Once Done, Never Forgotten

Buzz Lightyear: And did [Woody] give up when you threw him out of the back of that moving van?
Mr. Potato Head: Oh, you had to bring that up!
Buzz: No, he didn't! We have a friend in need, and we will not rest until he's safe in Andy's room!

— Toy Story 2

Some people just don't have the best fortune. They may have done something really embarrassing or regretful in their past that they're now completely ready to leave behind... if only everyone, their mother, and their dog wouldn't keep bringing it up at every opportunity.

Once Done, Never Forgotten describes any In-Universe situation where a character has done something in the past that other characters (or the universe itself) won't let them forget. The nature of the deed isn't terribly important for the purposes of this trope; it could be anything from downright evil to benign or even funny. Whatever the case may be, the important part is that this deed casts a shadow on the character wherever they go.

Once Done, Never Forgotten is a versatile trope, as it can easily be played for drama or humor. When played for drama, the character may have done something unforgivable, and the other characters bring it up constantly to shame and scorn them. Just as often, however, the trope is Played for Laughs, with old embarrassments being repeatedly brought up for the cast's amusement (as well as our own). In comedic examples, the target of the mockery may become The Chew Toy or a Butt-Monkey, and the mockery tends to be more playful and lighthearted than hateful. In less grave examples, the ribbing can even become an Insult of Endearment.

Related to (and can overlap with) Forgiven, but Not Forgotten and Old Shame. Contrast Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?, which is when characters keep referencing something awesome a character did, and Flanderization, which is when a once-minor trait completely engulfs the character, but isn't actually referenced In-Universe. If the incident is mentioned but never elaborated on, it's a Noodle Incident.

Compare the out-of-universe variant Never Live It Down, where a character is endlessly mocked by the fandom for a one-time or long-past event. If a show's creators notice fandom mockery of a character and slips it into canon, that's a form of Ascended Meme.

As per the definition of this trope, this means In-Universe Examples Only.

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Examples:

Advertising

• In one Capital One commercial, the Grinch volunteers to deliver Christmas presents, but is refused.
  Grinch: You steal the presents one time...

Anime & Manga

• In Boarding School Juliet, one reason for Romio's poor reputation with his fellow Black Dogs is a fluke he made in the school's Sports Festival the previous year, during the 100-meter race that decided the winner ^note he had a false start, and when the race had to restart, he was too exhausted to even continue. He was warned not to participate in any sporting event again. Even though he redeems himself in the very same race this year, later that day his reputation would only sink even lower than before, in the Mock Cavalry Battle that again decided the winner. Mainly because the loss was due to accidentally groping Juliet and passing out from a massive Nosebleed in the process. Not only was Romio ousted from his position as Black Dog leader, he gets an Embarrassing Nickname on top of it.
• Chainsaw Man: A nasty rumor about Denji circulating in Part 2 is that he eats humans like most Fiends and hybrids. Due to how he defeated Makima by eating her, Denji can't fully refute those claims.
• At the start of Charlotte, Yuu Otosaka uses his powers to possess people in order to cheat on tests, enabling him to get into a prestigious high school and get the attention of the School Idol. Nao Tomori catches him in the act and forces him to transfer to her school to help track down other ability wielders and stop them from abusing their powers. Yuu becomes a better person over time, but that doesn't stop Nao from snarking at him for being a cheater, often when he expresses genuine sympathy over her traumatic past.
• Code Geass: Princess Euphemia is likely going to be forever remembered for slaughtering thousands of innocent Japanese under the influence of the Geass, never mind that she would never do such a thing of her own volition.
• Dragon Ball Z: In the Buu Saga, Gotenks was hyped up to be the hero who would defeat Majin Buu and save the world, but he utterly failed to do so, getting his ass handed to him by Fat Buu and losing to Super Buu because he was more concerned with showboating and trying to make himself look cool. By the time of Super, the Dragon Team have decided that Gotenks is too immature and Lethally Stupid to be relied upon for anything; come the Tournament of Power, they tell Goten and Trunks point-blank that they're not on the team because the last time they depended on Gotenks to save the world, he completely screwed up and nearly got everyone killed.
• Girls und Panzer: Yukari will always be Sergeant Third-Class Oddball for Saunders students, after her attempt to infiltrate the school under that name.
• Downplayed in GTO: The Early Years The first thing Fumiya says to Saejima after getting out of juvie is asking if he's "that pencil nose guy", an understandable Berserk Button for Saejima (especially since Fumiya was one of the people who did it to him).
• High School D×D: After befriending Asia Argento, Xenovia Quarta often beats herself up for calling her a witch during their first meeting.
• Love Live! Sunshine!!: When coming up with names for their three-girl idol group, Riko Sakurauchi suggests "Three Mermaids", though when Chika and You dismiss it she asks them to forget it. Later in episode 5, when trying to figure out how to boost Aquors fame, Riko suggest they rename their now larger group to something more eccentric. Chika jokes they can go with "Five Mermaids" this time, much to Riko's embarressment.
• Minami-ke: One day, Chiaki decided to give everyone in her class a nickname, with Shuuichi ending up with the Embarrassing Nickname "Plain Yogurt". While the nickname didn't stuck, Shuuichi hated it so much that he keeps complaining about it many chapters/episodes later and says that he doesn't even like yogurt.
• Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation: On his very first day after enrolling at Ranoa Magic Academy, Rudeus instantly got on the bad side of the female student body when he got accused of being a Panty Thief, especially when the apparent victim was a VIP, Princess Ariel. Rudeus happening upon the undergarments was an actual accident, and the princess' bodyguard Fitts bailed him out before he got lynched by a mob, but it's a Running Gag to bring this incident up even after Rudy unwittingly builds a reputation around campus.
• My Hero Academia:
  • In the first chapter, Bakugou gets attacked by a sludge villain and is held hostage before being rescued by All Might. The other students at Ultra Academy know better than to anger him by bringing it up, but civil servants and upper authorities with the academy and Hero Association still refer to him as "That kid from the slime monster incident." Someone brings it up at some point during the sports festival, when Bakugo gets kidnapped by the League of Villains, and during the Provisional License exam.
  • After the Provisional License Exams just before the start of the second term in September, Bakugo starts a fight with Midoriya, who fights back and ultimately loses, resulting in both boys being confined to the dorms for a few days. Iida is rather annoyed with both of them for acting out, and even refers to them as "the lockdown boys" the following spring.
  • Sero is subject to a Curb-Stomp Battle courtesy of Todoroki at the Sports Festival. Given the overwhelming difference in raw power, everyone in the audience tells him, "Don't worry about it!" He moans about this later, as people continued to tell him this even after the Sports Festival ended. His classmates sympathize with him before telling him, "Don't worry about it!"
• In One Piece, when the Straw Hat Pirates reunite after a two-year Time Skip, Zoro of all people (he's the most notorious offender of No Sense of Direction in the crew) was the first to arrive at their meeting place. He proceeds to rub it in everyone's faces by calling them by the order they have arrived in (with him as Number 1, of course), to Sanji's chagrin.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • When Ash reunites with Misty and Brock during Sun and Moon so they can help his class tour Kanto, the topic of earning Gym Badges comes up. Both of them are still giving Ash grief about earning their badges out of pity.
  • Clemont is revealed to have lost to Drasna between X and Y and Journeys, which Bonnie won't let him live down.
• Spirit Circle features Flors the architect, who journeys to build a sphinx in a far-off land and ends up being known only for that, even though he thought of the project as a failure. He spends the rest of his life as a distant, bitter old man; his last breath begging for anyone to simply use his name rather than calling him "Master Sphinx".
• YuYu Hakusho: Early in the Chapter Black arc, Team Urameshi got caught in a game of Taboo where the loser could potentially lose his soul. Hiei deliberately disregarded the rules of the game out of impatience, leading to him being the first to lose his soul, which became a frequent source of mockery for him.

Comic Books

• Ant-Man: Hank Pym, the first Ant-Man, hit his wife, Janet van Dyne (aka, The Wasp), in The Avengers #213 and the incident has continued to hang a dark shadow over his character both in and out of universe to this day. In fact, the Skrull spy that impersonates him resents having to pose as a wife beater. Never mind that Hank hit Janet once, and was undergoing a mental breakdown at the time. The Never Live It Down nature of this incident has even been deconstructed a few times. In Secret Empire, when Tony Stark snidely brings it up during an argument, Hank goes on a violent tirade, ranting about how unfair and ridiculous it is that he still gets crap for this one mistake in spite of all his other accomplishments and good deeds while Tony himself has made mistakes with much worse consequences yet is always Easily Forgiven for them.
  • Hank and Janet had another similar scene in The Ultimates, a reimagining of the Avengers set in the Ultimate Marvel universe, only worse. Far, far worse - not only does he hospitalize Janet, it turns out in this continuity this has been going on for the whole time they've been dating. Pym is kicked out of the team because of it, and beaten to a pulp by Captain America, and everyone always treated him with rejection and disdain since then. Even when Pym pulls a Redemption Equals Death in Ultimatum, Captain America keeps insulting Hank before realizing that he's dead.
• Asterix: In the comics it happens with Alésia. It was the place where the Gauls were defeated by the Romans, and as such, it is a taboo subject. Whenever Asterix asks about it in The Chieftain's Shield, people loudly and angrily claim that they don't know where Alésia is (and the comic claims this is the reason no one knows today where it is located, which was the case when the comic was written).
• Batman:
  • The Batman villain Killer Moth used to be a big-name villain in Gotham until he was defeated by Barbara Gordon in her first ever costumed outing as Batgirl, something that his Villain Cred never recovered from.
  • Batman will never let Huntress live down her body count of mobsters. Justified, because Batman is infamous for his adherence to Thou Shalt Not Kill, and Huntress began her career as a vigilante specifically to deliver lethal punishment to criminals, which she is sometimes portrayed as unrepentant about doing and/or continuing to do.
  • For two decades, between A Death in the Family and Under the Red Hood, if Jason Todd got brought up after his death, it was usually other characters blaming him for dying. Which came after his mother, who Jason had been trying to reconnect with, sold him out to the Joker, who then bludgeoned Jason with a crowbar.
  • Preventing an occurrence of this becomes The Joker's motivation to commit "street" crimes that couldn't be linked to him in the story "Joker's Millions". Once Joker finds out that most of what rival mob boss "King" Barlowe willed him was fake, he is torn between being mocked publicly for being pranked by a dead man, getting jailed for tax evasion, or returning to crime to pay off the inheritance taxes and protect his image. This was later adapted into an episode for Batman: The Animated Series.
• Fantastic Four: The Trapster has a cool name (in comparison, at least), was a charter member of the Frightful Four, and wields fairly dangerous adhesive-based weaponry. He also debuted calling himself "Paste-Pot Pete" and had a string of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Human Torch and Spider-Man. And the heroes never let him forget it — to the point where just calling him "Pete" while he's in costume has become his Berserk Button.
• Green Arrow:
  • Roy Harper was once addicted to heroin. His heroin addiction lasted for only two issues before he went cold turkey with help from Black Canary and Green Lantern. Originally, Roy's addiction was sometimes brought up as one of his failures and was usually only ever used against him during especially bad moments between him and his friends or teammates. Then after the New 52 changed everything, Roy's addiction was retconned into alcoholism and barely a single issue went by without it being brought up. It only got worse after his drug addiction was brought back into his history, this time with the alcoholism still canon and while it was established he was seeing a therapist.
    • Coming off of this, Green Arrow threw Roy out of his home once he learned about Roy's addiction. While he felt guilty about it afterwards, it's long since been treated as one of the worst things Arrow did as a mentor and a father figure. And it doesn't help that Arrow has such a habit of routinely destroying his personal relationships that his abandonment of Roy keeps being brought up as just one example of what an asshole he can be.
• Green Lantern:
  • Hal Jordan's run as the supervillain Parallax, although it's a bit milder than most other examples, as he was later revealed to have been Brainwashed and Crazy at the time.
  • Guy Gardner will never live down the time he annoyed the Batman so much that Bats knocked him out with a single punch, or the time Superman almost stole his girlfriend Ice from him. It wasn't Supes' fault, though — Ice just said that she thought Superman was cute.
• Scarlet Witch: The Scarlet Witch removed the powers of almost all mutants in House of M, thousands of whom died as an immediate consequence. Although she was not herself at the time, everybody is angry with her because of it. She got this during her return in Avengers: The Children's Crusade and during Avengers vs. X-Men, Uncanny Avengers and others. In X-Men (2019), she is used as the boogeyman of the mutant nation of Krakoa.
• The Sentry: The Sentry once threw The Void into the sun. Subsequently, whenever a team he's on are dealing with a particularly powerful foe, someone will always suggest that they just have Sentry throw them into the sun. To make it funnier, after his death, Thor threw his body into the sun.
  Sentry: I don't throw everything into the sun...
• Silver Surfer: The Silver Surfer is always haunted by his past as a herald of Galactus, and that under his service he led him to consume planets. He left him in the climax of The Coming of Galactus, his first story arc, and for many decades we had always known him as a former herald of Galactus. Still, the past is always mentioned, either because of aliens with a desire of revenge, or by the Surfer himself and his constant "It's All My Fault" attitude.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Sonic loves to tease Antoine about his Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys phase, as seen in issue 204:
    Sonic: Remember your old yellow streak?
    Antoine: Oui. I recall it all too well.
    Sonic: Because I totally could bring it up right now.
    Antoine: I know.
    Sonic: I've got a list.
    Antoine: Stop eet.
  • Sonic himself gets it from Fiona Fox, who he unknowingly left behind in a remote prison while pursuing Robotnik, forcing her to break out herself. She's held a grudge against Sonic for his failure to save her for years, and it's one of the main reasons she ends up defecting to Scourge, using Sonic as a "prime example" of why she can't count on or trust anyone. She initially confessed that she did eventually see Sonic as a valiant hero after his Heroic Sacrifice to save Mobius from the Xorda, but that ultimately became an Ignored Epiphany.
  • In issue 134, after Sonic declines helping her run the kingdom in favor of continuing the fight with Eggman, Sally responds by slapping him, lambasting him for being selfish, and essentially dumping him right in front of everybody in Knothole. Several call-backs to this moment are made, with it being made clear Sally regrets being so harsh; she even turns down a chance to start a romance with Monkey Khan for this reason, acknowledging she reacted badly and was unfair to Sonic.
• Supergirl: In Post-Crisis continuity, Catherine Grant will never let Supergirl forget she vowed to save a child who was dying of cancer... and failed.
• Superlópez: In Los Alienigenas (The Aliens), one of the alien invaders (who have the ability to shapeshift at will) takes early in the story the form of a heater for a while to disguise himself. Later, when Superlopez is tracking down another of the aliens, he finds another heater, identical to the one used previously by the alien. Superlopez mistakenly thinks the alien has become again a heater (actually, the alien had taken the shape of a woman), and for the rest of the story, everyone seems to believe the aliens like taking the shape of heaters.
• Teen Titans: The villainess Cheshire once got her hands on a bunch of nuclear bombs and held the world hostage. And to show everyone she wasn't kidding, Cheshire dropped one on the country of Qurac and laughed as it burned, killing thousands upon thousands. She's long since been defined by this act of genocide. This counts as a Justified Trope because the sheer magnitude of the act is something that no sane person would ever forget when dealing with her, and she's repeatedly been targeted by people who want her to pay for it years after it happened.
• Transmetropolitan: The comic briefly introduced to a minor character who bemoans that, despite his skill with tools, he isn't called "Bill the Handyman" or "Bill the Stage Builder." We then see a speech bubble from off panel that calls out "Hey Bill Chimp-Fucker!" eliciting a wince from Bill. He later clarifies that it was "just one time" before vanishing from the comic.
• Ultimate Fantastic Four:
  • Doom considers the experiment this, especially being blamed for it.
  • A comical version is Reed being a Giver of Lame Names which gets a lot of riffing the first time, and the second time he's made something he gets asked "So what's this one called, the Wonderbus?"
• X-Men:
  • Jean Grey. The Shi'ar won't forgive Jean for having been possessed/replaced by a cosmic entity and later corrupted by two psychic villains in The Dark Phoenix Saga; every so often, Inspector Javerts from the Shi'ar Empire come to try to kill Jean (and did kill her entire family) because apparently merely being capable of hosting the Phoenix equals "may wake up one morning and decide to end the universe any day now."
  • Kitty Pryde's atrocious attempt to design her own outfit keeps popping up at times to embarrass her.

Comic Strips

• Calvin and Hobbes: Hobbes repeatedly brings up something Calvin apparently did at school that is the Trope Namer for Noodle Incident. When he does this, Calvin gets angry and claims he was framed.

Fan Works

Crossovers

• In The Myth of Link & Zelda: Age of Calamity, the prequel installment of The Myth of Link & Zelda: Survivors of the Calamity, Zelda won't let Impa live down an off-screen event in the past where she accidentally cut a hole in the side of her house with her Devoted Kodachi's Razor Wind.
• Avatar of Victory (Avatar: The Last Airbender & Mass Effect): Asha's family is considered jinxed since one of her ancestors, who was actually a decent commander, got the last Avatar killed in action.
• BlazBlue Alternative: Remnant (BlazBlue & RWBY): In Chapter 18, when Ruby starts making puns and calls Yang the "queen of punning", Yang points out that she only ever made one terrible pun back in Signal, yet people treat her like the Pungeon Master because of it.
  Yang: I swear, you make one shitty pun, and the world will never let you forget it.
• Danganronpa: Gilded Cage: Some of the participants' talents are based on single events in their respective franchise without the context. For example, Susato is the Super Duper High School Crossdresser for the time she pretended to be a male attorney because Meiji Japan prohibited women from participating in court outside of being a witness in crime, Legoshi is the Super Duper High School Cannibal for when he ate the leg of his schoolmate Louis (who gave it to him willingly) to fight off a stronger carnivore, and Hiro is the Super the Super Duper High School Dogfighter for his past in bot-fighting (which he dropped during the start of his film, and he was pulled while working on his nanobots).
• Cai Yong has several scenes in Farce of the Three Kingdoms, but his first scene is also the first scene of the story, wherein he explains to the emperor what transgender chicken signify. From then on, all the other characters refer to him as "the transgender chicken guy."
• In Harry and the Shipgirls, Lieutenent JG James Hunter, the shipgirl Sirius, and the Misericordia spirit Estelle fought off an attack by the Abyssal Fleet all by themselves...after having been in a threesome, with Hunter having taken potions to help his endurance. After the group was taken to the hospital, he was stuck with the moniker "Lieutenant Full Mast".
• Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail:
  • During their battle, Chloe tried using Tackle against Ash's Gengar, unaware that Normal-type moves don't work on Ghosts. Goh later brings this up, and her dad chides her for 'forgetting' that, which proves to be her Rage Breaking Point. To her, this reflects her inability to fit in; how could she get into Pokémon like everyone else if she didn't know something they treat as common knowledge...? And worse, she's the daughter of a Pokémon Professor, meaning that the insults from everyone would be even more damning. She even mentions this to Azam, stating that her classmates would just laugh at her trying to stop the Apex, assuming she's incapable of accomplishing anything due to her making such a rookie mistake. However, this trope is actually subverted, as Chloe is the only one to keep bringing up her mistake. Even Chloe's bullies moved onto other points of mockery quickly- Chloe just assumed that Pokémon experts like Goh, Ash, and her father would never let her forget her mistake, when really they were far more occupied with finding her and understood that everyone makes mistakes in Pokémon battles at first.
  • Ash's only source of info on Chloe was from Goh saying "She just stopped liking Pokémon one day". Because he never tried to do anything other than that, by the time he learns of the Infinity Train, he gets called out for being lazy and not even wanting to know anything about Chloe.
  • On a larger scale, this sort of mindset proves to be a major obstacle in the path of everyone trying to heal and change for the better. Many problems arise from a general reluctance of others to forgive the mistakes others have made. Chloe, for instance, spends a long time holding onto her grudges not just against those who bullied and hurt her, but those who left her feeling ignored and forgotten. Goh falls into a similar mindset, growing resentful and bitter. People who are trying to change their ways for the better frequently find their efforts stymied by those who refuse to see them as anything less than their absolute worst.
• Justice: After knowing that Parasite got kicked in the balls by Luffy, Hawkgirl amuses herself by spreading the story, like when she goes with Wonder Woman to Themyscira and decides to tell the Amazons about it.
• Manehattan's Lone Guardian: Early in her stay at the eponymous city, the dimensionally-displaced Leviathan accidentally smacks into a door that doesn't open on its own or with a button press. From that point on, those who associate with her are quick to remind her of this incident, even though it doesn't happen again.
• The MLP Loops: Applejack once tried to make cider out of potatoes. On consumption, Twilight went blind, Spike shot flames out of nose and ears, Zecora flat-out refused to try it, and Discord burst into fire (before announcing his approval). Apple Bloom eventually found a use for it - as a superb all-natural engine lubricant. Since then, references to the notorious brew keep popping up, much to her embarrassment.
• In Oni Ga Shiku Series, Izuku Midoriya finishes his fight against Bakugou Katsuki in the Sports Festival by applying a move Izuku learned from his uncle Goro Majima — namely, he applies an instant-effect sleeper hold to Katsuki that looks like he snapped Katsuki's neck and everybody at the stadium assumes that he killed him until Izuku kicks Katsuki a few times and he groans in pain to prove he is just unconscious. From that point onward, the memory of that takedown becomes a collective Trauma Button for the rest of 1-A and Izuku develops a reputation as "the class maniac" even with All Might.
• The Touhou Project/Pokémon crossover Monsters In Paradise has, all of people, Yukari Yakumo. Rustboro City's local librarian and her family take every chance to remind the youkai that she caused a swathe of destruction between Mauville and Rustboro while learning to ride a bicycle.
  Yukari: Honestly. You take one bike ride, and suddenly you're a pariah. I knew I should've flown.
• Realm of Entwined Science and Sorcery — Academy City (Fate/Grand Order & A Certain Magical Index): When she is summoned as a Servant, Queen Hippolyta is slightly displeased that she is only remembered as the person Heracles defeated for his Ninth Labor, saying she had a life before that.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds A Live: Whenever the Seven Heroes talk about Odio, someone will always remind Sundown that his Odio incarnation was a horse.

Ace Attorney:

• Lana Skye's Parole: This is weaponized by Kristoph when Lana Skye is interrogating him for his involvement in framing Phoenix for using forged evidence in court, where he reminds her that she used forged evidence as the chief prosecutor (albeit under another's order), and how she crushed several attorneys with such tactics, including Kristoph in his first trial.

Arrowverse

• Blackbird:
  • Trading Laurel to the League of Assassins for Sara's freedom is this for both Dinah and Sara. Dinah is basically Persona Non Grata to all of Laurel's loved ones now, and by the end of the first story, neither Laurel nor Oliver are quite ready to forgive Sara yet, even though she's palpable with her guilt and regret.
  • Ironically subverted with Oliver's decision to cheat on Laurel with Sara. Under normal circumstances, it would be this, but what Dinah and Sara did to Laurel was so much worse that it ended up overshadowing his actions completely. Then, he redeemed himself entirely by saving Laurel from the League, something that nearly killed him. By the end of the story, nobody holds what happened against Oliver anymore, not even Laurel herself, and some of them, such as Thea and Tommy, actively encourage him to get back together with her.

Bleach

• Vow of the King: The story of how Isane broke two 11th Division members' collarbones with her thumbs for getting belligerent with her quickly circulates around her own division, to her embarrassment.

Buffyverse

• Willow and Cordelia don't seem to be living down burning down Xander's house in Mirror, Mirror after their break-up. Particularly because they broke up with him then burned down his house in the mirror world because he didn't seem upset enough about it. To be fair to them, they thought the reflections reset and didn't know Xander was just taking them to different reflections each time.
• In Working for the Weekend, no one who knows of it will let Xander forget about the time he made an omelette out of Dodo eggs.

Danganronpa

• Never Say Never: All of the attempted murderers face this, rather than being Easily Forgiven after being exposed in the Bullying Trials.
• In Three-Point Shot, several characters bring up how Kaede set a trap to kill the mastermind in Chapter 1. Unlike in canon, the class discovers that Tsumugi is Rantaro's actual killer, so Tsumugi gets executed and Kaede survives, but Kaede still feels responsible for what happened.

Doctor Who

• In Rose of Pollux's fics, Jamie has on occasion reminded the Doctor that he had forgotten what Jamie looked like during one of their early adventures.

Dragon Ball

• Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
  • In the main canon, Yamcha getting killed by a Saibaman is a Never Live It Down. In this canon, the other characters also make fun of him for it, from Bulma telling him that she is breaking up with him for Vegeta who was partially responsible for his death to Vegeta laughing upon the thought that somebody would even die to a Saibaman to other characters using his name as a verb in certain situations.
  • In canon, Future Trunks warns the Z-Warriors about two androids who would kill them and is caught off-guard when he learns about Androids 19 and 20, not knowing about them. Here, Vegeta considers it a Mark of Shame and refuses to let him live it down, especially when more Androids show up.

Godzilla

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon):
  • Mark Russell has gotten over his anti-Titan bigotry since the events of Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), but regardless, said bigotry is one of the reasons why many at Monarch still view Mark with contempt.
  • San holds a grudge against Ren Serizawa, after the latter's meltdown during which he let his inner resentments at Vivienne out and hurt her feelings.

Harry Potter

• In Departure From The Diary, Tamelyn Riddle regularly reminds Harry of his Leeroy Jenkins tendencies, particularly that he tried to fight a Basilisk as a twelve-year-old with literally no plan at all. She makes it quite clear that event alone has convinced her he'd get them both killed if she ever left him alone for a few hours.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
  Harry: I was seven years old! How long are you going to keep on bringing that up?
  Harry's mother: I know, you bite one maths teacher and they never let you forget it, do they?
• In No Competition, Judas and Lich never let Lucifer forget about the time he had sex with a goat, even thousands of years later. On the flipside, Judas and Lucifer keep bringing up that Lich sank Atlantis.
• In The Real Us, five-year-old Harry dubs Dumbledore "Grandpappy Firebird" (reference to Fawkes). For the rest of the fic, Dumbledore happily answers to that nickname, and comments to embarrassed eleven-year-old Harry that he thought it was cute, and McGonagall was quite amused, which also pleased him.
• In Souls Abound, Crappy the goblin bitterly mused to himself that "shit yourself just once in class and that's all anybody would ever remember about you."

Kung Fu Panda

• A Different Lesson: Played straight at first, but eventually averted. Tai Lung eventually forgives Po for humiliating him, and Tai Lung himself is eventually forgiven for his rampage, but not until after a great deal of time, soul-searching, and grudge-bearing—for the longest time it seems as if the snow leopard will never get over his final battle with Po or acknowledge the panda had done anything worthwhile as a kung fu warrior, and thanks to how terrible his rampage was it seems as if everyone will only remember Tai Lung for that and not any of his heroic deeds which preceded it.
  • Prime illustrative quotes—first, Tai Lung regarding Po's humiliation of him during their battle:
  "Do I have to spell it out?" Tai Lung snarled sarcastically. "You battered me senseless, made me bite my own tail, bounced me off that belly of yours, and turned me into a laughingstock! No one in the village, or the whole valley, will ever take me seriously again!"
  The panda winced, looking rather guilty. His voice became evasive, even as his eyes shifted uncomfortably about, never meeting Tai Lung's gimlet gaze. "Yeah, well, ya didn't leave me much choice there, buddy. It was you or me, and you're the one who made it that way. I gave you every chance to call it quits, but you just wouldn't stop—"
  Tai Lung's nostrils flared. "You made me...bite...my tail." He seemed very stuck on that point.
  • And then regarding his rampage:
  "And as for who I think I am..." [Tai Lung] drew himself up to his full height, nostrils flaring as he growled softly. "I think I'm the one who defended this valley when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. I know I'm the one who kept the peace and protected all the outlying communities in Hubei province years before Oogway ever made his judgment or Chorh-Gom was rebuilt, so don't try and tell me how to do my job!"
  He knew he shouldn't be boasting, but he couldn't help it—as Po had made him realize, there was a lot more to his life and what he had done with it than his short-lived rampage (however horrific it had been), and everyone, himself included, needed to remember that.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

• You will always have a part of me nobody else is ever gonna see: Even after almost two decades and an Alternate Timeline later, Noriaki Kakyoin is still remembered for the time he said he wanted to marry someone like Jotaro's mother Holly, which in-universe the rumors have evolved to saying that Kakyoin wants to outright marry her if Kakyoin having to insist otherwise is any indication. Apparently, it's also the only story that Polnareff told his boss Giorno Giovanna.

Love Live! Sunshine!!

• Home: Riko Sakurauchi very much wants to defy this in regards to when she cooked a hamburg steak for her then girlfriend and now wife Yō’s, particularly when Dia teased her about Riko buying a frozen steak from the grocery.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Lampshaded by Loki in Castaway Getaways that one group of humans named him a god of deceit and mischief and Asgard has held that over him for centuries ever since.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Crimson and Noire: Played for Laughs in chapter 29, when Trixx and Roarr tease Fu about the time when he tried to leave Marianne behind to protect her. The two recall the incident with dramatic fervor.
  Trixx: What about that one time you abandoned her to 'protect' her?
  Fu: Trixx.
  Roarr: It was too dangerous, you said! 'She could have gotten hurt!'
  Trixx: (Quoting Fu) We have to go on alone, as always!
• In Chapter 12 of Hey, hey, maybe you're my love! (an AU where Marinette and Adrien have to kiss to transform) Ladybug tries to trigger Alya's transformation into Rena Rouge by kissing her on the lips, only to learn too late that her transformation only requires the corresponding phrase. Ever since, whenever they have to get a Miraculous for a temporary partner, Chat Noir silently reminds Ladybug about this, and Ladybug yells that it only happened once.
• The Karma of Lies: Discussed when Alya mentions that once she and the rest of the class reconcile with Marinette, she plans on teasing her mercilessly over not forgiving them immediately for the whole 'taking her for granted and socially abandoning her on Lila's say so'. The fact that Marinette is punishing them by cutting them out of her life precisely the same way that they did to her is completely lost upon them.
• In A Lady's Scout (and the Salt within her Soul), Marinette makes symbolic 'parting gifts' for each of the temporary heroes whom she has deemed unworthy of being entrusted with a Miraculous again. When she gives Max a pair of sunglasses, she remarks "And don't worry, they'll protect your eyes from dangerous napkins," reminding him of how he'd previously believed that a wadded-up paper napkin might have gouged his eye out.
• Long Con:
  • Marinette suspects that Alya and the rest of her classmates (aside from the oblivious Adrien) see her as just "the girl who's hopelessly crushing on Adrien", not letting her live down any of the embarrassing incidents that have sprung from her failed attempts to get his attention. She privately admits to herself just how much it hurts that they've reduced her to such a Flat Character, ignoring all of her other interests and ambitions and acting as though her sole motivation is hooking up with him.
  • When Alya publicly accuses her of lying, Lila counters by reminding everyone of how she mishandled the Oblivious incident: despite knowing that Ladybug and Chat Noir didn't have their memories when they kissed, she deliberately misrepresented the situation on her Ladyblog in order to push her preferred narrative. Chloe also brings up how Alya broke into her locker, further underscoring the idea that Alya doesn't let things like morals or facts get in the way of pushing a "sensational story".
• In On Thick Ice, Alya and most of the 'Girl Squad' refuse to let Marinette's old crush on Adrien go, mercilessly harping on it even when her feelings have long faded and she's eager to move on. Tellingly, they're also quick to advise that she should give up on Luka, that his crush on her was 'so long ago' and not worth thinking about. Implying that he's allowed to move on while she isn't.
• Truth and Consequences: Marinette finds herself in this position in the sequel, Mending Warped Designs. None of the other heroes have forgotten what she did, and even those who aren't still furious with her want to ensure that things never reach that point again.
• Two Letters: Even half a year after retiring, Marinette remains resentful towards almost everyone who had been akumatized. Particularly those whom she feels were akumatized for silly, petty reasons — for instance, while she doesn't begrudge her mother for getting akumatized over the time she was harassed by a racist cop, she does harp on how she once got akumatized arguing over whether Marinette should get a scooter. She even tends to mentally refer to people by the names of their akumatized selves.

My Hero Academia

• Crimson and Emerald: Hawks knows the day that his mother will forgive him for jumping out of their apartment window to test out his wings is still a long day coming.
• Downplayed in One for All and Eight for the Ninth, but several months after the story began, a schism in the hero community sees Izuku and Miruko facing "heroes" who are about to attack peaceful protestors, and Izuku is quick to point out how unheroic two of them really are.
  Izuku: Might as well not count Death Arms and Slugger. Odds are good they’ll say their Quirks aren’t suited for this and stand there watching.
• The UA Girls:
  • This is Played for Laughs with Momo, who confesses to the other girls that she didn't think much of Izuku at much, seeing him as 'wishy-washy' at first. The other girls refuse to let her live this down.
  • Izuku's habit of breaking his own bones is regularly brought up by his friends, even after he's taken steps to avoid doing it again.
  • The girls also regularly bring up how often Bakugou attacks Midoriya, feeling righteously furious towards him.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• The Nuptialverse:
  • Shining Armor started calling his sister "Twiley" after he caught her using Baby Talk with an infant Spike, right after she'd scolded him for treating Spike like a baby.
  • Both of Scootaloo's parents use this as part of their ongoing emotional and psychological abuse of their daughter.
  • Dash tells Scootaloo that her old nickname of "Rainbow Crash" came from an incident where she choked while running through an obstacle course.
• Rainbooms and Royalty: In Hot Heads, Cold Hearts and Nerves of Steel, Candance refuses to let Shining Armor forget about the time he accidentally walked into the mare's bathroom and got caught in there by Princess Luna.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: That time Trixie melted an ice palace at a party. While she was inside it. Any time she runs into someone she knew in Canterlot, they'll mention it. Even her friends are dubious with her track record re: ice palaces and melting. Not helping is that Trixie doesn't even remember how she did it, just that the last thing she said before giving Canterlot a second waterfall was "Watch this".
• Twilight The Third: Shining Armor aren't about to let Sunset forget what happened at Twilight's entrance exam anytime soon. Namely, that the reason why Twilight failed was because of them barging in and blasting Spike with a fireball, nearly causing Twilight to fall to her death along with Spike's actual demise.

Naruto

• in dreams you follow (but I dream in the dark):
  • Kiba deliberately invokes this against his friends, claiming that he's got grudges to settle due to things like how Naruto defeated him at the Chuunin Exams.
  • When fighting Kiba, Kakashi sardonically thinks that he'll never be able to live it down if he gets beaten by such an unskilled genin.
• Son of the Sannin has Shisui Uchiha on both the giving and receiving end of this trope.
  • In the Chunin Exams finals. Sasuke gets in a swordfight with Karui, who breaks his katana. He then pulls out a scroll to summon a replacement, mentally complaining that Shisui warned him to bring a spare one to the fight, and won't let him hear the end of it. Sure enough, that's exactly what Shisui is thinking while watching the fight from the stands.
  • Much later, he takes Sasuke to visit "an old friend" to teach him a lesson. Or rather, to visit the grave of said friend. Shisui confesses that was jealous of him and intentionally refused to help him when fighting an enemy too strong for him alone, to "teach him some humility". Naturally, said friend was killed, and his family (justifiably) still blames Shisui for his death even years after.

Odd Squad

• In All Mixed Up!, Mariana Mag's father doesn't forgive her after learning of how she rebelled against Odd Squad, and she was never able to regain his trust apart from him handing his aquarium down to her when she graduated college.

Persona

• Forewarned is Forearmed:
  • In the Persona 4: Arena story, Akira manages to defeat Mitsuru by surprising her with Belphegor, who knocks her on the head with his toilet. Both Akira and Mitsuru find this horribly embarrassing, Akira for summoning a Persona sitting on a toilet and Mitsuru for being beaten by said toilet. It's brought up in jest years later, though Mitsuru tries to brush it aside rather than linger on it.
  • Akira is on tape dancing horribly as part of an idol concert. He looks back on this fondly, though he admits that despite the fun he had, it's still rather embarrassing.

Pokémon

• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Youngster Joey won a chance to appear on DJ Mary and Professor Oak's radio show. During his appearance, he blurted out that he thought his Rattata was in the top percentage of Rattata. This ended up becoming an Internet meme, and five years later, people are still making fun of him for it.

Sailor Moon

• Nephlite from Sailor Moon Abridged fell victim to this: no one seems to remember anything about him other than the fact he became Molly's boyfriend, then died. They don't even seem to remember his real name, instead calling him "your dead boyfriend."
  • From the same series, Luna mistakes Amy for a Negaverse spy all of once, but it doesn't stop the latter and Serena calling all of Luna's assumptions into question for some time.

Scribblenauts

• In The Boy with the Magic Notebook, Lily tends to remind Maxwell about his prankster days when he first got the Notebook as a way to keep him humble.

The Secret World of Alex Mack

• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Lampshaded by George Mack after his family brings up his spotty history with photography.
  George: Boy you take a couple thousand out-of-focus photos where you accidentally lose the top two feet of the picture so everyone’s head gets cut off, and no one ever lets you forget.

Splatoon

• Her Fractured Spirit: while doing a Squidmas jingle for charity, Callie accidentally sung "Come give us your unwanted boys", not "Come give us your unwanted toys". That take was never aired, however Marie will never let Callie live it down. She even has a personal recording of it.

Star Trek

• The Wrong Reflection: After Brokosh becomes the third person to refer back to Eleya cussing out Tuvok's conference in "Surface Tension", Eleya wonders aloud if she's ever going to live it down. Brokosh says probably not, but he actually agreed with her feelings on J'mpok.

Thomas & Friends

• Thomas Abridged: Nobody lets James forget the time that he mispronounced "rubbish" as "Rabbish!"

Total Drama

• Courtney and the Violin of Despair: Brittany Reid’s refusal to let Courtney forget an embarrassing miscue at their school's orchestra concert destroys any chance the former friends had of reconciling from an earlier falling out. As a result, they become bitter rivals and remain so for the rest of their high school careers.
• Dear, Fanfiction Writers features multiple instances of the characters reacting to examples of this common in Total Drama fanfics (and the show's fandom in general), such as Harold seeing Heather's exposed breasts in Island, Leshawna lying to her teammates to get a spa trip in Action, and Geoff gaining Acquired Situational Narcissism in Action.
• Total Drama Legacy:
  • Carter will never let Emilia live down the Forceful Kiss she gave him on the first day of camp.
  • Drew will never forgive Harold for getting his mother eliminated and accidentally squishing his father's tarantula, even though he wasn't actually present for either event.
  • Nero will never live down accidentally touching Storm's breasts.

Warhammer 40,000 Expanded Universe

• In Falling for a Fell, Crimson Fell wonders if she will always be known for killing an Original. She does think it's a pretty cool thing to be known for, though.
• All Guardsmen Party:
  • Nubby arranged the purchase of a second-hand Warp ship and then blackmailed the owner to get a discount. After the party is nearly killed due to the vengeful owner installing bombs throughout the ship, they resolve to never let Nubby be in charge of a major purchase again.
  • Faced with a Tyranid Hive Tyrant and no time to come up with a plan, Sarge gives the order "HANDLE IT!" The party has never let Sarge live this particular line down, frequently yelling it at one another and incorporating it as a central step in an otherwise overly-detailed plan.

Young Justice (2010)

• With This Ring:
  • Paul will never live down the cake incident, where he made a giant (four mile wide) fruitcake in the sky over New York City while merged with the Ophidian. It doesn't help that he did a live interview during it using a literal song and dance number. And he followed it up by distributing the cake to everyone in New York City for Christmas.
    Paul: I remember the cake. The internet remembers the cake. Two hundred years from now, alien civilisations that have never met a Human before will address me as 'The Cake Man'.
  • You'd think the tremendous indestructible naked statue of himself would get more infamy than the cake, but that was in the middle of the Bialyan desert, so it was mostly overlooked.
  • For a few individuals, even the cake is overshadowed by the time he filled the entire world with construct-eyeballs, including the oceans and a good chunk of near-Earth space. His actual aim was to track down the remnants of the League of Shadows, but naturally he caught quite a lot of people showering or otherwise indecent. Beatriz da Costa was not amused.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

• Between My Brother and Me: Mors Omnibus: Yusho's really smart decision to go to Academia to stop Leo Akaba from his invasion plan without telling this to his wife and son is reminded by most of the people in Carroll City, Ruri, Zarc and his own wife because of how much pain, humiliation and psychological and emotional damage onto Yuya.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series
  • Mako Tsunami once threw a harpoon at someone. This got him the permanent moniker "Freaky Fish Guy." In his second appearance, he harpoons two more, but at least Joey seems to have talked him out of doing it again.
  • Coupled with Noodle Incident in one of Marik's Evil Council videos:
    Bakura: Marik, have you been using your Millennium Item as a bong again?
    Marik: No! And it was one time! Let it go, already!

Films — Animation

• In Big Hero 6, Wasabi got his nickname after spilling wasabi on his shirt once. He's annoyed by the name, but nevertheless goes by it.
  Wasabi: I spilled wasabi on my shirt just one time, people! ONE TIME!
• In Chicken Little, the titular character is bullied to no end and made a pariah for a year for once falsely claiming that the sky was falling. Referenced in "One Little Slip":
  I get the feeling in this town/I'll never live 'till I live down/the one mistake that seems to follow me around.
• Coco: Héctor dying by choking on chorizo, which the other shantytown skeletons won't let him forget. Héctor nevertheless insists it was food poisoning. Turns out that Ernesto poisoned his tequila.
• Finding Dory: After outswimming a squid that nearly eats Nemo because Dory forgets the warning, Marlin (who had almost lost him before) snaps at Dory, angrily telling her that forgetting things is "what you do best", causing her to swim away to find help for Nemo to make up for it. Nemo (who's more forgiving to Dory) calls his dad out for this, and up until they make up, he often repeats that line to Marlin in a snarky way.
• Isle of Dogs: Spots encounters the infamous cannibal dogs on the island and asks if they're going to eat him. Their leader, Gondo, is indignant that other dogs think of them as only cannibals, admitting that they only ate one dog one time, and that was because of their former leader being stuck in a coma, and the choices were either eat him to live or starve. Gondo takes this pretty hard, since the dog they ate was his best friend.
• Subverted in Meet the Robinsons. Goob was given flak for missing a fly ball during a big game because he fell asleep due to Lewis keeping him awake the night before, causing him to resent Lewis and grow up to become a Bowler Hat Guy. The truth of the matter was however, while he was given flak initially, everyone soon forgot about it, and he was the only one obsessing over it, causing him to believe everyone else did as well.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Ex-Big Bad Sunset Shimmer never expects to live down transforming into "a raging she-demon", mind-controlling Canterlot High as teenage zombies for her own personal army, and being an Alpha Bitch who made every other students' life miserable for years in the first Equestria Girls film. A Running Gag in the second movie is that even the only people willing to hang out with Sunset constantly bring it up against her, much to her dismay. It isn't until the third film that people stop regularly discussing it, and the fourth film until she's comfortable enough to joke about it herself.
• In Puss in Boots, Kitty Softpaws never stops bringing up the one time that Puss hits her with a guitar.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: This version of April O'Neil got stuck with the Embarrassing Nickname "Puke Girl" after her attempt to do her school's morning announcements lead her to gruesomely Stress Vomit due to a bad case of Performance Anxiety.
• Toy Story: Providing the page quote is Toy Story 2, where Buzz, Potato Head, Slinky, Rex and Hamm mount a rescue mission to save Woody from being sold by Al. It is during their long walk to Al's Toy Barn, the toys seem to want to give up, but Buzz gives them a Rousing Speech telling them not to after he reminds them that Woody never gave up when they tossed him out of the moving truck in the first film. Needless to say, they cringe at the thought of it.
• In Turning Red, Mei mentions in the epilogue that "People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002".
• Wreck-It Ralph: Let's just say no one lets Turbo live down "going Turbo", that is, trying to hijack someone's game in a bid for attention.

Films — Live-Action

• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: Ray Finkle missed the winning kick of Super Bowl XVII, and he was cut from the Miami Dolphins team as a result. Moving back to his parents' house in Collier County, the locals assaulted him and vandalized his parents' house for years due to betting their life savings on the game before he was committed to a mental asylum for plotting to kill Dan Marino over how he held the ball during that last kick. Even when Ace interrogated the locals, they're all still bitter over Finkle's role in how the game ended.
• American Pie: Jim will be forever known as the guy who prematurely ejaculated in front of a smoking hot exchange student on webcam. The incident is mentioned in almost every single film in the series (even the made-for-TV ones), and in Reunion, he discovers that it has even gone viral on YouTube.
• Await Further Instructions has this Played for Drama as Granddad always refers to his son Tony as "Squelcher" - all because Tony had once wet the bed as a child, and that only because he was afraid to leave his room against his father's express orders for fear of the punishment he'd receive for breaking them. He was beaten black-and-blue for wetting the bed.
• In Begin Again, Dave's affair with his producer Mim comes back to bite him when he tries to reconcile with Gretta, who brings up the name every chance to spite him.
• The parody disaster movie The Big Bus contains the immortal line "Jeeze! You eat one foot and they call you a cannibal!"
• In Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Colin mentions that all people remembered of Jerome F. Davies was him decapitating his wife while forgetting that he also was a visionary author.
• In Bloody Reunion, the one thing that all of his former classmates remember about Jung-Wo is that he is the boy who soiled himself in class.
• Invoked in David Cronenberg's The Brood when Robert Silverman's character intends to sue the psychiatric clinic (run by Oliver Reed) that he believes to be responsible for his lymph cancer. He knows he's going to lose the case, but he also knows that in a few years, people won't even remember the verdict.
  All they'll remember is the slogan: "Psychoplasmics Gives You Cancer." Catchy, huh?
• The premise of the HBO TV film Clear History is that main character Nathan Flomm never managed to live down being the guy who cashed in his share of a car company just days before its insanely popular electric car model went public, thus managing to lose out on over a billion dollars and becoming a laughingstock overnight.
• Clerks II both plays it straight and subverts it with Dante and Randall's former classmate Lance "Pickle Fucker" Dowds, who had earned the nickname in an incident of high school hazing. After Randall recounts the incident where Lance earned the nickname, Lance replies that nobody but the aimless Randall Graves would remember the incident at all. Cue Jay walking in and saying "Hurry up Pickle Fucker, I wanna get my cow tipper on!" As Jay is leaving, he yells off-screen, "Hey, Silent Bob, some pickle fucker just gave us free eats!" after Lance does so, revealing that Jay occasionally just randomly calls people "pickle fucker".
• Dad's Army (1971): Even months after it happens, Major-General Fullard won't forget how Captain Mainwaring refused to cash his cheque and so calls him "that damned bank clerk".
• Evolution (2001) features the Kane Madness. Ira Kane actually managed to develop a functioning anthrax vaccine, but the laundry list of side effects (including, but not limited to debilitating stomach cramps, severe diarrhea, memory loss, partial facial paralysis, temporary blindness, drooling, bleeding gums, erectile dysfunction and uncontrollable flatulence) ensured that he was unemployable as a biomedical researcher and left him teaching high school biology for the rest of his life.
• In For Your Consideration, Victor Allen Miller (Harry Shearer) is a dramatic actor who has been a veteran of stage for 40 years, yet all most people seem to remember of him is being a hot dog pitchman on TV when he was younger.
• Grosse Pointe Blank: Martin Blank had nothing to do with the death of little Boudreaux. Little Boudreaux was a retriever, and just following his instincts and trying to fetch a stick, which happened to be one of the sticks of dynamite the "three junk bond fuckos" were using to flush out game birds, while Martin was attaching a bomb to their car. However, the incident was enough to brand Martin as "the guy who blew up a dog" for his entire career.
• In La Ferme des Sept Péchés, Paul-Louis Courier laments that despite his distinguished military service under Napoleon and a prolific career as a scholar and political writer, people know him only from the time he made an ink stain on an ancient manuscript.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Ant-Man: Scott Lang was once a criminal, who was captured and jailed. By the start of the film, he has served his time in prison, and he's ready to start again. He gets a job at Baskin-Robbins, but gets fired when his employers find about his past. With no jobs to take, he accepts to take part in a theft with his friends. Eventually, he ends working with Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, who gave him his suit. Now he is a superhero, and his first job is... to steal something.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: During the opening battle, Steve Rogers briefly chastises Tony for swearing. The other Avengers find this hilariously uptight of him and throughout the film tease Steve whenever somebody swears around him. Steve is embarrassed by the whole thing, considering he wasn't really thinking when he rebuked Tony and even swears himself.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Drax refers to Quill as "man who has lain with an Askervarian", to which Quill replies, "That was one time, man."
  • It's revealed in The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special that Mantis once ate an entire commissary's supply of zargnuts. This gets repeatedly brought up by Drax until she snaps:
  Mantis: (livid) GET OVER THE ZARGNUTS!!!
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Ron Weasley gets this when Professor McGonagall chooses him to help demonstrate the waltz.
  Harry: You're never going to let him forget this, are you?
  Fred and George Weasley: [they look to each other, look back to Harry and shake their heads] Never.
• Once I, Tonya gets closer to the Nancy Kerrigan Knee Capping, Tonya's narration goes "I mean, it's what you all came for, folks— the fucking incident!"
• Ollie from Jersey Girl is largely unemployable after trashing his own client at a press conference. He gets one job interview because he's so infamous that his interviewers just want to meet him, not because they could ever hire him.
• Joe Dirt: After being abducted by "Buffalo Bob", everyone asks Joe if he was harmed in certain ways, even though nothing terrible really happened.
• The Long, Hot Summer: the Quick family just can't seem to shake its reputation as a family of barn burners, and it gets the protagonist run out of town before the opening credits even get the chance to start.
• In the director's cut of Mallrats, Brandi dumping T.S. is triggered by him accidentally shooting a senator with a prop musket from a play he was in at an event hosted by her father. Throughout the director's cut, people would bring up the incident. One particular example was the guy T.S. randomly beat up in the parking lot for asking him about Brandi in the final cut.In the director's cut, he asked him about the musket incident, and T.S. was finally sick of people bringing it up.
• The Other Guys: Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) became a pariah within the NYPD and the city as a whole when he shot a man in a Yankee Stadium corridor during the World Series, not knowing it was Derek Jeter. Although he's been on desk duty ever since then, his coworkers STILL don't let him forget.
• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Jack Sparrow makes the suggestion once in the first film that Will Turner may be a eunuch due to the fact he hasn't got a girlfriend (again Jack's speculation). Will is thus repeatedly referred to as a eunuch (mostly by Jack himself).
  • While it could be argued that "sea turtles" became more of an in-movie meme, the fact that it was Jack who seemed to have begun it seems to indicate its mention by other characters is more or less just their way to poke at Jack.
• Raising the Wind: On his first day at the London Academy of Music and the Arts, Malcolm accidentally kicks a bass drum loose and injures a cab driver. Sir Benjamin isn't impressed and reminds him of this when he meets him next.
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: Boba Fett will apparently never live down that time he annihilated three Rebels who went at him with ion blasters and was denied the bounty over the issue, considering Vader looks and points at him specifically when specifying "no disintegrations".
• Superbad:
  Seth: Hey Greg, why don't you go piss your pants?
  Greg the Soccer Player: That was like 8 years ago, asshole!
  Seth: People don't forget!
• Tommy Boy:
  • At one point, Tommy catches Richard ogling an attractive skinny-dipper with his fly undone. He doesn't let him forget it.
    Tommy: (as they're going to sleep) "Richard? Who's your favorite little rascal? Alfalfa? Or is it Spanky?" (chuckles) "Sinner..."
  • An elderly woman sitting on Callahan Auto's board constantly rants about "whores" coming to town if the company collapses, with the other members' exasperated reaction indicating that she's been harping on this for a very long time. Finally, her husband pipes up:
    Old Man: "Jesus Christ... once during the war I visited a prostitute, and my life has been a living hell ever since!"
• In the Christian movie Tribulation from the Apocalypse film series, young Calvin Canboro wets his pants while he and his brother Tom wait for their sister Eileen to finish her prayer to God about the tree she carved their names into. Years later, Tom Canboro keeps bringing it up, and their sister Eileen doesn't even remember whether it happened or not (or so she says).

Jokes

• The former Trope Namer for Bestiality Is Depraved fell under this trope, as poor McGregor had a litany of accomplishments to his name, but all that anyone in his town will call him now is "McGregor the goat fucker".
• A weedy farmer's son named Jacob was helping his father unload wares at the Shrewsbury marketplace, when suddenly he farted so loudly that everyone in the market square turned to stare. Jacob immediately ran out of sight, then out of town, and kept running long after the town was out of sight. He ended up conscripted in an army, enslaved by pirates, shipwrecked on foreign shores, went around the Mediterranean three times, and had so many other adventures that it was more than sixty years until he was in sight of his hometown again, now a rich and respectable but heavily scarred, suntanned and muscular merchant prince. Unable to resist the lure of nostalgia, he went into town and saw a magnificent church that had not been there when he'd left. He asked a small child when the church had been built, who answered "It was started six years, three months and four days; and finished forty-one years, nine months and five days after The Day Jacob Farted."

Literature

• Animorphs:
  • After Seerow's gift of advanced technology led to the Yeerks rebelling and expanding across the galaxy, the Andalites named the Law of Seerow's Kindness after him to prevent anything like it happening again.
  • A much darker and more well-deserved version than most: Alloran is blamed for the Hork-Bajir genocide and is forever remembered as "Alloran the Butcher". It doesn't help that he doesn't regret it at first. He's also remembered as the only Andalite ever taken prisoner as a Yeerk host.
  • In the final battle on the Pool Ship, Jake flushes 17,000 Yeerks into space as a distraction. There's only one more book for people to mention it, but mention it they do, and he lives with that regret (and his failure to save Tom and causing Rachel's death).
  • A more light-hearted version: In Megamorphs #1, Marco isn't invited to a popular girl's pool party because the last time he was at one of her pool parties, he dropped a candy bar in the pool and told everyone it was poop.
• One of the tales of Arabian Nights is about the merchant Abu Hasan, who flees to India in embarrassment after he lets loose a "terrible and great" fart at his wedding reception. Ten years later, he secretly returns home, only to overhear a mother telling her daughter that the day he farted was the day the latter was born. Abu goes back to India, this time to never return.
• In the first novel of The Black Company series, Croaker writes romantic fiction about the Big Bad who is employing them. Almost two decades later, people are still bringing it up.
• In the Bloody Jack series, Jacky Faber seems to live this trope. "It's the talk of London!" "It's on all the Broadsheets!" "There's even a song about it!"
• There are quite a few such incidences mentioned in the Bunnicula series:
  • In Howliday Inn, we learn of the time that Harold ate the geranium (which he freely admits was in poor taste^note And not very tasty, either).
    • Howie does the same thing in the last chapter of the book!
  • In the above book, Chester also brings up Harold's episode with Mr. Monroe's electric razor.
    Narrator Harold: Could I help it if I'd thought he was being attacked by an oversized bumblebee? It was a perfectly logical error.
  • In The Celery Stalks at Midnight, Harold mentions to Howie Chester's confusion over what kind of "stake" should be used to try to kill vampires in the first book:
    Chester: All right, all right, I made a little mistake. Everyone's entitled to one mistake in the course of a lifetime.
  • In Bunnicula Strikes Again, Harold mentions that one time (presumably long before Bunnicula came along) that Chester ate string. Mr. Monroe tried to pull it out of the cat's mouth, and ended up clear on the other side of the room, clutching a ridiculously long piece of string that was still protruding from Chester's mouth. "You looked like a tape dispenser", Harold remarks.
    Narrator!Harold: Howie cracked up. Chester did not.
• Josella Playton in The Day of the Triffids writes a novel which her publisher ends up titling Sex Is My Adventure. Even years after civilization has collapsed and the eponymous killer plants are running amok, people she meets are still mentioning this book.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In "Rodrick Rules", Rodrick keeps bringing up "that thing" that happened to Greg over summer (Specifically, he accidentally entered the women's bathroom at a retirement home and was mistaken for a Peeping Tom.) and threatening to tell people about it.
  • In one book, Greg reveals that his classmate Cody gets called Dookie by his classmates, teachers, and even the principal, all because he once stepped in dog poop.
  • One book reveals that Greg's father Frank believes Rowley Jefferson to be accident-prone just because Rowley once broke a plate.
• Discworld:
  • One of Sam Vimes's ancestors, Suffer-Not-Injustice "Stoneface" Vimes, led an army of rebels against the insane, murderous, pedophile king Lorenzo the Kind. But after their victory, no judge or jury could be found that would dare stand up against royalty and actually convict Lorenzo, even after all the evidence was presented. So Stoneface took matters into his own hands and performed the execution himself. Despite thus being one of the most important figures in Ankh-Morpork's history, the one thing everyone remembers about him is that he was a "regicide" who killed one of the city's kings. The modern Vimes dislikes that term, saying "It was only one king. It's not like it was a habit."
  • Vimes becomes the perpetrator of this in Thud! when he describes the painter Methodia Rascal as "Painted famous painting, thought he was a chicken, died."
• The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden has a few things he would rather people forget about, except they never do.
  • The Faerie Courts keep laughing about The Donut Incident.
  • After Changes, people keep bringing up the fact that he slept with Mab to become the Winter Knight.
  • Then there's the time he talked his way out of being found in Thomas's apartment by pretending to be his gay ex. The SI cops wouldn't let him live that one down, at least until the end of the novel.
• The Rosemary Wells picture book Fiona's Little Accident is about Fiona thinking this will happen to her. Her very visible and obvious Potty Failure is seen by the entire class during a major presentation that she and her best friend Felix are doing. She runs and hides, but Felix tells her to come out, telling her that nobody will even remember it by the end of the day. As it turns out, he's right, as the entire class's attention is drawn by their classmate Victor's goldfish-swallowing trick.
• The Suits of Futuristic Violence And Fancy Suits make it very clear they're never going to stop giving Will Blackwater shit about that time he came up with a clever bluff to create a fake superweapon, which very nearly worked...right up until he tripped over his own feet, broke the gun (a disguised water pistol) and got them all thrown in a warzone prison. Bonus points as he brought up the original bluff himself, to illustrate a point he was making, only to watch the others drag the full story out to its embarrassing conclusion.
• Goblins in the Castle: In Goblins on the Prowl, "Bonecracker" John the giant has a reputation for viciousness as a result of an incident long ago — when a person is afraid in his presence, it makes him hungry. If he's hungry, he's likely to eat that person. When the knight Sir Mortimer falsely accused him of devouring cattle and stealing young maidens, John picked him up to discuss things, but Sir Mortimer was overcome with fright, triggering John's hunger reflex... so to save Sir Mortimer's life, he threw him far, far away. The landing broke just about every bone in Sir Mortimer's body (which is not what John intended to do), and ever since then, he's been known as Bonecracker John, which does not please him (Igor, on the other hand, thinks he should be proud of it).
• Holes: Early in his stay at Camp Green Lake, a boy named Theodore was stung under his arm by a scorpion and complained very vocally about the pain. Because of this, he ended up with the nickname "Armpit".
• Horatio Hornblower
  • In the novel Lieutenant Hornblower, Acting-Captain Buckland is tied to his cot when the Spanish prisoners aboard the Renown attempt to take the ship. This ruins his chances of ever being promoted, in spite of the resounding success the ship had won, because all anyone will remember is the story of him being taken prisoner in his bed. Bush reflects on it as another piece of the general unfairness and illogicality of reputation in the navy, since Buckland—for all he was The Ditherer—would have fought to unconsciousness or death like the other officers if he'd been able.
  • Hornblower himself can't let himself live down that he got seasick on a ship at anchor in Spithead on his first day in the Navy, even years after the fact.
• Isildur from The Lord of the Rings. He was a total badass who did many great things. Chief among them, he actually defeated Sauron, admittedly with his father and Gil-Galad having done most of the work. However, all the Council of Elrond seem to remember him for is not destroying the ring, which meant Sauron could return. What makes this an especially glaring example is that no one could have done any better. Frodo is the next person to be in a position to destroy the Ring, and makes the exact same choice. According to Word of God, no one has enough willpower to actually destroy the Ring. (And in fact, it only goes in the lava because Gollum falls in while trying to grab it.)
• Masters In This Hall: Even though it only happened once and not even during an actual robbery, everyone remembers the jewel thief team known as the Lilywhite Boys for throwing a guy out a window. Jerry is very annoyed by this.
• Mercy Thompson feels this way about the fact that everyone in the supernatural world immediately brings up when she was a teenager and tricked the Marrok into sitting in peanut butter. And the time she wrapped his car around a tree. And the thing with the chocolate Easter bunny. Of course, the reason everyone keeps bringing it up is because of how awesome they think it makes her to have successfully pranked him on multiple occasions, given that he literally has killed people for less.
• In Nursery Crime: The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde, Chief Inspector Jack Spratt is constantly having to defend himself against a reputation for killing giants. ("Technically, only one of them was a giant; the others were just tall.")
• In Orconomics, Gorm Ingerson is constantly recognized as the dwarf who punched out an elven guard for insulting a goblin.
  Thane: Ah. So you must be the same Gorm Ingerson who punched out the Elven Guard at—
  Gorm Ingerson: Bloody bones, has anybody not heard about that?
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Percy tells the tale of Daedalus and how he pushed his nephew off the Acropolis. When Daedalus tries telling the king and queen what they're doing is wrong, they respond with "You pushed your nephew off the Acropolis. What do you know about right and wrong?"
  Percy: Daedalus really wished people would stop bringing that up. One little murder, and they never let you forget it.
• Ratburger: Zoe once remembers a classmate who everyone at school, even the teachers, only calls "Hairy Bum", because of one time when he mooned out the school bus window.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Jaime Lannister is forever known as the Kingslayer for murdering the man he was supposed to protect. What is frequently overlooked is that the king in question was killed to prevent him from roasting a city full of people alive. The reasons this became Jaime's defining moment are either because only a few people knew of this (and most of them were killed in the uprising that night) or they deliberately chose not to mention it.
  • Walder Frey is nicknamed the "Late Walder Frey" by Lord Hoster Tully when Walder came to Robert's Rebellion after Robert killed Rhaegar and, as a result, Walder is viewed as the cowardly weasel that he is. Later on, Walder Frey becomes infamous for the betrayal he orchestrated in The Red Wedding by killing Robb, with whom he pretended to make amends, and for breaking the most sacred tradition of hospitality. Now, he and the rest of the Freys are the most hated people in Westeros. Soon, every Frey who ever sets foot out of their fortress gets killed by everyone in the Riverlands and the North.
  • Torrhen Stark, as the last King in the North before Aegon I Targaryen's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms, had every intention of leading his armies against Aegon after he crushed houses Lannister and Gardener, but Torrhen saw the size of Aegon's force and submitted to Targaryen rule and gave up his crown. Torrhen is still remembered in both the North and the South as the "king who knelt", and for ending centuries of independence in the North. Never mind that he saved countless lives on both sides of the conflict by kneeling, and insured that his house would enjoy years of prosperity as Wardens of the North.
  • Prince (later King) Maekar accidentally killed his older brother Baelor, a very popular and well-liked prince who was next in line for the throne, in a melee when he hit Baelor over the head with a mace. For the rest of his life, Maekar had to deal with both the grief of killing his brother and everyone thinking he did it on purpose.
  • King Aegon III is generally not remembered by the population of Westeros. When he is, it tends to be along the lines of "he's the guy who lost the dragons", since the last of them died out during his reign (or so everyone thought), to the point where he is often called "the Dragonbane." In actuality, while the king did harbor strong negative feelings toward dragons - seeing his mother burned alive and eaten by one left some understandable scars - he never actively tried to wipe them out, and even made at least a token effort to hatch some of the remaining eggs.
• Southern Sisters Mysteries: When they were kids, Patricia Anne lost Mary Alice's Shirley Temple doll. They're in their sixties at the time the book takes place, and Mary Alice still brings it up a few times every book.
• Spirit Animals. In Book 2: Hunted, Conor gives up the Iron Boar Talisman to the Conquerors in exchange for his family's safety. Rollan (who had been abandoned as a youngster) gets onto his case a lot about this in Book 3 and part of Book 4 and calls his decision a selfish move until Fire And Ice, when he is reunited with his mother and apologizes to Conor.
• According to at least one Star Trek Expanded Universe novel, Counselor Troi has never lived down crashing the Enterprise in Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: Nemesis. In her defense, in Generations, the main hull had just blown up and the saucer section was effectively out of control for even the most experienced pilot, and in Nemesis, she was ordered directly by Picard to do so to try and stop the Scimitar.
• Star Trek: Enterprise Relaunch: Over a decade on, and no Vulcan is letting Archer live down the "gazelle speech". Heck, even Vulcans who've never met Archer know of his terrible speech-making skills.
• Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations:
  • In the 24th century, DTI agents are taught that James T. Kirk is a time-travelling menace (seventeen separate temporal violations). They call him "the Time Pirate". It's quite a shock to two of their agents when in the process of causing violation no. eighteen, they actually meet Kirk and realize he isn't the crazed maverick they've been told about.
  • Given the above, Lucsly is also fond of needling Dulmer over his comment in "Trials and Tribble-ations" that he'd "probably have done the same thing" as Sisko in getting Kirk's autograph.
• Star Trek Living Memory: John Gill has gone down as a laughingstock in historian circles for the whole "recreate Nazi Germany" thing.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In the Revenge of the Sith novelization, after lecturing Anakin several times about holding on to his lightsaber (including one instance early in the book), Obi-Wan drops his own saber on Utapau while chasing General Grievous and is briefly glad that Anakin's not there to make sure that he never lives it down.
  • Heir to the Empire suggests that Lando losing the radar dish atop the Falcon while flying it through the Death Star II is one of these, though at least with some justification:
    Han: At least the sensor dish is still there.
    Lando: You're never going to let that go, are you?
    Han: You said, "not a scratch".
  • Jedi Academy Trilogy:
    • Kyp Durron, a powerful young Jedi who once got either possessed or heavily influenced by an ancient and very evil ghost, and who then fished out an indestructible superweapon that had been dropped into the heart of a gas giant and proceeded to use it to cause a supernova that destroyed a rather populated planet. He was then very quickly and easily brought back into the light and put the superweapon into a black hole, then got off basically scot-free in the trilogy where he originally featured. Basically every book to feature him since then has called him on it, particularly I, Jedi, a sort of Fix Fic trying to get the trilogy to make sense, where the main character leaves in disgust after this mass-murderer is welcomed back into the Jedi Academy for training. Other books paint Kyp as the perpetual Atoner, having it and his lack of punishment constantly brought up.
• In the first Sweet Valley Twins book, Jessica shows up for ballet class decked out in sparkles and ribbons. The teacher proceeds to publicly humiliate her, blasting her for this, and for several months afterwards, acts completely oblivious to the fact that Jessica is the best dancer in the class, instead, blatantly favoring the less skilled Elizabeth.
• Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note. Sunahara's arrest for assault (which is a big case of Cassandra Truth in its own; the person he attacked was trying to burst his father's car's tires) severely affected his reputation so that he was expelled from the soccer team and everyone sees him as a Japanese Delinquent.
• In Thank You for Smoking, Nick Naylor used to be a television news reporter until one fateful day when he erroneously reported that the President had choked to death on a chicken bone, resulting in a brief panic that sent the stock markets into freefall. Realizing that he would never escape that, he left journalism completely and became a spokesman for the tobacco industry.
• Tortall Universe: Kel of Protector of the Small can't live down her fear of heights, and Wyldon takes every opportunity to test it. Works out for her in the end, though.
• Vampire Academy. Adrian seems to get a lot of grief for drinking and smoking when he has a legitimate reason for doing so, rather than to annoy people.
• Vorkosigan Saga has Cordelia Vorkosigan's shopping trip during a civil war...which included bringing the head of the pretender home in a plastic shopping bag. Decades later, it's still brought up as why no one invites her shopping, although when it's done good-naturedly, she is glad that Barrayar has advanced to the point where it can be joked about.
  Jole: What's in the box? Not a severed head again, I trust?
  Cordelia: Now, now, Oliver. Bring home one dismembered body part — once, mind you, once — and people get twitchy about checking your luggage ever after.
  • Aral Vorkosigan is forever attainted by the wider galaxy as "the Butcher of Komarr", responsible for the deaths of the Komarran planetary council after they had surrendered to Barrayar's forces — which is all the more galling for Aral, as it was actually his political officer who ordered their deaths and he got stuck with the blame. Over thirty years after the massacre, several Komarrans take the opportunity to get digs in at his son Miles about having "the Butcher" as a father, and there's genuine concern about the optics of Aral being involved in some parts of Emperor Gregor Vorbarra's wedding; particularly anything to do with Laisa, the bride, as Komarr's 'sacrificial maiden'. However, Aral has long since decided to weaponize his reputation, since he feels he's earned the weight that it brings.
• In Warrior Cats, no cat ever lets Crowfeather and Leafpool forget that they ran off to be mates with a cat from another Clan — especially after it comes to light that Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf are their kits.
• In the Wayside School book series, there were three kids in the class named Eric (Fry, Bacon, and Ovens). Eric Bacon and Eric Ovens were bad at sports so everyone just assumed Eric Fry was bad at sports when he was actually great. The only time people noticed him playing was when he caught a ball that slipped out of his hand. Everyone called him "Butterfingers" after that.
• In Wolf Hall, Thomas More never meets Richard Rich without complaining of how Rich was a wastrel as a young man. Thomas Cromwell uses this to his advantage when he's trying to manufacture evidence for the Kangaroo Court by sending in Rich to take away More's books personally, guessing that More will be less tight-lipped around a man he utterly dismisses (even though that man is now Solicitor General). It works; Rich provides damning testimony at the trial and More doesn't help his case by insulting him in front of the court.
• In The Wheel of Time, the entire male gender suffers this as a result of Lews Therin and his Hundred Companions (all men) attacking the Dark One and getting the male half of the True Source tainted in the backlash. As a consequence of both the stigma against their folly and the fact that male channelers inevitably go insane and die, the entire world has undergone a political shift toward matriarchy, with men having equal status at best in most societies. The sentiment is comparable to the idea in traditionalist Judeo-Christian societies that women are flawed because Eve tempted Adam to eat the Fruit of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Mack cuts off Coulson's hand to stop him from being petrified. Coulson very much appreciated having his life saved, but he brings it up constantly, to everyone, that Mack cut off his hand and now he has an awesome robot hand.
  Mack: Aw man, no fair!
  Coulson: You wanted tech like this, you should have cut off your own hand.
• Arrowverse:
  • Back when he was an Upper-Class Twit, Oliver Queen beat up a paparazzi once. Many characters never let him forget this.
  • During Flash vs. Arrow, a training session ended with Oliver shooting Barry In the Back, something the latter has never forgotten, and he keeps bringing it up in subsequent crossovers when Oliver plans to train someone else. Barry eventually got his revenge during Elseworlds when they switched bodies (and powers), and even gloats about it, to Oliver's annoyance.
  • The Flash: Barry's time-travel that resulted in the Flashpoint timeline. Notably, during the same Elseworlds storyline, Oliver's very first reaction is "Oh, Barry, what have you done this time?"
• The Big Bang Theory: The perennial joke of the series is that every character in the Fab Four is a doctor with exception of Howard. This gets compounded later in the series when his wife obtains her doctorate.
  Leonard: Doctor Gablehauser.
  Gablehauser: Doctor Hofsteader.
  Raj: Doctor Gablehauser.
  Gablehauser: Doctor Koothrapali.
  Howard: Doctor Gablehauser.
  Gablehauser: Mister Wolowitz.
  • In the series finale, Sheldon seems to try to avoid calling him "Mister" by addressing him as Astronaut Wolowitz, which is awkward, but better than nothing.
• Bones:
  • Agent Booth once, in a moment of personal stress, drew his weapon and fired two rounds into a robotic clown-head atop an ice cream truck. Several seasons later, after he'd completed counseling, got reinstated and received commendations for his work, it still gets brought up by folks from other government agencies when they want an excuse not to trust him with sensitive documents.
  • Similarly, Brennan finds herself constantly reminded that she once shot an unarmed man (it's okay, though: he was trying to set her on fire along with the evidence).
• Bosch: In the season 2 premiere, Officer Powers inadvertedly contaminates the crime scene by forgetting to put on gloves before popping the trunk of Tony Allen's car to discover the body. Bosch ridicules him for this, even three seasons later during a time when Powers is relegated to clerical duties as a result of a leg injury from a car accident.
• Cheers: In the final season, Frasier seriously considers committing suicide after Lilith reveals she's been having an affair and wants to leave him. This gets brought up several times through Frasier.
• Bill Buckner (playing himself) in Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "Mister Softee". 25 years after committing a mistake that cost the Red Sox the World Series^note (actually cost them Game 6, tying the series and necessitating a Game 7, which Boston lost), everybody still hates him for it.
• Clare in Degrassi ranted out Eli at the Local Hangout, screaming "DID YOU FLIP A SWITCH AND ERASE ME FROM YOUR MEMORY, DID YOU EVER LOVE ME AT ALL?" Since then, Eli wrote it into the School Play, Connor and Mo used it to psych out an Opposing Sports Team, and Connor, KC and Adam put it on Twitter where at one point it was trending in Toronto.
• Faking It: Liam will never live down sleeping with Amy (and vice versa) after Liam found out that Karma was lying to him when she said she was a lesbian (which he probably should have guessed by all the times she wanted to make out with him, but still...) and Amy was rejected as a romantic partner by Karma.
• Friends:
  • Ross liked to hold tea parties, while wearing his mother's dresses as a child, and Monica never passes up an opportunity to tell this to one of his dates.
  • Chandler utters his famous catchphrase "Could x be more y?" maybe twice. Yet somehow, it becomes the go-to tease whenever any of the other characters mock him.
  • Lampshaded in one of the last seasons when Joey goes to Monica's Halloween party as Chandler, and his "impression" consists of nothing more than repeating the last thing Chandler said and adding, "BLEARGHHHHHHHHH!" on the end. Everyone laughs, except Chandler (who points out that he doesn't do that).
  • Ross was afraid that getting divorced a third time would become his Never Forgotten moment, so for several episodes he didn't tell Rachel that he hadn't filed for an annulment. Ross getting divorced eventually did become the one thing anyone commented on whenever he was interested in someone. Granted, getting divorced 3 times in the span of 5 years is no easy feat.
• FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman: In "There's Food Safety and Then There's Food Safety", The Fetchers created a cake protector that managed to hold 135 pounds. An overzealous Ruff decides to put the protector to the ultimate test by pitting it against a monster truck. He almost immediately regrets it once he sees the thing in motion, and Grandma Ruffman never lets him live it down for the rest of the series. This was mentioned in the Season 5 episode, "How Much Frosting Can You Bear?" when Grandma Ruff still holds a grudge for what Ruff did in that Season 3 episode.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Jaime Lannister is derogatorily known and addressed as "Kingslayer" by everyone for his Bodyguard Betrayal, even by his allies and people who knew said king was insane and whose successful rebellion forced Jaime into that position. Jaime insists that people should be grateful for it. And, once we learn the rest of the story, it turns out he's right. Still, people despise him less because he killed the king and more because he broke his oath as a member of the Kingsguard. So, properly, he should simply be known as Oathbreaker, but that's not as punchy or specific as Kingslayer, so he's stuck with the latter. Jaime has struggled with Then Let Me Be Evil ever since.
  • Catelyn never quite forgives or forgets Ned bringing home his infant illegitimate son.
  • The Lannisters and perhaps the Boltons are careful to officially distance themselves from the Red Wedding, since they know such a blatant violation of Sacred Hospitality will stain them for generations.
    Tyrion: Oh, I know. Walder Frey gets all the credit... or the blame, I suppose, depending on your allegiance.
  • Theon Greyjoy is never going to live down his actions in season 2; even after being tortured for years on end, permanently mutilated and sexually assaulted, the Starks reclaiming and rebuilding Winterfell and Bran's return, characters still feel the need to abuse the suicidal ironborn man for betraying the people who held him hostage.
  • Arya will always despise the Hound for killing Mycah. Killing Mycah was despicable, but for the most part, his later actions range from petty crimes to outright heroism. By the end of the fourth season, he has come to care for Arya and serves as her loyal guardian. In the end, the trope reaches its logical conclusion and Arya, unable to forgive him for killing Mycah, leaves him to die slowly and painfully of wounds received while trying to protect her.
• Played for Drama in The George Lopez Show episode "Girl Fight": Carmen ends up facing immense bullying at her school after a popular ex-boyfriend spreads a rumor that she dated him solely for sex, dumping him as soon as she got what she wanted, leading to Carmen being branded as the "school whore". George and Angie fight hard and manage to get the leader of Carmen's tormentors suspended, have said ex-boyfriend confess that he lied, and gets the school to crack down on future bullying. Lessons learned, everything returns to normal, right? Unfortunately, no — her classmates still continue to see her as a whore, with the harassment escalating to the point that it borders on sexual assault. In the end, her parents have no choice but to transfer her to an entirely new private school to start fresh.
• General Hospital: Whenever Winifred and Maxie were on the same screen, she would always remind her that Winnie was the one who put Spinelli in prison (as part of her job as an FBI agent).
• In Glee, people are still making jabs about Tina putting Vapo-Rub on Blaine's chest while he was passed out.
• Gotham: Professional Killer Patrick Malone laments that despite the countless different methods he has used to kill people throughout his long career, he got stuck with the nickname "Matches" Malone because of that one time he burned someone to death.
• The Grand Tour presenter Richard Hammond crashed a Rimac Concept One electric supercar during the production of the second series. The crash itself was epic; the car went the off the edge of a mountain road, flipped multiple times going down, and landed at the bottom upside-down where it caught on fire. Miraculously, Hammond escaped the burning vehicle with moments to spare and only a broken knee as the sum of his injuries. When the second series aired, almost every episode had jokes by Hammond's co-presenters about Hammond being unable to finish a car journey right-side up, not on fire, or without destroying a multi-million pound supercar. This perhaps culminated in one episode when the show was allowed to show a picture of the under-development Rimac Concept Two. The picture was, of course, flipped upside-down.
  • Mostly averted with Hammond's Top Gear crash while filming for series 9. Hammond wrecked a jet powered dragster at 288 mph, and spent 2 weeks in a coma. He's had some ongoing memory issues as a result, and other than light teasing when they aired the series nine premier, May and Clarkson generally leave that one alone. Hammond's wishes have been respected enough that the series 9 premier isn't aired anymore and isn't available for purchase.
• Grey's Anatomy: Poor Schmitt will always be known as the guy who dropped his glasses in a patient during surgery.
• Home Improvement:
  • Tim's brothers won't let him forget he slid down the banister head first, explaining... well, Tim.
  • Jill will never let him forget the time he dropped a steel beam on her car.
  • Nobody lets Tim forget the time he glued his head to a table.
• The Inbetweeners: In the season two finale, Will drinks energy drinks to help him take an exam. This causes him to have irritable bowel syndrome, and when Mr. Gilbert refused to let him go to the bathroom, Will soils himself during the exam. A prominent running gag in season three is people bringing up the incident to Will.
• JAG: In the second season episode "Heroes", Harm fired off a sub-machine gun in the courtroom to demonstrate a point. This gets referenced two or three times a season for the rest of the show's run, usually in terms of "I can't believe he didn't get brig time for that", or "you should've seen him in the courtroom."
• LazyTown: Inverted in the episode "Dear Diary" where Sportacus reminds Stephanie of one of his more humiliating moments to cheer her up and drive home the point that there's always a way.
• Law & Order:
  • When Jack McCoy has an argument with one of his subordinates over questionable tactics, expect the phrase "You once hid a witness" to come up. In the episode "Under The Influence" (s8e11), McCoy hid an exculpatory witness from the defense, in order to maintain murder charges against a drunk driver who killed three pedestrians. (He later relented, but still faced sanctions for his actions — incidentally, from the judge who initially encouraged him to do this, because he was mad that McCoy didn't follow through.)
  • Similarly, expect the fact that he slept with Claire Kincaid to pop up at least once a season.
  • Mike Cutter also liked to point out the time that he held a bunch of Russian gangsters without charge for weeks on end, and took it almost all the way to the Supreme Court.
  • Mike Logan got Put on a Bus for punching a politician. He features in a later TV Movie. Naturally, when Law & Order: Criminal Intent rolls around, he's gotten a reputation as a hothead, and carries around a clipping about the incident in his wallet. Though having a temper and an attitude was part of Logan's character from the start, it really didn't get thrown back in his face until CI (by which point, ironically, he's started to calm down a bit).
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
  • A social worker is called to trial for placing a child in an abusive home, which eventually led to his death. The bad publicity and death threats she receives drive her to suicide, with her last words lampshading that she has saved hundreds of children but will only be remembered for this one.
  • Elliot Stabler once admitted that he has fantasies of murdering child molesters, which is often brought up by people who question his credibility as a cop.
• Luke Cage: Early in season 2, Luke gets his abilities tested in a crossfit. His run time is 3.72 seconds, which a news reporter says is faster than Usain Bolt. The entire Jamaican community acts like Luke himself said it, and proceed to give him shit about it for the rest of the season.
• M*A*S*H: During an episode when Hot Lips (whose nickname itself is an example) demands a transfer from the 4077th, citing Hawkeye and Trapper's hijinks as one cause:
  Hot Lips: I am not looking for a truce with these two shower tent peekers!
  Trapper: Boy, you peek into one shower and you're labeled for life.
• The Mr. Potato Head Show: Feeling both guilty and desperate for something to show his audience after his original plan for a reality show spectacularly blows up in his face, Mr. Potato Head films himself doing a dance that embarasses him called the "Fluffy Pookie-Poo" and submits that to his network executives for the show. To his dismay, both the executives and the TV-watching public love it, and it becomes extremely popular. He swears he'll escape the embarrassment if he has to move to South America to do it...only to find that it's also popular in South America.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000: Mike Nelson destroyed three planets in a single season, all purely by accident.
  Prof. Bobo, the Simple Country Lawyer: So you blow yourself up a planet; does that make you a world-destroyer? Hmm? My momma, she burnt a brown betty one time, that make her a world-destroyer? I reckon not.
• The Nanny:
  • Fran will occasionally rub Mr. Sheffield's nose in his decision to pass on producing Cats for Broadway.
    Sheffield: Fran, how long will you keep reminding me of one bloody mistake?
    Fran: Now... and forever, Mr. Sheffield.
  • He also rejected Hair and Tommy. Talk about missed opportunities.
  • Andrew Lloyd Webber is the Always Someone Better for Mr. Sheffield, so Niles will rub his face in Webber's successes even more often than Fran.
  • A few seasons into the show, Maxwell said he loved Fran... and then took it back. She brings that up about every other episode.
• Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: In Elementary School, Ned used the girl's bathroom by mistake at least a couple of times during emergencies. This has led to him being mocked by Loomer and his gang, including adding an "and Ned" sign to the girl's bathroom door.
• New Tricks: Part of the background of Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman), an uptight, tough-as-nails investigator. Her previously high-flying career came crashing down to earth when she was forced to shoot a dog in the line of duty and she was shunted into a backwater assignment heading up the team of retired police officers.
• Odd Squad: Orchid has a tendency to constantly bring up other characters' past misdeeds just to make them feel bad.
  • In "Odds and Ends", Xavier and Xena partner her up with Olympia following Otis and Ms. O being fired from Odd Squad and Ohlm becoming the new Director of Precinct 13579, reminding her that Olympia is the reason why they were fired to begin with. She immediately begins rubbing it in Olympia's face and continues to do so even long after Xavier and Xena leave, much to the agent's chagrin.
  • In "End of the Road", when the agents of OSMU are sent Back to School as punishment for disobeying the Big O's orders, Opal attempts to introduce herself to Orchid, who serves as a teacher at the Odd Squad Academy. Orchid interrupts her by saying that she'll either refer to her as "Sherman" or "the agent who made her sister turn evil".
  • A non-Orchid example of the trope occurs in "Jinx", with Dr. O shooting a knowing, sideways glance at Oscar when the Noisemaker remembers the events of "The Odd Antidote" and how he gave Oscar chocolates that, when eaten, cause a person to make odd noises. The Scientist's response is to avoid any sort of eye contact and awkwardly adjust his glasses.
• Once Upon a Time: Regina will never let Snow White live down telling Regina's mother about her engagement to a stable boy, resulting in a horribly violent Parental Marriage Veto. Snow's gotten very tired of hearing it, since she was ten at the time.
• Commander Michael Burnham from Star Trek: Discovery is constantly reminded by others about her attempted mutiny, especially since it's the first time that it has ever (officially) happened in Starfleet history.
• Parks and Recreation: As an eighteen-year-old, Ben became mayor of his small town and bankrupted the town when he had a winter sports complex built. Years later, the townspeople still hate him for it. As he tells Leslie, he became a state auditor so he could prove how responsible he is.
• Red Dwarf gave us a justified use, then lampshaded it when Arnold Rimmer reads of the captain having described him as "constantly failing" the astronavigation exam:
  Rimmer: Constantly fails the exam? I'd hardly call 11 times "constantly". I mean, if you eat roast beef eleven times in your life, one would hardly say that person "constantly" eats roast beef, would you?
• Sherlock: Despite the fact that Sherlock only wears a deerstalker cap once in an attempt to disguise his appearance, it is referred to constantly by the press as a signature item of his wardrobe.
• Stargate Atlantis: Rodney McKay once blew up a solar system ("Just five-sixths of a solar system!"). Nobody in the show lets him forget this, and often bring it up in an attempt to deflate his ego a bit.
• Stargate Universe: Everett Young beat the crap out of Rush and left him to die on a desolate planet. The civilian population on the ship didn't take it too kindly.
• Star Trek: Picard: Whatever happened to the Enterprise-E, Worf's old crewmates are holding him alone responsible despite his protests of innocence. The series' prequel novel or IDW's Deep Space Nine sequel didn't do him any favors either, as he almost wasn't allowed to take command of the Enterprise-E because of his actions during the Dominion War in saving Jadzia Dax's life and ignoring orders to rescue a potential Cardassian defector. Picard points out that nine out of ten officers would have done the same thing.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: In "Court Martial", it turns out that Ben Finney (whose death via negligence caused the titular court martial) believes that, because of "one little mistake" that Kirk reported while they served in another ship earlier in their careers, everyone in their class mocked him as they made Captain before him. Said mistake could have destroyed the ship with all its crew. It's made pretty obvious as the episode goes that Finney has become completely freaking insane from his obsession over this, including constantly sending letters to his daughter Jaime ranting about it (which make Jaime accept that maybe her father is crazy enough to try to frame Kirk), his trying to crash the Enterprise with everyone on board, and the wide-eyed glee he shows as he tries to kill Kirk with his bare hands at the climax.
• Star Trek: Voyager: Harry Kim has a habit of constantly falling for women he can't get. It gets to the point where every time he starts a relationship, his buddy Tom Paris goes off on a litany of every doomed romance he's started in his time on the ship.
• Stranger Things: Dustin's infamous duet with Suzie isn't going to be forgotted very soon. Lucas and Max are still mocking Dustin for that three months later. A year later, Will just had to start to sing the song (The Neverending Story's theme) to make his brother understand they're going to visit Suzie, and Jonathan's reaction makes clear he still remember the thing.
• Supernatural:
  • In Season 4, Sam got sexually involved with the demon Ruby and as a result, kickstarted The End of the World as We Know It. While he goes on a long redemption arc, characters routinely bring this up.
    • In Season 7, the angel Hester just assumes that Sam and the demon Meg are lovers based on Sam's history with Ruby, much to Meg's annoyance.
    • In Season 12, his relationship with Ruby is among the things that Toni wants to know about when she has captured him for interrogation.
    • The 15th and final season reveals that Ruby (who at this point has been dead for nearly 13 years) was the only individual who knew the location of an important MacGuffin. The instant her name is mentioned, Castiel says "oh, the demon with whom you had sexual relations?"
  • Castiel goes all Well-Intentioned Extremist and briefly becomes God in Season 7. He's also given a long redemption arc, but it's brought up occasionally by other characters.
• What kickstarts the plot of Temps de chien is when its main character, Antoine Meilleur, punches a dog that was biting his arm live on TV. Afterwards, most people he comes across keep criticizing him for doing such a thing to that dog, even though he did so purely as self-defense.
• Treme: In Season 2, Janette gets angry about an article written by Alan Richman (As Himself) about New Orleans that was derogatory towards the city. When she sees him in a bar, she throws a drink of Sazerac (a New Orleans cocktail) in his face, and people are still bringing it up several episodes later, though often in flattering terms.
• The Wire:
  • In the season 2 episode "Stray Rounds", McNulty goes undercover at a brothel so the Major Crimes Unit can make arrests and perhaps make headway into their long-running investigation of the docks and the dead bodies found there. Naturally, McNulty ends up picking two prostitutes, and is involved with Three-Way Sex until the police raid the brothel (when Bunk and Kima catch him in the act, McNulty's first words are, "You're late"). When McNulty writes up the incident report, Bunk tells him, "As a pervert, this report is gonna make you a BPD legend." Sure enough, three seasons later, McNulty still gets asked about it.
  • Roland Pryzbylewski shot up his own patrol car and called it in as being under fire from a sniper. This gets brought up from time to time, usually after he messes up.
• 7 Yüz: In the episode ""Hayatin Musikisi", Pinar is subjected to endless mockery by her colleagues on account of getting cold feet while meeting with a client and dealing with it in the worst way. Instead of presenting her pitch, Pinar stammered and stuttered, before asking the client "well, can't I just send you an e-mail?" The continued embarrassment from the incident and ridicule of her co-workers do little to improve her self-confidence, and she is subsequently sidelined from making pitches.
• We Own This City: Sgt. Wayne Jenkins robbed a dwarf stripper. Even for his thieving co-workers on the Gun Trace Taskforce think that incident crossed a line.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Romantic Getaway and a Germanic Meat-Based Diet", when Missy asks why Mary & George believe Sheldon when he says she snuck out but not her when she says she didn't, George says it's because Sheldon is a "goody-two-shoes" and Missy stole his truck.

Podcasts

• The Neighborhood Listen: When a guest takes a disliking to Burnt, his cohost Joan tries to talk him up by saying that she didn't like Burnt at first either but grew to appreciate him. Burnt is surprised to hear that Joan once found him irritating. She guiltily apologizes, and the ever-chipper Burnt says that he isn't mad but will never forget what she said. He brings it up several more times over the course of the episode, each time assuring her that he will never forget it.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: The deity Helm of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
  • He doesn't seem to ever be able to live down his moments of Lawful Stupid, like killing the first Mystra. It's gotten to the point he and his followers still get called Lawful Stupid by other characters.
  • Helm also gets a lot of flack from the fact that it was a group of his worshipers who found Maztica (a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of the Mayincatec flavor)... and promptly turned into Conquistador-expies.
• Warhammer: The way Ogre mercenary Golgfag Maneater got his surname is an example. People started calling him Maneater after he settled a dispute with a human paymaster by eating him and walking away with his paychests. No big deal, except many people end up assuming he eats human meat and nothing else — which he doesn't — much to Golgfag's annoyance. Warhammer Ogres are Extreme Omnivores who'll eat literally anything when they're hungry (except gold, which is regarded as worthless due to lacking any nutritious value) and Golgfag is no exception, yet to this day he still has to grumpily explain to people who get the wrong idea that a) yes, he may eat a human if the mood strikes him, but b) no, he does not eat manflesh exclusively or have a particular taste for it.

Theatre

• Forms one of the greatest Running Gags in Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier: After having the seat of his pants torn out by a Bengal tiger, Prince Achmed becomes a laughingstock in the Magic Kingdom and elsewhere. Even worse, he's henceforth known as "tigerfucker" by his soldiers, who cannot be convinced their prince wasn't violently sodomized by a tiger. Thing is, they're proud of him for such an achievement, despite his best efforts to reestablish the truth, and they even think his invasion of the Magic Kingdom is motivated by his wanting to be reunited with the tiger.
  Princess: Didn't my tiger eat your ass?
  Soldiers: Tigerfucker! Tigerfucker—!
  Achmed: Stop it! [to the Princess] No! Your tiger did not eat — [to his soldiers] OR fuck — [back to the Princess] my ass! It is I who will be doing the fucking today.
  Soldier: That's right. Bring Achmed his tiger and nobody gets hurt!
  Achmed: SHUT UP!

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Inverted. Ann has blamed herself for the incident regarding her Entanglelitis when it caused her to attack Ryan and slashed out his eye whenever it's brought up, despite Ayane and the rest of her family telling her it was an accident and wasn't her fault.
• Boktai: Played for Laughs in the Ice Tower of the Dark Castle. There is an ice block puzzle so brutally difficult that there is actually a button you can press to solve it for you, but you're warned that it's the "LOSER BUTTON" and that if you press it, you will forever be immortalized as a loser. Sure enough, pressing the button solves the puzzle and replaces the button with a plaque that reads "HERE FOREVER WRITTEN IS THE NAME OF THE LOSER DJANGO" (or whatever name you chose). However, the plaque is in a dungeon you only ever visit once, as when you finish it the entire tower is launched into space and destroyed on re-entry into Earth's atmosphere... along with the plaque and any evidence whatsoever that you're a loser. There's no other consquences for pressing the button, and given the game's sense of humor (not to mention one of the people responsible for the game), conning you into solving a brutal puzzle you have no good reason to do was deliberate.
• Borderlands 3 has the Sell Out quest; when you take it, Tyreen calls you up because she needs a fresh murder vid for her followers, and nominates you to do the job because "you're a total gun slut", complete with bribing you with a gun. Should you actually follow through on it, Tyreen hands you the Legendary gun "Sellout", no questions asked. The problem: while it is an admittedly sweet gun, Tyreen's voice is recorded on it, with a number of crazed messages, to remind you that you sold your dignity for this weapon. ^note Note that this is the only way to get this weapon; the alternative of shooting out her cameras only gives you a fat wad of cash, and that comes and goes easily in these games; whether hearing Tyreen's deflated dismissal and calling you a dipshit is compensation enough is entirely subjective.
  Always remember that you're a gun slut, and you will never be clean.
• This is how The Deathslinger of Dead by Daylight earned his moniker. While using a prototype of The Redeemer, a Harpoon Gun designed to reel in bounties for capture, the harpoon simply speared right through the target. Taking out a good chunk of their guts and killing them on the spot. Even after working out the bugs, the nickname stuck with him.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Downplayed in regards to Molag Bal's (Daedric Prince of Domination and Corruption) most infamous title, "King of Rape". To note:
    • In-universe, he's only been recorded as having raped one person, but this does not prevent his most infamous title being that of the "King of Rape". It also doesn't help that this act was stated to be the "first" rape, similar in implication to the "first murder" of the Bible.
    • Skyrim's Dawnguard DLC further downplays this. It's implied that this is one of the ways that Molag Bal chooses to confer the abilities of a Vampire Lord upon his most devout followers. While his male followers are asked to perform a large Human Sacrifice in his name, women are subjected to a far more degrading ritual at his hands, with the implication being further reinforced by Serana refusing to elaborate further on the matter.
    • In the title's original context, personal assault wasn't even the focus. Instead the "King of Rape" was focused the corruption of racial and genealogical purity, both being Serious Business to the Dunmer.
  • There is a stablemaster NPC in Skyrim named Hofgrir Horse-Crusher. Horse-Crusher isn't actually his family name, but a nickname. Turns out he used to absolutely love horse-riding, until one night he got blackout drunk and attempted to ride a colt, only to snap its back, earning him his new moniker. He has refused to ride a horse ever since.
• Fallout: New Vegas: "Cannibal" Johnson. No, he isn't a humanitarian. Once, cornered by raiders, he managed to kill one of them, and took a bite out of his heart for psychological warfare purpose. It worked, since they freaked out and ran away. It also got him stuck with his nickname.
• The Warrior of Light in Final Fantasy XIV is a Heroic Mime, so they tend to nod a lot whenever they agree to do something. As the story goes on, the Warrior of Light becomes a lot more expressive. However, most of the main characters tend to poke fun at the Warrior of Light for nodding all the time or being able to inspire the masses by a simple head nod.
• In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Dimitri gave a girl he liked a dagger as a going-away present. Sylvain still gives him guff about it to this day. Interestingly, she actually did keep said dagger to the present day, and it becomes a Chekhov's Gift later on.
• While Carol Tea may have ducked out on the girls in Freedom Planet 2, it wasn't the only time, and neither was the time she ducked out on Lilac in the original. The habit is so frequent, in fact, that Lilac and Milla (as the latter points out) have called it "pulling a Carol". Lilac taking off to find Merga at the end of the sequel is treated with the same jest.
  Carol: You guys are never gonna let me live that down, are you?
  Neera: Never.
• CJ in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is constantly reminded by his friends and brother Sweet on how he fled to Liberty City after his brother died in a gang war, leaving behind everyone that needed him. The only thing CJ ever says about the event is how he needed to "get away from some shit." As the story progresses, Sweet starts cutting CJ some slack when he proves to him that he's staying to help out the gang while Ryder doesn't let up on it due to his Jerkass nature.
• Inazuma Eleven: One year before the start of the series, before the match between Kidokawa Seishuu and Teikoku Academy in the Football Frontier finals, Gouenji ran away from the match because his sister suffered a bad accident, leading to his team being disqualified. After changing school and getting back into soccer one year later, Gouenji had to face off Kidokawa in the semi-finals. His former teammates, particularly the Mukata triplets, still hated him and continued to mock him for running away, at least until they learn the truth about his sister, after which they stop taunting him.
• Mass Effect:
  • The galactic community in Citadel Space still looks down on the quarians, usually manifesting as racial bigotry, for creating the Geth. This is despite the fact that it occurred over two hundred years ago and, as Tali points out, billions of quarians were killed and they lost their homeworld; combined with the economic sanctions the Council imposed on the quarians as punishment for breaking interstellar law regarding AI's, one can easily say the quarians have paid for their mistakes. However this gets subverted when records of the original geth-quarian war reveal that it was mostly a war between pro-geth quarians and anti-geth quarians... then swings right back when one remembers the quarians alive today are not the same quarians who fought in that initial war and that some are open peace with the geth, or at least don't want to fight them.
  • Another instance of this trope appears near the end of the Mars mission. In order to stop an infiltration unit created by Cerberus from leaving with the plans for the Crucible, James Vega rams the Cerberus shuttle with the Kodiak they used to to reach Mars. This causes a huge crash that destroys the enemy shuttle while leaving the Kodiak mostly intact but leaves James with a reputation of crashing and destroying shuttles all the time despite him no longer piloting the Kodiak.
  • The Citadel DLC for Mass Effect 3 adds two of these moments for Shepard: Joker will never let you (or Cortez) live down using him for bait that one time, and nobody lets Shep forget about shooting up that sushi place. Specifically, they won't let Shepard live down the part where they fell through a fish tank.
• NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD: KAngel's big spiral into madness in the "Internet Overdose" ending really kicks off when she, due to immense stress and mean comments, undergoes a horrific meltdown and pukes on stream. Despite all the other streams she may have done beforehand, with varied topics like gaming, anime, fanservice, ASMR, and her personal life, this incident quickly overshadows everything else and she becomes "puke girl" to the wider internet. Naturally, this only further damages her mental state.
• Persona:
  • Persona 4:
    • Yukiko's Shadow hosts a dating gameshow and mentions "scoring a hot stud". Teddie has no idea what it means, but that doesn't stop him from bringing it up at almost every opportunity, even citing "scoring with girls" as one of his reasons for wanting to stay as a human. Unsurprisingly, Yukiko gets rather annoyed whenever he brings it up.
    • Kanji's Shadow comes off as a Camp Gay He-Man Woman Hater, resulting in Yosuke teasing Kanji about being gay. In reality, Kanji occasionally shows attraction to Yukiko, before becoming romantically interested in Naoto. Shortly after facing his Shadow, Kanji admits that his actual fear is of rejection, and Kanji's mother tells the player character that he didn't have many friends of either gender while growing up.
    • Rise doesn’t like to think about her shadow’s intention to "bare it all".
  • Persona 5
    • When Haru meets the group in Okumura's Palace during her temporary team-up with Morgana, she rather theatrically introduces herself as the "Beauty Thief." While Haru comes up with a much better thief name, Noir, upon joining, other teammates occasionally tease her about the "Beauty Thief" phase in Mementos skits and a scene at the start of the seventh Palace (in which the cognitive people wear masks like Haru's). The name also gets brought up in Persona 5 Strikers a few times, including by Haru herself, much to the confusion of new ally Zenkichi.
    • Toranosuke Yoshida, the Sun Confidant, suffers from this. Twenty years ago, he was elected to the Diet, but his downfall came as a result of three scandals- missing a meeting to take a vacation, embezzling money and calling a voter an idiot at a forum. Despite the fact that his second and most serious offense wasn't even his fault, he ended up being forced out of politics, and branded with the Embarrassing Nickname "No-Good Tora."
    • A Mementos skit in Royal has Akechi lamenting the infamous "pancakes" line that got him outed as Black Mask,^{Explanation(Major Spoilers)}During the visit to the TV station in June, Akechi casually mentioned overhearing the Thieves talking about going out to eat pancakes. The problem was that Akechi shouldn't have been able to hear Morgana say that unless Akechi had been to the Metaverse before. The Phantom Thieves realize Akechi's claim that he'd awakened his Persona not long before Okumura's death in October was a lie, and discover that his offer to work together is actually a trap. with the potential responses from the other Thieves being mocking. Likewise, Word of God has said that Futaba and Haru were intentionally written to avoid directly interacting with Akechi to show they never forgave him for the murder of their respective parents.
• In Red Dead Redemption, John's former gang members love to bring up the fact that his wife Abigail was a prostitute and that they had all slept with her, though from what is seen in the prequel, there is no indication that Abigail was treated disrespectfully by the gang or that she slept around frequently with other members. It's possible they said that just to spite John or to get under his skin. John himself does not care.
• Resonance of Fate: Early on in the middle of a blackout, Zephyr claims to be "good in the dark". Considering he says that shortly after accidentally walking in on Leanne in the bath (thinking she was being attacked by a monster), Vashyron just runs with it and keeps making fun of Zephyr about it every time it comes up.
• Solatorobo: Protagonist Red finds out that Tagalong Kid Elh is scared of bugs. It becomes a Running Gag in the game. Elh even says "I'm never going to live this down, am I?" the first time the fact is discovered. An NPC uses the exact words after sending Red down a mine and nearly killing him via overenthusiastic application of mining explosives.
• SOON: To Atlas' chagrin, people always remember that one time Atlas blew up a "little chunk of Switzerland."
• A really odd example in Starcraft is Tychus Findlay, who says the sentence "Hell, it's about damn time" a total of one time in his appearances in Starcraft 2 (Yes, only the intro). You'd swear it was his catchphrase with how much his Heroes of the Storm counterpart says it.
• Prince Snowe from Star Stealing Prince is very nearly killed at the start of the game, coming close enough to death to break an enchantment on his kingdom that's tied to his life and put it in jeopardy. From that point on, none will ever miss an opportunity to remind him that he's an idiot who couldn't even go on a small journey without getting himself (almost) killed even when it's decided that breaking the enchantment was for the best.
• Velvet Crowe of Tales of Berseria will never live down the one moment where she acted like a dove in order to fool a security guard. Magilou in particular keeps bringing it up to annoy Velvet.
• In The Walking Dead: Season One, Lee will make fun of Carley at several points for the time that she couldn't get a radio to work... because she put the batteries in backwards.

Web Animation

• In The Champions, Loris Karius's botched throw in the 2018 Champions League final is the subject of multiple jokes. A book by him titled Goalkeeping Essentials is claimed to be "[a] book that nobody reads", and when the Champions League goalkeepers fail to prevent a meteor strike, they refuse to return to avoid similar embarrassment:
  Alisson: We can't go back, we blew it! We'll be a bunch of... Loris Kariuses down there.
• The Cyanide & Happiness Show has Fart in a Jar Martin, who plays with this trope a fair bit. He has the nickname because he farted in a jar in the fourth grade, and every time someone calls him the name, he complains that he only did it one time... but the thing is, he carries the jar around with him so that he can prove to people that it only happened once, and he always introduces himself by claiming that people call him Fart in a Jar Martin despite the fact that he only did it one time in the fourth grade. Everyone around him just really wants him to stop talking about it. Then it's revealed that he actually did it on a daily basis for years, and continues to do it to this day.
• In the DEATH BATTLE! match between Aquaman and Namor, Wiz stabs Boomstick in the foot with one of the sea kings' tridents. Boomstick gives Wiz hell about it throughout the rest of that season and into the next.
• Subverted with Car Crash in Epithet Erased, who protests that he has his nickname because he crashed one car...four times. When he subsequently crashes it a fifth time, the subtitles just refer to the event as "the inevitable", and Giovanni wonders out loud if it might be astigmatism and suggests that he get his eyes checked.
• Refreshing Stories: In "My wife was having an affair at an abandoned hotel… which was also the venue for the air soft match," Mikoshi left the survival game team after Hiroshi allegedly shot him in one of their past matches, causing Hiroshi, Bunta, and the rest of the team to follow suit. Years later, Mikoshi still refuses to let go of the past and sets up a hard airsoft match to trick him into losing. Hiroshi still wins by shooting him despite dressing up a hostage dummy as himself.
• In RWBY, Jaune Arc suffers from motion sickness, so his introduction consists of him vomiting on the flight into Beacon. Since it's the first thing Ruby Rose ever learns about him, she nicknames him "Vomit Boy". While reminiscing about the past over dinner in Volume 5, Jaune mentions feeling queasy because of how much they've all eaten, so Yang Xiao Long calls him "Vomit Boy", leaving him unimpressed. In the next volume, Ruby has him listed on her scroll under that nickname.

Web Comics

• Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: In "Clean Up", Duke, the newest Bat-kid, realizes that he forgot about the gala Bruce is holding that evening and hasn't stashed his superhero gear safely away from prying eyes, despite Alfred's repeated reminders. Duke's frantic inner monologue notes that if Batman's secret gets revealed because he neglected to pick up his costume and arsenal, he'll never live it down.
• Bittersweet Candy Bowl The rest of the school subjects Jessica and Tess to this treatment (Jessica is not actually a slut, and Tess regrets the bullying she did).
• Everyone in Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell, from the police to Darwin's friends, won't stop giving Darwin a hard time about how he accidentally "made the Dalai Lama retarded". Much of the plot involves him trying to find redemption and earn karma to make up for his youthful mistake.
• El Goonish Shive has Abraham's creation of the Dewitchery Diamond, an apparently indestructible gemstone that creates cursed abombinations. Every properly trained wizard has heard of him, apparently.
• Cat from Furry Experience celebrates completing a research paper by doing her "happy peanut butter dance." Her roommate Ronnie happens by, and records the whole thing on her phone. To Cat's chagrin, Ronnie has made this song-and-dance into her ringtone.
• This transpires in Girl Genius when knowledge of Tarvek's... "adorning" of Lucrezia-controlled Agatha becomes widely known. Even Gil heard about it. He still does it in his head sometimes, so he has only himself to blame for it.
• In Grrl Power, Maxima doesn't appreciate being reminded she once (accidentally) destroyed a mosque.
  General Faulk: I don't think you're in any danger of being knocked of your throne yet, oh Destroyer of Mosques.
  Maxima: [slams desk] ONE mosque! And it was an accident! Mostly.
• Homestuck: Nobody will let Karkat forget the shipping chart.
• In Jupiter-Men, Jackie will not let it go about Nathan accidentally ripping out her soul that one time while griping about how traumatic it was.
  Jackie: Just to be extra, super clear. I'm just getting scanned, right? I'm not getting my soul sucked?
  Nathan: You're not going to let that go, are you?
• In Kevin & Kell, Dorothy dated Rudy's coach when they were in school. He proposed to her, but she turned him down, marrying Kevin's dad instead. As their marriage ended in a bitter divorce, Rudy's coach likes to say "I told you so" whenever the two contact each-other.
• The Order of the Stick: After Vaarsuvius sells their soul to fiends in exchange for power, Blackwing continuously reminds them of how dumb their actions were.
  Vaarsuvius: I have a plan.
  Blackwing: Does it involve selling your soul?
• Schlock Mercenary:
  • Captain Tagon gets this after he crashes into a table and winds up with a fork in his eye. For the rest of the Mallcop Command arc, his crew keep making fork jokes.
  Captain Tagon: I bet I can live that down after I turn it to my advantage.
  • Tagon himself gets in on it by threatening to pass the fork on to a grunt as a "prize" for too much chicanery.
  • Next arc has a semi-callback to it when he gets a knife stuck in the same eye. He pulls it out and uses it murder the guy that threw it.
• Shortpacked!: Robin's a decorated war hero, and served two terms as her district's congresswoman, having ran actively for a third term, and having been key an a great deal of landmark legislation, including one bill that resulted in a month of world peace. All people remember her from is that one sex tape.
• Sidekick Girl: Illumina has a rep among her fellow heroes as a jinx with a trail of dead sidekicks. Only one of Illumina's sidekicks actually died in action, and we saw that was a Heroic Sacrifice. Another went insane as a result of his powers^note Forever Lad was a forty-something man stuck in the unaging body of a 12-year old and another simply abandoned her in the middle of a fight. Other than her current and longest-standing sidekick, Val (the title character), we don't know what happened with any of Illumina's sidekicks, from how many there were to why they were reassigned to other heroes. Other than, of course, that they're not dead.
• In The Whiteboard, Doc grumbles about being asked to not maul anyone while refereeing this time.
• White Dark Life: Luigifan will never, ever live down the time he accidentally hit Uma in the face with a glass bottle and knocked her unconscious. Even worse were the contents — he tried to make a Love Potion using assorted pheromones. What he actually made, due to not being all that much of a chemist, is a stinkbomb.
  • Luigifan had a lot of trouble living down the time he nearly killed Tulip with his Yveltal. The incident made it onto the Quotes page for "Didn't Think This Through" for a damn good reason.
  • Another from Luigifan is claiming that Princess Torch would make "beautiful firebird babies" with Inu. (He was actually expressing relief that Torch wasn't saying something outlandish about Inu, with the example being that they would "make beautiful firebird babies", but everyone around him reacted... poorly. Torch absolutely hates it when the incident is brought up.)
  • Speaking of Torch, she'll likely never live down her repeated glomping of Inu, including when she nearly crushed him to death on their first meeting and the extended cuddle session that prompted the aforementioned "beautiful firebird babies" remark.

Web Original

• Wheeljack giving the Dinobots simple brains for authenticity is an example from the Dr. Smoov The Transformers parody videos. Optimus mocks him mercilessly for it when they do a commercial together, saying "Hey, let's make the Dinobots stupid like real dinosaurs! I'm Wheeljack, I make stupid robots!"
• The Onion:
  • One Onion News Network video has a returning, wounded veteran being constantly reminded by everyone in his hometown of Pennington, IL that he shit his pants in the 4th grade. Even the mayor awarding him a key to the city brings it up and the veteran is clearly facepalming at this; he's quoted as saying "he can't wait to leave Pennington and get back to the fight."
  • Another video has the same town haranguing and harassing a guy who moved to New York to make it big in the music scene, only to come back with no success. Even the cops are pulling him over constantly and patting him down. And the reason he moved back? His girlfriend committed suicide, and the news anchors' reaction to this is that "he'll finally have something to write about".
  • There's also the article "Everyone Still Remembers Time You Threw Up In 5th Grade".
  • "Man Who Got Shit Together 5 Years Ago Still Viewed As Lovable Fuckup By Friends, Family"
  • "All Of Man's Accomplishments Overshadowed By Hefty Birth Weight"
• The Cracked article 5 Popular Figures of Speech That Have Creepy Hidden Meanings plays with this, regarding "those bastards at the Department of Homeland Security": "You've made like a million sandwiches in your lifetime, but do they call you the sandwich maker? Of course not. But you commit one war crime and suddenly you're 'a war criminal.'"
• In TomSka's video "The Blame Game", several of the people that Tom kidnaps still remember him as that fat kid that they called "Ham Man".

Web Videos

• An early episode of Atop the Fourth Wall was Batman: Fortunate Son, a bizarre comic featuring Batman waging war on the evils of rock music. For years after that review, just about any appearance of Batman would prompt a joke about his hatred of rock, and Linkara still makes them whenever possible. He's admitted both on the show and off that Batman Vs. Rock and Roll is one Running Gag he will never get tired of.
  • Similarly, the episode on Superman #701 had a scene where Superman decides not to bust some drug dealers, on the questionable basis that "over there has to stand for itself". Whenever Superman appears in later reviews, there's generally a gag where he refuses to solve a problem because it's "over there", and times when he wants to help "over there" are treated as an Out-of-Character Moment.
• Game Grumps: animated scene has Dan mock Arin for spelling "eye" as "E-W-E" for the rest of their life, bringing it up even after Arin has his first child and when they're both dead in their graves. To top it off, Arin's grave says "closed his ewes."
• One Retsupurae video series had slowbeef give ProtonJon hell over being conned into LPing a Super Mario World romhack by its creator, who claimed he had cancer and that his last wish was to see his hack LPed before he died, but was later found to have made up the whole thing.
• Sgt Ducky: Tony getting sicked on by Emma after betraying his girlfriend and the boys will never be forgotten and it has long since been immortalised as a cautionary tale on why you should never betray your friends.
• TFS at the Table: Several of Wake's teammates have indicated that they will indeed remember when, just as they had convinced a very petty dragon not to kill them all, Wake ran off with the dragon's enchanted armour that he hadn't dropped - and threw all his teammates lives into jeopardy again.

Western Animation

• Amphibia: A Running Gag throughout the series is that when someone is reminded about a mistake they made in the past or something bad they did, they respond with a defensive "It was just one time!" or some other variation of "one time".
• Batman Beyond: Terry/Batman II is constantly reminded of his delinquent record, despite having paid for it by spending months in Juvenile Hall. In Return of the Joker, he tells Bruce this was the reason he accepted donning the mantle.
  "I'm trying to make up for past sins. The state says my three months in juvie wiped me clean, but my soul tells me different. Every time I put on that suit, it's my chance to help people that are in trouble. I guess on a personal level, it's a chance to look like a worthwhile human being again. In my eyes, if no one else's! It's what I want, Bruce."
• Beavis And Butthead: In "Crying", Butthead notices Beavis crying while watching The Bachelor (in truth, it was because of an onion in a chili dog) and proceeds to remind Beavis of it at every opportunity. Even 80 years later when the two are wheelchair bound at a retirement home, Butthead is still making fun of Beavis for crying.
• Bob's Burgers: In "Poops!... I Didn't Do It Again", Bob mentions the time Linda pooped in a bucket at a wedding because the line for the bathroom was too long. Linda then complains that she only did it once.
• Centaurworld: In "Holes: Part 3", every time someone brings up Mary, the scene cuts to her furiously complaining about the herd ruining her wedding a few episodes ago.
• In the Dragons: Riders of Berk episode "Fright of Passage", Astrid holds a particular chip on her shoulder because her Family Honor was mocked and teased by the village ever since her Uncle "Fearless" Finn Hofferson froze when faced against the Flightmare a decade prior. It was eventually revealed that Finn did not freeze in terror, but rather because the Flightmare sprays a paralyzing venom. The news of this revelation restores the Hofferson name.
• Futurama:
  • Leela once fell for Zapp Branigan's acting and had sex with him. She completely despises him and wants nothing to do with him, but the issue is always mentioned when he's around. Mainly because he's her personal Abhorrent Admirer and loves to mention his moment of glory at every chance he gets.
  • Fry performing certain deeds which led to him becoming his own grandfather. Usually the Professor tends to be the one to bring it up most.
    Fry: I did do the nasty in the pasty.
    Nibbler: Verily!
• The Great North:
  • In Season 1 "Period Piece Adventure", Vera has a grudge against Beef because he trespassed on her property. Once, thirty years ago when he was sledding by her house as a kid and left snow tracks on her driveway and she tells him she'll never forget it.
  • In Season 1 "My Fart Will Go on Adventure", when the Shaw family brings up an example of them not being a perfect family for the Tobins, Ruth brings up the time Louis, after eating some egg salad, farted on their couch one time 17 years ago. Apparently, his fart smelled so bad that Ruth called the fire department because she thought there was an electrical fire in the walls and they tried to reupholster their couch but the smell was too deep in so they had to get rid of it. According to Louis, Ruth and Honeybee's grandma have never let him forget it.
• Hey Arnold!:
  • One episode had Rhonda throw a party in which some characters were not invited for being Geeks. They bring up the literal definition of the word, which repeatedly prompts this exchange: "...And none of us bite the heads off chickens! Except Curly." "Yeah! And that was only the one time!"
  • Another example (and deconstruction) occurs in "Phoebe's Little Problem". Phoebe, while accepting an award on stage at a school assembly, accidentally farts into a microphone. The rest of the students won't let her live it down, eventually causing her to become a shut-in. Some of the other students (and Mr. Simmons, the teacher) feel bad for her and try to cheer her up, but their attempts end up making her feel worse. Finally, at another assembly, Phoebe gets on stage and goes on a tirade about how, in spite of everything else she's done, all the other students are reducing her to just being "the girl who farted", as if that was the extent of her accomplishments. When Harold still proceeds to mock her for it, he ends up wetting his pants and runs away while everyone laughs at him and Rhonda says "He's never gonna hear the end of it."
• Justice League: Even though Hawkgirl ultimately chooses the Justice League and Earth over her Thanagarian people, the public (and even some of her fellow supers) have yet to forgive her for her actions in "Starcrossed". Seasons later, there are in-universe web forums solely dedicated to bashing her, and some of Hawkgirl's former True Companions in the League still have trouble trusting her again.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the episode "Newbie Dash", Rainbow Dash finally fulfills her lifelong dream and joins the Wonderbolts. However, in her first run, she suffers a crash, and ever after gets called Crash by her new wingmates (something she's touchy over due to childhood bullies always calling her Rainbow Crash). However, by the end of the episode, she learns that the Wonderbolts operate using nicknames like this (Soarin', for instance, is called Clipper due to his tendency to clip his wingmates' wings during drills as a rookie), and Dash learns to recognize it as an Insult of Endearment rather than genuine mockery.
  • Both Season 6 and 7 have Starlight constantly reminded of her villainous misdeeds, though it's more of off-handed comments that Starlight would really wish was not brought up.
  • Twilight, at one point, heavily condemns Trixie and considers her a bad influence on Starlight. Trixie and Starlight even joke about their mutual histories as former jerks who had since found redemption.
• The Proud Family: Oscar will never live down losing the basketball match to Wizard Kelly. Because he's the show's main Butt-Monkey, he not only missed the shot, but the ball bounced all the way to the other end of the court. And he is constantly reminded of this humiliating moment by the Wiz.
• Rick and Morty:
  • In the episode "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", Jerry mentions in passing that he has wondered about having a vagina. Afterwards Groupon reminds him at every occasion about his vagina fantasies, leading to Jerry proclaiming "I don't want to be known as the vagina guy."
  • In the episode "Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion", there's the existence of the giant space baby created in "Rickdependence Spray" when Morty's genetically-enhanced super-sized sperm "Sticky" entered Summer's enlarged ovum. It is a continuous source of squick to everyone that knows of it, including other-dimension Ricks:
    Hothead Rick: I think you guys got a lotta nerve actin' better than us! This is the family that made a giant incest baby! Had the government launch it into space! It's still floatin' around out there somewhere!
    Rick: Are we ever gonna live that down?
• A sketch in Robot Chicken involved a new member getting inducted into G.I. Joe, and ruining first impressions by tripping over. He is mercilessly mocked by the crew and given the nickname "Fumbles". This backfired horribly, because after too much abuse he ends up joining Cobra, and turns out to be an ace sniper.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Bart Gets Famous", Bart makes a disaster in a TV studio, broadcasted live, and tries to excuse himself by saying "I didn't do it!". It was a big success, and he soons becomes the "I didn't do it" kid. Everything is fine, until he realizes that it's all just a fad. Everywhere he goes, nobody cares about anything he has to say, except for his line. And then, the end: as all fads, he becomes old-fashioned, and that's it.
  • Another Simpsons example is "The Boys of Bummer", in which Bart misses a fly ball, losing his team the game, and is bullied by all of Springfield until he attempts suicide. The professional baseball player Joe LaBoot is another example, as he is still bullied for being a terrible player despite having retired decades ago.
• In Star Trek: Lower Decks, Sonya Gomez, despite having long since become a Captain after her last appearance onboard the Enterprise-D decades earlier, never forgot the fact that she dumped hot chocolate on Captain Picard, essentially using it as a moral booster for equally jittery ensigns.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Fighter Flight", Zeb is fed up that Ezra won't stop reminding him that he saved his life in the previous episode.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The turtles will never live down the fact that they mutated April's father, and she turns her back on them for it. This eventually comes to an end when Casey informs her that he lost a friend on an accident, which led her to forgive the turtles.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • Whenever an engine gets into an accident, the other engines will always bring it up whenever possible to tease them for the next few episodes.
  • In "James and the Coaches", James bumps one of the coaches so hard that he made a hole in of them. In order for the train to continue, he needed newspaper and a passenger's bootlace to mend the hole in the coach. Three episodes after that, engines will remind James of the bootlace incident, much to his annoyance.
  • Similarly, in "Brake Van", Douglas brings up James crashing into the tar wagons in "Dirty Objects".
    James: Shut up. It's not funny.
  • In "Edward and Gordon", Gordon gets stuck pulling trucks on a steep hill. Edward comes to help him up. Ever since then, the hill has been known by most characters as "Gordon's Hill". Other engines would later have trouble on the same hill but since Gordon was the first, it's officially named after him.
  • In "Percy Takes the Plunge", Henry, after being teased by Percy for being afraid of the rain, lampshades that no one will ever forget the time he wouldn't leave the tunnel because he thought the rain will spoil his paint.
• Total Drama:
  • Gwen will likely never live down being kissed by another girl's boyfriend. That one scene led to Gwen getting voted out and all her allies abandoning her (with Sierra even referring to her as the "New Heather"), even though she'd been a good friend and strong competitor up until then. In All-Stars, she is placed on the villain team entirely because of this, and becomes their Token Good Teammate.
  • Bridgette getting her tongue stuck to a pole when she tried to kiss Alejandro. Several characters love to ridicule her for it or are angry at her for her actions, even despite the fact Bridgette herself showed immense guilt and shame for what she did and was ultimately forgiven by Geoff, and how the couple moved on from it to happily continue their relationship.
• Transformers: Animated: Bulkhead continually brings up the fact that Professor Sumdac was, well, deceived into rebuilding Megatron.
• Xiaolin Showdown: Raimundo is repeatedly reminded about his struggle to become an Apprentice of the Monks. Early in the series, Omi constantly ridicules him for not having made Apprentice. Even after he finally does make it, he's still referred to as "the last one to make apprentice."

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