Your protagonist in an Adventure Game walks up to the Big Bad's base. A guard halts you at the entrance. You're presented with a Dialogue Tree; you select "I'm the new recruit." He laughs and notes you're pitifully out of shape for the job, then shoos you away.
You walk up to the same guard again. You're presented with a dialogue tree; you select "I'm here by order of the commander." He asks for your authorization papers. You don't have any. He chases you off.
You walk up to the same guard again. You're presented with a dialogue tree; you select "I'm here to fix the boiler." He admits that the boiler has been acting up lately, and lets you through, apparently forgetting that you just tried to con your way past with two other excuses.
What happened? Well, it would be cruel to give you a game over (nonstandard or otherwise) because you selected the wrong choice, without at least a hint of the right one. It would be even crueler to make the game Unwinnable just because the guard knows you're a liar and doesn't trust you on the second visit. And it would be too simple to let the player just shoot the bastard and walk in uncontested. So they stretch your Suspension of Disbelief and give the guard NPC Amnesia. Guess The Guards Must Be Crazy.
This could be considered one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality if there weren't at least two other options — wait for the guard change (which could be a simple Palette Swap after you've exited the screen), or have a screwed-up conversation force you to find a non-conversational route past the guard instead. Like getting in through the window with your handy Grappling-Hook Pistol, finding the secret passage, etc. Or just let the player kill the guard, because that's what they'll want to do anyway. But this involved a lot of extra programming work, and the deadline is Christmas. Implementing NPC Amnesia is easier.
RPGs often have a similar, if simpler, situation where a Non-Player Character will ask a yes or no question. You can answer "Yes" and get some information, then come back and answer "No" to get different information that might also be important. Or answer "No" first. It's all the same to the NPC, who doesn't recognize you as the flip-flopper you are.
A subset of But Thou Must!. Compare Welcome to Corneria.
Gaming examples:
- Star Control II: You can ask a question as often as you like unless you offend the person you're asking when you ask the first time.
- The Blackwell Series: The dialogue puzzles usually involve choosing a right answer amongst several false ones, sometimes with a dialogue tree that requires a right answer at each step, and the player is given unlimited retries no matter how many times they get it wrong. It's at least justified with the ghosts, who aren't all there, but the security guard in Legacy and the artist in Convergence have no such excuse.
- Chains of Satinav: While posing as a messenger to gain access to a pirate ship, you need to answer the guard's three questions. You can't find out the answer to the second question until you've been asked it by the guard and sent away. Then, when you come back with the answer and repeat the conversation up to that point, you learn that you need to know what it's called in pirate jargon. Now leave, come back, and have the exact same conversation again! Later in the game, there's a conversation with Olgierd where you try to convince him not to kill himself that can be very repetitive if you fail to address his arguments satisfactorily and have to start a dialogue branch over. However, this conversation is optional since you'll eventually get the item you need whether he kills himself or not.
- Gemini Rue:
- At one point, you have to ask a fellow at the front desk of an apartment building the room number of Matthius Howard. But he won't give it to you without (what he thinks is) a legitimate reason and there is in fact a correct solution. If you fail to provide one, he'll refuse to speak with you for the rest of the game. At this point, you can call your partner, Kane to call the guy and ask for the number, which he'll relay to you.
- Later, you have to convince a smuggler to meet up with you, and no matter how many times you botch the conversation, he's willing to give you another chance to convince him despite his apprehensions.
- Grim Fandango:
- Subverted. Part of the Rubacava section requires you to go through a security checkpoint, and the first time you go through the guard has you place all of your items on the nearby table. Later, after you've annoyed the guard so much that she throws away an item you need, you can return to the checkpoint and attempt to go through again. The guard appears to mindlessly repeat the earlier conversation about placing your items on the table...until she makes it clear she does remember you by following those instructions with a suggestion to "jump out the damn window!"
- Played straight when you have to get her to blow up a cigarette case in the contained detonation chamber (It Makes Sense in Context). No matter what you say it is at first, you can keep answering until you pick the right response to make her think it's a bomb.
- In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, this is averted in a few locations, most notably the castle section. You can bluff guards through a combination of the right disguise and excuse, but you'll have to fight them if you fail. Different guards require different outfits. Also, if an already-bluffed guard sees Indiana in a different outfit, the guard will spot the ruse and become hostile. However, one of the guards won't object after seeing Indy going out of a window only to return later through a door, as long as Indy is still in Nazi uniform.
- In the sequel, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, you still have to fist-fight any guards you fail to bluff your way past, but there's nothing quite so elaborate as the castle sequence in the first game. There's also a sequence where you can only learn a password by first admitting you don't know it.
- The Longest Journey: The most blatant example is a high-strung secretary who won't let you into the Corrupt Corporate Executive's office. You can go through every option in the Dialogue Tree (all of which will fail), then leave, come back with a pizza, and pretend to be a delivery girl (in the same set of clothes), and he'll let you through. Although he does acknowledge that your character April does look familiar, April pretty much gaslights him into believing you.
- Sam & Max: Subverted. You need a password to get into the back room, and the trope works just as described even though you are obviously not a member of the mafia (as they all wear giant bear heads). However, the first thing that happens when you get through is that they're impressed you were able to steal the password, and are offered a position in the mafia provided you do some other jobs for them. Incidentally, one of Sam's initial guesses, before you get the password, is "Swordfish".
- Tex Murphy: In the second game, Tex is on the phone trying to convince another man to meet with him. This requires a very specific set of (lying through your teeth) conversation steps, and if you say the wrong thing at any point he'll hang up on you. But don't worry, you can call him back two seconds later and repeat the process from step 1; he'll be none the wiser. And if you've done the whole thing right and convinced him to meet you, but forgot to use the address tracker to find out where his home is, well, you just do the whole thing again.
- The Walking Dead: Averted. Every single thing you do and say will be remembered by everyone around you, and can come back to haunt you several chapters later.
- Assassin's Creed: You can kill someone, turn a corner and hide in a haystack, wait for thirty seconds, and then do it again. Nobody notices the man in white when he emerges from his hiding place. Justified in that the NPCs aren't actual people, but rather Altair's memories of them, as remembered by his descendant roughly 800 years later, making him an Unreliable Narrator.
- Breath of Fire II: When you're trying to smuggle your partner out of town in a garbage can, the guard will stop you and ask what you're carrying. Any of the three responses will work. Later on, the party is asked by a monk what the true name of their god is; answering correctly will let you skip a boss fight.
- Disco Elysium: Lampshaded in the endgame encounter with "Dolores". One of her criticisms of the Player Character is that they treat conversations like dialogue trees.
- EarthBound Beginnings: Often just for fun but there are some particularly complex trees that must be solved through trial and error in order to proceed.
- Fallout:
- Fallout: Subverted. You can lie about having done a particular quest. If you choose to lie and get found out, you can go and do the quest, and come back only for him to tell you "I think you're just lying to me again. Go away." Particularly annoying if you rely on this trope, since completing his quest is the only way to get the Power Armour and BFGs.
- Fallout 2: Lampshaded. If you fail to convince the guard the first time and try again, the guard remarks that you didn't even walk behind the corner before coming back and giving another excuse.
- Fallout 3: NPC characters have a hard time remembering if you've insulted them unless it drove them to attack you; however, when you're given a chance to make a Speech check, you only get the one chance—botch it and you can't convince them to let you try again. Not related to Speech checks, if you steal the Power Armor Mr. Crowley is hoping to retrieve, the NPC in question will never talk to you again, instead only saying, "You stole what was rightfully mine."
- Fallout: New Vegas: Some dialogue trees have a "skill check" as your only dialogue choice. If that skill is too low your response isn't very good. In those cases, you can fail the check and try again after boosting that skill and the person doesn't even seem to find it odd that you were less eloquent before reading a magazine and putting on leopard-print nightwear.
- Final Fantasy VII: Yuffie appears to the party as a random battle encounter. If, during the post-battle scene, the player answers wrong, she'll disappear, stealing from you. She keeps coming back with the same dialogue and continues to steal from the party until her entire dialogue's answers are chosen correctly and she joins the party. However, at that point, she will acknowledge the previous encounters by offering to return "some" of the money she stole earlier.
- Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords: A running theme across the game is that people aren't exactly happy with Jedi or Sith; for normal people, it's hard to tell the difference between one group of superpowered folk running around with lightsabers and another group that does the same thing, and whenever one of them goes after the other, regardless of who starts it, they have a tendency to set the entire galaxy on fire along the way. The people of Dantooine in particular don't like Jedi because the presence of an Enclave made the area a prime target during the Jedi Civil War. As such, running around with your lightsaber visibly equipped tends to make people angry or at least hesitant to talk to you—and they're not going to conveniently forget that you just talked to them with a lightsaber equipped if you back out of the conversation and put it away before trying again. So it's a justified aversion.
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Despite seeing Link attempt to rescue her twice from the Forsaken Fortress, and him actually succeeding the second time, Mila doesn't seem to remember him once she's returned to Windfall and treats him as if he were a total stranger. She even recounts the details of her kidnapping as though Link doesn't already know them.
- Lost Odyssey: Thanks to Jansen throwing an amnesia-causing magic pearl at the guard of their cell and convincing him that they've been wrongly imprisoned, he'll release the party every time you get caught in the Stealth-Based Mission segment.
- Mass Effect: You can give a password as "Uh, sic semper cough, cough ...", then come back with the real passcode. It's justified because you're speaking to a computer.
- Mega Man Battle Network: The quiz givers will always repeat the exact same lines, and give the exact same questions. Always. Apparently, they have forgotten that you have just done their quiz and failed, odd, as you would think that they would consider a rare item as a prize a reason to remember those who have taken the quiz.
- Tales of Symphonia: At one point you have to deliver a letter to a king to help one of your party member friends, but the king is ill and the guards will not let you inside his castle. Just after the first two guards deny you entry, two other guards appear and tell the first two "Your shift's up.". This allows you to leave and come back shortly after you get the help of a future ally who allows you to pretend that you're helping her deliver sacred wood inside the castle.
Shooters
- Firefall: El Terremoto never seems to remember you are not a newbie anymore and gives his "I heard about you!" speech over and over.
Simulation Games
- Animal Crossing: Shopkeepers will never question you if you get to buy an item just after you reject it. Also, villagers temporarily feel bad when you insult them or refuse to help them. After some minutes, they act as if it never happened.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- In this case, it's also PC Amnesia, as you can repeat an entire conversation in the exact same way multiple times. Sometimes, taking advantage of this is even necessary to continue the game.
- You only have one shot at getting April May to tell you about her employer. Blow it and you have to drop by Grossberg to find out.
- Black Closet: Part of solving the steam tunnels case involves gossiping with your fellow students to figure out places where the tunnels might be, but any girls that you've previously harassed, put in detention, or otherwise upset will refuse to speak to you.
- L.A. Noire: Since questioning suspects and witnesses is a huge part of the game, you as a rule only get one chance to ask the right question, although for some you can re-ask it or a similar one after you find more evidence and re-question them. Your rating on each case is partially determined by how well you go through the dialogue trees.
Non-video game examples:
Fan Works
- Living in Oblivion: Several instances of it happening in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion get pointed out.
- Pokémon Fusion Generation:
- Most gym leaders will not acknowledge anything they do outside their gym. Even if you visit them after the Magnet Train explodes, they will act like it never happened.
- After Janine helps you in Victory Road, she can be found in her gym right afterwards and won't mention it. She doesn't address the Magnet Train explosion either. She will, however, give you Beepom after Courtney surrenders it in the Safari Zone, and will ask you how it's doing.
- Averted with Blaine, who wasn't on the Magnet Train and acknowledges the events taking place in the Seafoam Islands.
- Averted with Blue, since you fight him after the Magnet Train explosion.
- Yureka: As the manhwa is set largely within an MMORPG, this is Played for Horror with Piri. She's a cheerful shopkeeper NPC who is meant only to seem like a person on the surface, but instead experiences grief when her memories are wiped whenever the game resets. Except she's actually a real human, hooked up to a game ever since she ended up in a coma after an accident.
- Family Guy: Peter manages to get three free samples in a store by first going as himself and then re-entering the queue having put on very obvious incognito disguises (one is a joke nose and the other a fake black bear with a hat). The clerk looks more irritated each time until he snaps and tells Peter he can have all the free samples he wants. Except, it was two men identical to Peter, not just him. So, parodied.
- The Simpsons: Parodied. In one episode, Homer takes a free sample offered by someone in a store but is refused a second. So he comes back with a fake mustache on and is refused again. Until Homer comes back on the other side of the screen, and it's actually someone else who looks exactly like Homer with a fake mustache.
