Quotes / Ret-Gone

Anime and Manga

"The Blanks' energy is about to run out. And everything related to Senna will disappear from our memories. One can't remember something that shouldn't have existed in the first place."

— Rukia Kuchiki, Bleach: Memories of Nobody

"What isn't remembered never happened. Memory is merely a record. You just need to re-write that record."

— Serial Experiments Lain

Yuji: This is what it means to be a torch?
Shana: Yes.
Yuji: And I will vanish in the same way?
Shana: Yes. The remaining scum will eventually burn out. Nobody remembers it existed, and nothing remains. That's why all continues smoothly.
Yuji: No! I know! I know that Hirai existed!

— Shakugan no Shana

Comic Books

Per Degaton: His name was Jason Huntington. He was your best friend in grade school. He was the only other boy you could relate to. Jason loved the pulp magazines and the science-fiction pictures. He kept you from feeling isolated. From being without friends. I think I'll take him too.

Hourman: No.

Per Degaton: Thanks to the Red Morgue, your friendship with Jason Huntington never existed.

Hourman: ARRGH! (spasms and collapses)

Degaton: Jason died when he fell - I mean when he was pushed - from his crib. Your childhood is becoming quite bleak. Do you even remember him? Or do you just recall the loneliness? The empty void during your school years. Who else, Hourman? Perhaps the first girl you kissed? Shall I erase her from your timeline too?

—JSA Vol. 1 issue #71

Fan Works

Retroactive erasure. While striking you down will merely deny your future, an exorcism will deny your past. All memory of you will be removed from the Realground and the Underground alike. You will never have existed - not as a Reaper, not as a Player, not as a living human. And your efforts of sabotage against your fellow Reapers will become the whims of fate, that no one has ever opposed the Reaper's Game. A fate more cruel than any Player has suffered.
If you will not let your voice be heard, nor will you hear the voices of others, then the world ends at your borders, and all the potential your life or death could hold will vanish into the aether.

— Black Rock Shooter, The Precedent of Hatsune Miku: Ghost Town

Films - Live Action

"Imagine if you suddenly learned that the people, the places, the moments most important to you were not gone, not dead, but worse: had never been. What kind of hell would that be?"

— Dr. Rosen, A Beautiful Mind

Literature

"When the shadow people take you, they take all of you. Past, present, future. They reach back and rip you out of the past, like tearing up a plant by the roots. If a man kills you, you're gone. If a shadow man kills you, you never were."

— David Wong, John Dies at the End: John and Dave and the Temple of X'al'naa'thuthuthu

Live Action TV

Lister: We don't exist here anymore!
Kryten: Actually sir, we don't ever have existed here anymore, but this is hardly the time to be conjugating temporal verbs in the past impossible never tense.

— Red Dwarf, "Inquisitor"

Crusher: Computer, read the entire crew roster for the Enterprise.
Computer: Dr. Beverly Crusher.
Crusher: Have I always been the only member of the crew on the Starship Enterprise?
Computer: Affirmative.
Crusher: If this were a bad dream, would you tell me?
Computer: That is not a valid question.
Crusher: Like hell it's not.

— Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Remember Me"

Tabletop Games

Time warped in on itself, doing everything possible to keep Vargo's act from ever taking place. It's like a wave rolling through time: as we get further from the event, the shockwave rolls further and further back through time. During the Great War, it was like he had just disappeared off the face of the earth and had never tried to stop the war. But after the war, I found that people who had attended the ceremony officially welcoming the Etherites into the Council could no longer agree on whether or not Vargo had been there. During the Great Depression, I met an Etherite who swore he'd attended Vargo's funeral after he'd died in a lab accident before the turn of the century. After World War II, I found an article in Paradigma - the Etherite science journal - written by the man reputed to be Vargo's mentor, claiming that he'd had no such student. I was in Odessa once during the Cold War, and met an old fisherman who was trying to drink himself to death because he'd come back from fishing one evening to find that his village was gone, and everyone he'd asked had told him that the only village there had been destroyed back in the time of the Tzars. I still have vivid memories of sitting in a Paris cafe, seeing Vargo's ship appear in the sky; others have similar memories. But as the years pass, more and more of them see to forget, and those who remember can't agree on the details. That is the power of Paradox.

— Mage: The Ascension - Guide To The Traditions

"Some were born to fight. Some were born to rule. I was never born at all."

— Sarkhan Vol after revising history, Magic: The Gathering

Video Games

"Never existed!"

— Chrono Legionnaire, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

"If you return your memories to him, you'll disappear. And since everything about you was built on those memories...no one will remember you when you're gone. There won't be any "you" to remember. I can't save you, Xion—even a memory of you."

— Naminé, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days

"Everything you've done, everything you are... It will be as if you never existed."

— Squares, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

"Have you ever thought about a world where everything is exactly the same... except you don't exist? Everything functions perfectly without you... Ha, ha... That thought terrifies me."

— Goner kid, Undertale

"I had been expecting you. Your life, your name, they will be wiped from history. Come, it is time... to die."

— Kronika, Mortal Kombat 11 Towers mode

Web Animation

"Oh yeah, Peter accidentally had a baby with Fauxlivia thinking it was 'Ourlivia', and with him not existing that baby is just aborted by the universe itself."

— Alternate History Hub mentioning the fate of Henry Dunham in "A Mediocre Recap of Mediocre Alternate History Shows

Webcomics

Sabrina: Fido, if you don't go in there and stop this right now, I am going to make you never born.
Fido: D... don't you mean "Wish I was—"
Sabrina: No.

— Housepets!

Western Animation

"Say goodbye to the universe, Maximals. The future has changed, yes. The Autobots lose. Evil triumphs, and you... you no longer exist!"

— Megatron, Beast Wars Season 2 Finale

Past Phineas: Wait, Candace! You're grown up, and there's two of you!
Good Future Candace: Phineas, we're from the future—two alternative futures. One that's good...
Bad Future Candace: ...and one that's terrible.
Past Phineas: Someone should really fix that.
Both Future Candaces: We did.
Past Phineas: So the bad future no longer exists?
Both Future Candaces: Right.
Past Phineas: Well, if it doesn't exist, shouldn't Candace from the bad future cease to exist, too?
(Beat)
Bad Future Candace: Oh, darn. (Vanishes out of existence)

— Phineas and Ferb

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