tiny patch of cloud is Cloudsdale?
    Applejack: The same way [Discord] got you to think that cheap rock was a bonafide diamond.
    Rarity: ...I thought we agreed never to speak of that again.
  • In "Rock-Solid Friendship", when Pinkie Pie learns her sister Maud told Starlight Glimmer where to find a stone with the ability to contain cutie-mark magic, this is her reaction.
    Pinkie Pie: [laughs nervously] Hey, I got an idea. Let's not tell anypony that part where you maybe, for sure, accidentally helped Starlight enslave a town! [laughs again, then glares at Maud] Tell. No. Pony!
• The Owl House: In "Once Upon a Swap", after escaping their respective pursuers, Eda remarks that they should never speak of the body-swapping incident again.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Best Served Cold", Gladys runs off saying that she'll "never tell anyone about this" after realizing she accidentally joined a revenge scheme.
• The Penguins of Madagascar, "Jiggles": after Kowalski's Blob Monster spat both Kowalski and Julien out, the two were covered in green goo and draped across each other. Julien's response to the situation is, "I will not talk of this if you don't."
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • Buford and Baljeet agree on this after their clothes get blown off by Ferb test-driving Meap's repaired spaceship in "The Chronicles of Meap".
    Buford: We must never speak of this again.
    Baljeet: Agreed.
  • According to "Bee Story", the Fireside Girls' first try at their "Beekeeping Patch" was such a disaster they've agreed to never even mention it again.
  • Done by Candace and Stacy in "The Klimpaloon Ultimatum" after they miss a high five.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) had the episode "Shotgun Wedding", in which the Professor tries to learn more about Fuzzy Lumpkins for the purpose of science, and after getting covered in mud, flowers, and a curtain is mistaken for a woman by Fuzzy and nearly forced to marry him. After the Professor is saved by the Powerpuff Girls, he writes on his notepad "Lumpkins are, above all, stupid" and as a sidenote "never speak of this again"... and then eats it. He gets really mad when the Girls mention it about 10 seconds later.
• In Recess all the group agreed this when they see Spinelli having fun dancing Hula Hula with Ms. Finster, who was babysitting her in that episode.
• In Regular Show, Skips enforces this on Mordecai and Rigby at the end of "Diary" since they had to openly reveal their deepest secrets out loud to each other.
• In an episode of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Fred and Daphne encounter a statue of Scrappy-Doo, prompting Fred to tell Daphne that the gang all promised they'd never speak of him again.
• The Simpsons:
  • From "There's No Disgrace Like Home", Homer forces Dr. Marvin Monroe to honor his "double your money back" advertising claim since the family is still fighting. After Dr. Monroe refunds him double, he says "Just go, and never tell anyone you were here!"
  • The Itchy and Scratchy Land episode, after Homer takes a disastrous shortcut:
    Homer: All right, we're here. Let us never speak of the shortcut again.
    • From the same episode, when the others point out that, despite the murderous robots, they technically fulfilled all the conditions that Marge mentioned for a great family vacation.
      Marge: You know, you're right. This truly was the best vacation ever. Now let us never speak of it again.
  • Marge also said it in regard to a relative who snapped and went on a shooting spree:
    Marge: Well, Bart, your Uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out". Unfortunately, one day he put his theory into practice. It took 75 Federal Marshals to bring him down. Now let's never speak of him again.
    • And then Marge actually does speak of him again when she tells Bart to listen to his heart, and "...not the voices in your head like a certain uncle did one gray December morn."
  • This also happened in "The Principal and the Pauper", where Principal Skinner was revealed to be really an impostor named Armin Tamzarian. They cleared up the problem by deciding they were happier with the fake Skinner, and the real one was run out of town. The local judge issues a decree that no-one will ever mention it again, under penalty of torture. Everybody cheers in agreement.
    • And, this being The Simpsons, they do mention it again — in I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot when Skinner is giving Lisa a hard time about naming a new cat of hers the same as her old cat, she calls him Mr. Tamzarian. On the DVD Commentary, Al Jean indicates he inserted the joke himself as a Take That! to that episode.
      Lisa: I'm keeping you. You're Snowball V, but to save money on a new dish, we'll just call you Snowball II, and pretend this whole thing never happened.
      Skinner: That's really a cheat, isn't it?
      Lisa: I guess you're right, Principal Tamzarian.
      Skinner: ...I'll just be moving along, Lisa. Snowball II.
  • Another episode (one that's a Three Shorts type of format like Treehouse of Horror so it's not even canon) introduces Grandpa's brother Cyrus, with dialogue to this effect (paraphrasing):
    Bart and Lisa: You never told us you had a brother, grandpa.
    Grandpa: Yes, and I'll never speak of him again.
  • In "The Last Traction Hero", Mr. Burns is revealed to Smithers and the viewers as the owner of Chernobyl's power plant. He doesn't want the fact to be spoken of again.
• South Park: In the "Fantastic Easter Special" episode, Jewish Kyle and Jesus Christ are locked in a cell. Jesus can escape to stop the episode's villain, but only if Kyle kills him so he can resurrect outside the building. Being notably Jewish, Kyle is less than enthusiastic about the idea, but eventually agrees on the condition that, "Eric Cartman can never find out about this."
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the Season 6 episode “Krabby Road”, SpongeBob hides Plankton from the cops by disguising him as a booger. After SpongeBob blows him out of his nose, Plankton tells him, "You will never speak of this to anyone!"
  • In the Season 9 episode “Squid Baby”, Squidward says the trope name verbatim after he finds out that he was in a (full) diaper the entire time of the episode.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "The Honorable Ones", Zeb and Agent Kallus are forced to work together to escape the ice moon Bahryn after an escape pod crash. At first, Zeb offers to take Kallus as a fairly treated prisoner. Instead, they decide to get rescued separately, and as a matter of principle, whatever experiences they had do not leave Bahryn. However, in season 3, these events proved too impactful for either of them to ignore; the rest of the Ghost crew, as well as some other characters, end up finding out what happened, because the events on Bahryn ended up leading to Kallus having a Heel–Face Turn.
• Static Shock: In "Junior", when a ship is sinking, Static tries to lift it, but he's not strong enough. He carries the passengers to shore in a makeshift raft and asks them not to tell anyone he tried to lift the ship.
• Steven Universe:
  • "Secret Team" has Steven, Pearl, and Amethyst creating a team in order to hide something from Garnet. After they destroyed all the monsters Pearl and Amethyst decide to never discuss it again, though Steven is attached to the concept of their "secret team" and ends up telling Garnet the secret.
  • "Stuck Together": Aquamarine offers this to Topaz after the latter betrays her.
  • "A Single Pale Rose" has a more dramatic example. Pink Diamond, before staging her shattering, orders Pearl (disguising herself as Rose Quartz) to never speak of it again. As Pearl's obedience to her Diamond is hard-coded into her, the order functions as a Geas, leaving her Tongue-Tied every time she attempts to talk about it.
• In one crossover between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Usagi Yojimbo, Usagi says this when he and Leonardo infiltrate a fortress. While Usagi respects the Turtles, he doesn't really like ninjas.
  Usagi: Ugg! Ninja garb! I feel like I am cloaked with dishonor! We will speak of this matter to no-one!
• Thomas & Friends: Gordon and Henry claim they know how to deal with cows, but are at a loss when one wanders onto the line and delays their trains. Afterwards, both agree not to tell anyone (though word gets around, anyway).
• Transformers: The 2008 BotCon script reading, "'Bee in the City", ends with all parties involved agreeing to never speak of the incident again.
• In Wakfu, episode "The Dragon-Pig", for not listening to Sadlygrove's warning, Evangelyne, Amalia and Yugo fall victims to a Forced Transformation turning them into cute, but defenseless piglets. Once they regain human form, Amalia insists that this incident should never be mentioned again.
• We Bare Bears: At the end of "Anger Management", Nom Nom agrees to let his anger management coach Grizzly give him "one last hug for the road", but afterwards tells him "This never happened!"

Real Life

• A key component to the treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War was the agreement for neither side to ever blame the other for starting it (so that it does not break out again over the debate), which effectively silenced the topic altogether in interconfessional meetings. The Westphalian mindset that wars can break out with nobody at fault remained dominant in Europe until the Treaty of Versailles.

• The practice of Damnatio Memoriae in Rome was this about people (Normally emperors).

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Now let us never speak of this trope again.

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