Sometimes, a person may choose to wipe their own memories, with the intention that this would be a permanent action. When this occurs, it's usually for several reasons.
- They want to prevent a secret that they know about from slipping and feel that forgetting it would make that more difficult.
- They feel guilt over something that they have done and want to forget all about it.
- They have either had their heart broken by someone or have seen something they really did not want to see and feel that losing their memories is the only way to get over their resultant Heroic BSoD.
- They want to defeat a telepathic opponent, especially one that feeds off memories, and feel that deleting their memories would either make it harder for the opponent or otherwise weaken them.
Such memory loss either occurs through natural repression or wiping through technological or magical means. It almost always tends to be Laser-Guided Amnesia, although in serious cases, they may end up losing more than they expected, potentially leading to either Amnesiac Dissonance or even Identity Amnesia.
This might be played using the method of a Memory Jar and Pensieve Flashback; characters may deliberately dump certain memories onto a "container". They may not be able to remember said memories, but when needed, they can check the container to remember them.
Compare with Memory Gambit for when the memory loss is not intended to be permanent. May overlap with Victory-Guided Amnesia if the character deliberately sacrifices their own memories to win. May also overlap with Trauma-Induced Amnesia due to them being traumatized over whatever event they witnessed. Overlaps with Ignorance Is Bliss.
This trope is by its nature Spoileriffic; spoilers will be unmarked.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Sailor Moon: By the end of Season 1, the title character has defeated the villains at the cost of all her friends' and boyfriend's lives, and makes the wish to be able to live as a normal girl. The next morning, everyone has been resurrected with no memory of their time as superheroes, with only Luna and Artemis keeping their memories. The first part of Season 2 revolves around everyone regaining their memories one at a time.
Audio Plays
- Torchwood (Big Finish): In "The Office of Never Was'', Ianto accidentally kills the employees of Milne Futures by poisoning them with Retcon to reverse the effects of their brain augmentation drugs. In the aftermath, he took a retcon drug to wipe himself of the memory of his actions and to clear his conscience. After Oliver forcibly reminds Ianto of what he did, Ianto wipes his memory again.
Comic Books
- In The Alternates, Kid Curious created a weaponized, targeted version of Alzheimer's disease that can be used for Laser-Guided Amnesia. Realizing how dangerous such a thing would be in the wrong hands (and, more selfishly, that he would probably be kicked out of his Tropaholics Anonymous group if they found out he had such a weapon) he used it on himself so that he would forget the formula for creating it.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Search: Ursa is exiled by Ozai and, wishing to begin her life anew, visits the Mother of Faces, an ancient spirit capable of bestowing people with new identities. Sensing the woman's sorrow, the Mother of Faces offers to erase Ursa's painful memories of the years she spent as Ozai's wife. Ursa realizes that accepting the offer would also cause her to forget her beloved children, and despite tearfully acknowledging that doing so makes her a horrible mother, she goes through it. She then returns to her home village, marries her old boyfriend and spends the following years blissfully unaware of her former life. Her memories only return at the very end of the novel, when her husband tells her the truth about her past, prompting Ursa to request the Mother of Faces to undo the spell.
- Dark Reign: Following Norman Osborn's acquisition of everything belonging to him, Tony Stark goes on the run from him as he's only missing one thing — the list of superheroes and their secret identities, which is stored in Tony's mind. Thus, Tony decides to run to certain safe houses so he can erase that list, taking the rest of his memories away from him. He ends up with a backup of his memories installed soon after, but the backup being from before the entire Civil War debacle.
- Used quite often in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe stories involving Paperinik, as the hero is extremely protective of his Secret Identity but will need time to reveal it to someone, and as soon as the knowledge isn't necessary anymore they'll take a memory-erasing candy to forget it (if only to keep him to force-feed them one). Particularly notable when it was Fethry's turn: the guy is just so nice and kind that Paperinik reluctantly made an exception, but Fethry himself eventually asked for candy because he realized he was only giving him trouble.
- It turns out that the chronically depressed Chromedome has been doing this to himself as a form of Laser-Guided Amnesia over the course of The Transformers (IDW). The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye goes into detail about it, explaining that he'd actually had not one but numerous previous Conjunx Endura (Cybertronian equivalent of spouses) and after losing every single one in the course of the war, he eventually began erasing his own memories of them to spare himself the pain of repeated heartbreak. He almost does this when Rewind is seemingly killed by Overlord, but is convinced to stop at the last moment by Brainstorm (in one of his rare Pet the Dog moments) and eventually starts learning to deal with his grief in a healthier manner.
Fan Works
- Fallout: Equestria: The Goddess has the power to read minds, so to smuggle a balefire bomb into her Cathedral, the main protagonist Littlepip tells everyone their parts to play then has her memory removed and stored and then leaves notes behind to manipulate herself into doing her part. Littlepip almost ruins the plan by looking at her stored memories but gets shouted at by her previous self who anticipated that Littlepip would attempt to look and ruin the plan in the process.
- Its Dangerous To Guard Alone: Twilight saw the future and doesn't want to mess it up by overthinking things and causing a Grandfather Paradox situation, so she decides to apply an amnestic to herself to forget all about it.
Twilight took a deep breath and nodded to herself. "Brave, please arrange an appointment with Zecora at her earliest convenience. Her amnestics always taste better than anything I can make."
- In Mork and Memories, Mork overhears Mindy say that it's not "easy" being married to an alien. Thus, he uses telepathy to erase his alien memories and make himself think he's human.
- Played for Laughs in This Bites!: after the encounter with the monstrosity that is Magical Girl Inferno Aniki (whose mere sight had made Vivi vomit blood), the crew wants some Brain Bleach to forget it, Chopper agrees to prepare it... and Luffy just thinks the memory away.
- Two Letters: Marinette knew that giving up her Guardianship would erase her memories of everything Miraculous-related, including her time as Ladybug. As part of preparing for this, she wrote two letters: one to Luka revealing her Secret Identity and why she was quitting her job despite the high price, and one to herself.
- Vow of Nudity: In Bonus Encounters: Last Catgirl Standing, after surviving a convoluted Stable Time Loop on an uncharted island, Fiora sneaks back onto her own boat but gets spotted by her past self. Realizing she had no memory of this encounter, she tags herself with a temporary amnesia curse ensuring she doesn't remember anything between arriving at the island and jumping overboard to swim ashore.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder, a Recursive Fanfic based off of Two Letters, has Bunnyx accidentally reveal to Marinette that Hawkmoth will eventually get his hands on the Miracle Box. While Bunnyx doesn't care, insisting that's just how things are meant to be, Marinette decides to find a Superior Successor and give up being the Guardian, knowing she'll lose her memories as a result.
Film — Live-Action
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: After breaking up with his girlfriend, protagonist Joel tries to make up with her only to find out that she has undergone a procedure to erase her memories of him. Joel decides to take the procedure himself out of spite, and the bulk of the film consists of Joel reliving their relationship in reverse as his memories of her are erased one by one.
- Himalaya Singh, a Hong Kong screwball comedy from 2005, introduces a "mystical Indian potion" that wipes away a person's memory, a drop for a day, tested on Singh's sidekicks who thought "today was Tuesday / Monday" (they took one and two drops, respectively, on a Wednesday). Near the end of the film, Singh realized he's hopelessly addicted to gambling, lust, greed, and assorted vices and decides to wipe his memory clean by finishing the remaining half-a-bottle.
- Men in Black II: Years before the movie, in order to protect the Light of Zartha, Agent K used the MIB's own neuralyzer to erase his memories about the Light but left clues for himself about the Light's whereabouts in case he'd ever have to find it again. He and J spend a good portion of the movie following these clues.
- In Oldboy (2003), Oh Dae-Su is so psychologically broken over the reveal that his younger girlfriend Mi-Do is actually his long-lost daughter, that he seeks out the aid of a hypnotist to hypnotize him into forgetting the whole traumatizing ordeal. Despite Oh Dae-Su's efforts, the film's ending implies that the hypnosis wasn't successful as his smile turns into a painful grimace as he embraces Mi-Do.
- The Sheep Detectives: Exaggerated. Sheep can forget unpleasant memories just by willing themselves to for a moment, with Mopple being the only one who can’t. The sheep have to push past the desire to do this in order to solve George’s murder.
- In Shutter Island, the protagonist's backstory is revealed to be one where he Mercy Killed his troubled wife after she drowned their three kids. He goes mad and is sent to an institution where he eventually fakes a regression so that he can be lobotomized and forget what happened forever.
Literature
- A Certain Magical Index: A flashback reveals that one year prior to the events of the first volume, Misaki Shokuhou intended to rewrite her own memories to relieve herself of "heavy thoughts", stemming from her time at the Clone Dolly Workshop (as revealed in A Certain Scientific Railgun). But her attempt was interrupted by Kamijou Touma stumbling upon her, with the situation devolving to her attempting to erase his memories of inadvertently seeing her underwear only to be thwarted by Touma's Imagine Breaker negating her abilities.
- In The City and the Stars, this procedure is routine: at the end of a citizen's life, they edit their memories, choosing which ones to carry forward to their next incarnation and which to delete. At one point, Khedron the jester points out an artwork and says he remembers that he can't remember anything about who created it except that he knew the artist. Maybe, he speculates, he created it himself and then deleted the memory out of pique when it didn't get the appreciation he felt it deserved.
- Coffin Princess Chaika: During the final battle, Chaika runs out of magic fuel for her gundr, and is forced to use her own memories to power the spell that ultimately kills the Big Bad for good. The ending shows Tohru helping her recover but leaves it ambiguous as to how much she remembers (or ever will remember).
- Divergent: In Allegiant, Peter chooses to wipe his own memory using the Memory Serum, having become tired of being cruel and believing the serum to be the only way he could change.
- The Emperor's Soul: Shai's final essence mark, if she ever used it, would leave her as a humble farmer with no memory of her past as a forger. While the essence mark technically requires regular reapplication to be permanent, the personality it gives her includes false memories telling her that she needs to regularly reapply it or die.
- In Ghost Story (2011), it's revealed that Harry Dresden had his memories removed in Changes, as part of a Batman Gambit in preparation for becoming the Winter Knight. Specifically, he didn't want Mab to find out that he ordered a hit on himself ahead of accepting the mantle. Mab wanted him to take the job, and he needed the mantle's power for a mission but didn't want to deal with it potentially changing his personality afterwards. Harry would have had trouble keeping that information hidden from her.
- In The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma, we find out that Constance, when she was only 2 years old, made herself forget the scary experience she had at the orphanage before she had run away, including the Big Bad's recruiters bargaining with the orphanage to take her away.
- A story in the 10th Thieves' World anthology features a character who bears a complex curse: to wander the earth forever, to never sleep twice in the same bed nor eat twice from the same table, and to never know why. When the archmage Enas Yorl temporarily restores his memory, he remembers that the one who cursed him was himself, as penance for a crime so hideous that Enas Yorl won't even hint at it.
Live-Action TV
- Arrested Development: Gob carries around a bottle of pills that he calls "forget-me-nows" because they cause amnesia. (They're actually illegal roofies.) He doses himself after admitting to Steve Holt that he is Steve's father because he can't handle the responsibility.
- Castle (2009): Castle disappears on the way to his wedding at the end of Season 6, and reappears two months later with no memory of his lost time, two bullet wounds, and a severe fever. He tries to figure out what happened, even offering an award to anyone with information, eventually tracing his steps to Montreal, where he comes across "Henry Jenkins", an imposter involved in the disappearance who was later revealed to be a CIA handler. "Jenkins" tells Castle that he himself didn't want to remember and that they went to great lengths to make him forget, confirming this with a Trust Password. He urged Castle to go back to living his normal life instead of digging for the truth, and Castle, while shaken, believes him. Castle later learns he did this because he had learned about LokSat, a dangerous, hidden co-conspirator in the murder of Beckett's mother, and got shot in the process. Castle knew if Beckett found out about LokSat she would never stop until she took him down, choosing to forget so he could be with her and still protect her.
- Doom Patrol (2019): Madame Rouge, the Big Bad of the third season, chooses to erase her own memory and join the Doom Patrol for a shot at redemption.
- Once Upon a Time (2011):
- After King George threatens Charming's life if Snow White doesn't leave him for good, Snow is so heartbroken over the separation that she takes a memory potion to forget him — just before she could learn that Charming ran away to be with her. This has the unintended side effect of making Snow cold and heartless, so Charming goes after her to stop her from killing Regina and brings back her memory.
- In "Save Henry", flashbacks to Regina's adoption of Henry show Regina took a memory potion after learning Henry was the son of the Savior to forget about his origins, because she wanted to focus her energy on being present as his mother instead of worrying about Emma's return in the future. It is unclear whether this potion wore off when Emma came to Storybrooke or if Regina simply figured out the truth a second time.
- In "There's No Place Like Home", Rumplestiltskin takes a memory potion to forget all of the future information the time-traveling Emma told him about reuniting with and then losing his son.
- Flashbacks in "The Eighth Witch" reveal that Regina was the one who cast the Hyperion Heights curse, forced to do so since it was the only way to save a dying Henry, and knowing if it broke Henry would die. This also erased her memories, giving her the cursed identity of Roni.
- Red Dwarf: In "Thanks for the Memory", Lister, feeling pity for Rimmer over the fact that the latter hadn't been loved, edits Rimmer's memory to give him his old girlfriend Lise Yates. When Rimmer inevitably finds out, he is so upset that he requests his memory erased to get rid of the emotional turmoil. To help erase all knowledge of the incident taking place, Lister and the Cat decide to erase their memories too.
- Stargate SG-1:
- In "Wormhole X-Treme", Martin Lloyd turns out to have voluntarily given himself memory-altering drugs this time, after discovering that his homeworld had been destroyed the last time SG-1 ran into him.
- Linea's experimental Fountain of Youth actually worked on her test population, and herself, but had the side effect of erasing everyone's memories. As "Ke'ra" works with SG-1 to devise a cure for the memory loss, they figure out who she was (i.e. a mass-murdering Mad Scientist) and try to persuade her that restoring her own memories would be a mistake — but she doubts their claims and fixes herself anyway, upon which she's horrified to realise that they were right. She's on the brink of being Driven to Suicide, in a way that would also kill everyone else nearby, when they are able to talk her down and persuade her that she can erase her memories again.
- Torchwood: In "Adam", Jack, alongside the rest of the team, chooses to take an amnesia pill, which would wipe out the last 48 hours of their memories, to repel all knowledge of Adam, a malicious Backstory Invader who relies on memories to survive. Despite Adam's efforts to survive by editing one of Jack's cherished childhood memories with his missing brother, as well as his claims that removing him will also remove all of Jack's memories with his dead father, Jack goes through with it.
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Mind of Simon Foster", downwardly mobile salaryman Simon Foster is desperate for cash, so he agrees to sell his memories, especially his sexual ones, to an underworld trader. The cash helps for a while, but Simon finds he can't rightly recall other things as well. When Simon demands memories back, the trader isn't sure which are Simon's memories and which aren't. Simon ends up with a head full of memories he never had before.
- Wednesday: Xavier asks Bianca to use her Compelling Voice to make him forget about Wednesday after she rejects him. Bianca refuses; she may be mean, but she hates forcing other people to do what she wants in such an unnatural way.
Video Games
- Daniel from Amnesia: The Dark Descent erased his own memory so that he wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that he tortured people to death and murdered children who tried to escape.
- Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream takes place in Erde Wiege, a parallel world existing outside of space and time where people from all throughout history come together in order to accomplish their dreams. In the game's ending, when the cast is returning to their respective time periods, Plachta chooses to have her memories of her time in Erde Wiege erased: due to encountering her future self as well as Sophie, her future best friend, she discovered important details about what's in store for her, including the fact that her current friend Luard will fall into evil and trap her soul within a book. By keeping her memories, Plachta would be able to avert this fate, but in the process she'd create a future where she never gets to meet Sophie, something she can't bear to do knowing how close they become. As such, she decides to let herself go through the hard times that are coming, knowing that it ultimately leads to a brighter future. That said, her future self doesn't undergo this amnesia, so she knows that she'll eventually get those memories back.
- Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: Later in the game's story, it's revealed that the Overlord Zenon the party defeated was an imposter; the real Overlord Zenon is one of the party's members: Rozalin. As Zenon, she became so powerful after killing many Demon Lords and Overlords that she was starting to transform into something more than a demon, so she sealed away her powers and memories and reincarnated herself as Rozalin. The final battle of the game is against a reawakened Overlord Zenon with her memories restored.
- Fallout 3: The side quest "The Replicated Man" reveals that Harkness, the security chief of Rivet City, is actually a synth known as A3-21 who, after developing a sense of self-determination and escaping the Institute, sought the help of Horace Pinkerton to wipe his memories clean on top of a reconstruction surgery so that he can start a new life without the constant fear of being hounded by the Institute.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, Hermes invokes the memory-wiping device Kairos to wipe his memory of the day's events along with the memories of everyone else present at Ktisis Hyperboreia. Due to his Insane Troll Logic, this is his way of ensuring "fairness" in seeing if mankind deserves to exist in the wake of the Meteia's impending Song of Despair.
- Flower Knight Girl: In Sigillaria's story section of the "Chasing Bunnies, But They're Flowers" event, she's revealed to have deliberately sealed away her own memories of her involvement in the "The Brides of Feta Isle" event due to the trauma it brought her, with the memories forcibly coming back from the deja vu of both Hii-chan and Win convincing her to go out in the Summer season with a new revealing ensemble, plus Hii-chan questioning if she had fun at the Feta Isle resort.
Sigillaria: GuwaaaAAA! My sealed memory's coming back!! They were targeting my ass~~~~!!
- Limbus Company: Don Quixote's true identity is Sancho, an ancient Bloodfiend who witnessed the downfall of her home in La Manchaland and decided to drink from the River of Oblivion to suppress her memories. In Canto VII, they are fully restored after some manipulation from Sansón, forcing her to face the consequences of her past head-on.
- Look Outside: If you explore Apartment 12, you can discover that your next door neighbour, Sybil, inflicted severe memory loss on herself because she discovered information that could doom the entire world in her research of the Visitor, and even the knowledge existing within her thoughts could be catastrophic (the only reason it didn't immediately obliterate the planet upon learning of it was because she was so horrifically mutated at that point she was no longer a part of Earth, strictly speaking, with most of her body existing as Meat Moss within a Pocket Dimension).
"I've begun the process. There is no going back now. I'm forgetting so much already. I'm already starting to forget their faces. I hate it. I haven't cried in a long time. I guess this body can still do that."
- Märchen Forest: Mylne and the Forest Gift: One character wiped her memories so she would stop grieving over the losses of her past. That character is Rosetta.
- Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: It's revealed that the protagonist Yuma Kokohead is actually the real Number One, the best detective of the World Detective Agency. He made a contract with the Death God Shinigami to take away his memories and act as his mentor, all the while borrowing the identity of the real Yuma Kokohead so he can make himself accept help (since he always preferred to work alone). After Yuma learns the truth about himself and his connection Makoto Kagutsuchi (the perfect homunculus created from Number One's DNA), Shinigami allows him and Makoto to leave the Mystery Labyrinth through the emergency exit, which ends the contract between Yuma and Shinigami and returns Yuma's memories as Number One.
- NieR: Automata: When it's revealed that the little machines have committed suicide out of fear of dying to the invaders, Pascal blames himself so much that he begs you to either kill him or wipe his memories. If you wipe his memories, he has lost all attachment to his fallen friends and just sells their parts. He doesn't even remember his own name anymore.
- Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team: It's eventually revealed that the reason your main character arrives in the Pokemon world with no memories of why or how is because they asked to have their memories erased, as it would have cleansed their heart and mind and allowed them to prove that they were The Chosen One that Gardevoir believed they were.
- In Psychonauts 2, it's revealed that Ford Cruller shattered his own mind for the sake of forgetting the traumatic events that turned his love Lucrecia into the monstrous Maligula and his morally dubious decision to rewrite her memories to let her live as "Marona", Augustus' mother.
Visual Novels
- Murder by Numbers (2020): It is eventually revealed that S.C.O.U.T. erased his own memory after he accidentally killed one of his creators during a testing accident. His intention wasn't just to forget the incident, but to render himself completely non-functional so that he would never hurt anyone again. The process was interrupted before he could complete it, leading to S.C.O.U.T. waking up in a junkyard and obliviously setting off in search of his erased memories.
- Your Turn to Die:
- In Chapter 2-1, Safalin offers Sara the ability to manage her Hallucinations through a special treatment that involves erasing some of her memories. Doing this more than twice triggers a Non-Standard Game Over where Sara completely loses all memories involving Joe and is left mentally broken.
- If Gonbee Yamada outlives his sister, he goes into a severe Heroic BSoD, eventually electing to have his negative memories of her completely erased.
Web Animation
- Inanimate Insanity: In "Mine Your Own Business", MePhone4 decides to delete all his memories of Steve Cobs with the intent of running from his problems, but doing so causes him to stop functioning. The contestants are then forced to recover the memories to bring him back.
- Red vs. Blue: Alpha, an AI created by Project Freelancer, was tortured constantly by the Director to produce more AI by splitting off aspects of his personality into separate beings as he gradually went insane. He eventually sheared off his memories into another AI named Epsilon and adopted a new identity as the supposedly human protagonist Leonard Church.
Webcomics
- Casey and Andy: The title characters invent a Memory-Erase-O-Mat and use it to erase their memory of a particularly good movie so that they can watch it again fresh. But, because they can't remember erasing their memories, they keep at it for six straight days
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Websites
- SCP Foundation: "Amnestic Use Guide": Personnel will regularly request amnesiacs after particularly unsettling events, such as witnessing the particularly brutal death of a colleague or watching The End of Evangelion. Sometimes requests are allowed.
Western Animation
- Æon Flux: At the end of "Reraizure", Rorty, distraught over his lover's death (and betrayal), has taken a bliss pill which causes the taker to forget everything, basically committed mental suicide. Æon, having fallen in love with Rorty, leaves him be while filled with pity and in a state of misery.
- Gravity Falls:
- The Society of the Blind Eye is a group started by McGucket to protect people from the knowledge of the supernatural by erasing their memories, and members can delete their own memories at their leisure as a perk. While breaking in, Mabel tries to use the tech to erase her memories of all her failed summer romances but ultimately realizes it's a bad decision.
- This is revealed to be the cause of Old Man McGucket's insanity. He was once a genius inventor who, among other things, developed a memory-wiping device to help uphold the town's masquerade. After his encounter with Bill Cipher, he began to use it on himself, and the constant use gradually drove him insane.
- In the Grand Finale, Stan tricks Bill Cipher into entering his mind and then uses the memory-wiping device on himself, erasing Bill along with his own memories.
- Inside Job (2021): In the season one finale "Appleton", Reagan and Ron, to escape their lives in the Deep State and settle down, plan to erase their memories with the Illuminati's memory-erasing guns and have their partner read a script to their suggestible unconscious mind to form a new narrative. However, Reagan, upon going through all possible scenarios and finding she cannot balance her dream of internally reforming the Deep State with a life with Ron, feeds him an altered narrative so he can be free, but not her.
- Invincible (2021): Prior to the beginning of the series, Donald died thirty-eight times while saving people, got rebuilt as an android each time, and every time upon learning that he was no longer entirely human he requested to have his memory of the discovery erased, so he wouldn't be distracted by it. Following his on-screen death when Nolan finds him and other agents spying on the Grayson house, Donald chooses for the first time not to forget, as he realises that his actions define him more than his cyborg body does.
- Monsters vs. Aliens (2013): In "That Which Cannot Be Unseen", the gang repeatedly walks into Coverton's quarters, only to see something disgusting. They ask Sqweep to use her memory removal machine, but they keep seeing it again and wiping their memories. As it turns out, what they saw was Coverton in a chrysalis.
- The Simpsons: In "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind", Homer Simpson takes a Forget-Me-Shot, which would wipe the last day of his memory, to erase his knowledge of the fact that his family was organising a surprise party for him.