http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewersAreGoldfish

Naruto: Want me to have a flashback of what just happened 13 seconds ago?

Everyone: No!

Naruto: Aww... Naruto: The Abridged Series Want me to have a flashback of what just happened 13 seconds ago?No!Aww...

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Sort of like how executives think Viewers Are Morons, they also think you have the memory of a goldfish, which, according to an incorrect urban legend, lasts about three secondsnote real life goldfish have been proven to have longer memory; a study concluded a maximum limit of seven months. And, if you don't buy that, it's also been busted. Because remembering what happens over the course of a whole thirty minutes or, god forbid, an hour, is too difficult for your general media consumer, there is a handy little device called a Flashback that can be used to rewind, oh, five minutes or so to say, "Hey! This just happened, moron!" note It may also be the case that a viewer has tuned in partway through the program or series, and therefore has no memory of what happened even moments earlier. It may also come from an ancient survey that stated that Americans change the channel 20 times every minute on average.note Though even if that is true, for the entertainment industry to base this whole trope around it only proves that they have no idea how to properly interpret statistics.

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With weekly television, there is a tendency to underestimate the audience. Arguably, this is the reason why network television has historically favored episodic storytelling over more serialized ones; the idea is that the episodes can be shown out of order and that viewers can just watch episodes at random with no need for context outside of the forty-five minute block. It's a bonus if shows like The A-Team explain their setup with a handy voice-over in the opening credits.

Sometimes a necessity in video game plots, due to the possibility of the player saving the game, taking a break of, say, two or three months, and then coming back, having forgotten important plot points during that time. In this case, the flashbacks will only seem insulting to the player's intelligence during a non-stop play. Some games try to avert this by putting plot summaries or scenes that otherwise show what has happened up to that point in the Loading Screen. Others have a character keep a diary which the player can read to remind themselves of the plot so far.

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This may also be a justification depending on the format. Sometimes, book series will Call-Back to past events from the previous books when they were intended to be relatively standalone, or in case the viewer read the previous book, then went on to the next one a little while later. TV shows, for example, are often made around commercial breaks, so when you view it on DVD or on a channel that does not use commercials (such as the BBC) it'll seem odd.

Often this is an excuse for lots of Padding and Stock Footage, to reduce production costs.

Compare Fleeting Demographic Rule, where executives believe that they can recycle whole plots due to this short memory, or Repeating Ad, where it's presumed viewers will not recall ads they saw in the same commercial break. Also compare Recap Episode, where an entire episode functions as this for a series. For characters in-story with memory this bad, see Forgetful Jones.

By the way, this trope exists because executives think viewers are stupid. They also think you have the memory of a goldfish which lasts about three seconds. Only it really doesn't, as proved by the MythBusters.

Examples

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Advertising

There exists a commercial for Nerf guns in which a kids "squad" is gunned down by a lone gunman. Cue action shots of the survivor getting the cool, new Nerf gun and taking out half a dozen kids to get revenge, and as our protagonist finds the one responsible, the commercial flashes back to the beginning of the thirty second commercial to remind you why he wanted revenge in the first place.

Any of those commercials that include the phrase "act now and you'll also receive [insert product here], absolutely free!" They inevitably list all of the great bargain items you'll be getting if you act now about five times before the commercial ends. But Wait, There's More!

Radio commercials that repeat phone numbers as many as four times in a row. This might have been effective in the old days, but it's almost become a Discredited Trope, because now people mostly listen to the radio in situations where they can't write a number down (like driving), and the commercials that use it are always for really shady-sounding businesses (get-rich-quick schemes, predatory lenders). On the other hand, repeating the phone number means the listener is more likely to memorize it. Whether they like it or not.

HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead. HeadOn, apply directly to the forehead. Lampshaded in the ads where people interrupt the commercial: "Head-On, I can't stand your commercial, but your product is amazing!" This was also parodied when it was spoofed in Disaster Movie.

One commercial for Liberty Mutual opens with the announcer saying, "Liberty Mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need." The announcer goes on about how this is great news, only to be rudely interrupted by a news reporter, who proceeds to repeat the exact same information. The shortened version that occasionally plays on television is significantly less redundant by having the announcer only say, "Great news. Liberty Mutual customize—" before the reporter's interruption.

Anime and Manga

Comic Books

Uncanny X-Men #152 features a helpful sequence of flashback pages that explains how Kitty Pryde ended up in a car with (someone who appeared to be) her arch enemy Emma Frost... but the final panel of the flashback recalls an event that happened only a few pages earlier in the same issue.

Batman comics of the 1950s were very big on Telling in addition to Showing, making sure the reader didn't lose track of what was going on. In at least one story, this resulted in Robin recapping information gained earlier on the same page.

Archie Comics will actually do this, including a recap to the first part of a story... that's in the same book, and was simply broken up by a few gag panel pages. Also present is in just how often the comics reuse the exact same jokes, not simply from issue to issue, or within the same issue, but in at least one case having jokes with identical punchlines in two short comics on the same page. Because obviously reading three more panels was sufficient time for that joke to become funny again.

When he was Editor-In-Chief of Marvel Comics, Jim Shooter believed in the edict that "every issue is someone's first issue!" Therefore, it was required that every character be identified by name (usually in a bold font) and their powers briefly described. A good writer could do this in a fairly seamless way... then you had issues of Marvel's first huge Crisis Crossover Secret Wars, where certain pages came across like a Mousketeer Roll Call.

The Richie Rich story "The Man Who Has Everything " is about Richie and his friend Jackie Jokers having trouble trying to come up with a birthday present for Mr. Rich. Richie eventually asks Mr. Rich himself, who tells his son that he'll think it over. The comic then pretty much starts over from the beginning, but with Mr. Rich in place of Richie and Jackie, complete with Mr. Rich making the exact same jokes Jackie made (and having the audacity to claim Jackie couldn't make them up himself).

Fan Works

Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series parodied this in Episode 35, where Kaiba and Yami have flashbacks of the events of the entire Abridged Series up until that point, including the opening of the episode. Kaiba: Hey Yugi, remember when this episode began?

In Chapter 2 of Sherlock Season 4, the narrator tells us that Watson died in the first episode "in case u cant remember".

Films — Animation

Titanic: The Legend Goes On abuses this one, mostly because the animators were lazy.

Frozen does this. The intro scene, Elsa accidentally injuring Anna in their childhood, is the primary motivation for one character's actions and is flashbacked in less than half an hour later. During the ending, they also make a effort of explicitly stating that an act of true love will heal Anna, during the scene where the spell on her was being broken . Restating this seems redundant, given that it was primary objective of the characters for the last half of the movie, and they've already drilled this in the viewer's head multiple times. Give the audience some credit...

Films — Live-Action

Literature

The Song of Roland — everywhere. When will Charlemagne lose the heart for making war, again? (Stanzas XL to XLII, which are exactly identical, except rephrased.) Justified in that many of these old stories — Beowulf, the Arthurian legends, and so on — were originally sung ballads from the days when few could read or write, and the repetition helped the person singing the ballad (and the listener, because some of these could be pretty long) remember what happened. In addition, the ballad needed to grab and hold the attention of folk who had come in late, or nipped off for refreshments, and who might have no idea what was happening if not for the repetition.

Each and every one of The Baby-Sitters Club books would spend an entire chapter (usually the second one) giving a rundown of all the main characters and how the club worked. The Baby-Sitter's Little Sister spin-off series did the same thing, with Karen having to explain her "two-two" blended families in every single book. What makes the trope apply notably to this series is not so much that there's a recap, it's that it's done in such excruciating detail that it's like the author is explaining everything from scratch. While it's common for most series to remind us of things, with the BSC it's stated like it's the first time, every time. This is most likely because plots rarely continue from one book to another, so the books don't need to be read in any particular order to be understood. This means that any book in the series could be the first one a new reader reads, so they have to describe the characters' personalities, backgrounds, relationships, etc.

This seems quite normal for most book series, as the new books sometimes come after months, if not years. It's just really glaring if you read the books within a few weeks; for example, the Drizzt Do'Urden novels are notorious for it. Also in the War of the Spider Queen hexalogy which was writen by six different authors under the supervision of seventh one (who wrote the Drizzt novels). One of these books used this even inside itself, sometimes within the same chapter, to the point where it got annoying.

It's just not possible to find a Sweet Valley High book that doesn't mention certain information repeatedly — the twins are blonde and blue-eyed, with perfect size-six figures and identical gold lavalieres that their parents gave them on their 16th birthday; they drive a Spider Fiat; their house has a Spanish-style kitchen; their mother is often mistaken for their older sister, and their brother looks like a younger version of their father. Considering how many books there are in this series, it borders on the ridiculous.

Same goes for Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. The same little bits of backstory are repeated endlessly (Nancy's mother died when she was three; Bess and George are cousins, yet polar opposites; Frank is one year older, one inch taller, and slightly leaner than his brother Joe.)

Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 is really terrible with this. Have you forgotten what Tengo's ears look like or did you just zone out and not even absorb any of the last ten pages? Don't worry, another summary is coming right up.

The book series of W.I.T.C.H. also does this, explaining at the beginning of each book how the girls are the guardians of Candracar, have magic elemental powers, etc. It wouldn't be so bad, except its possible to whip through several books in one day.

Twilight is notorious for this - almost every time Edward comes up, his looks get described in full.

In Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe likes to remind us what happened as little as one chapter ago.

The two pages in the first chapter of any given Animorphs book will be a recap of the first book.

Along with its slide from hard to soft alternate history, Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 restates characteristics of numerous characters every time they appear. US Navy sailor Sam Carsten is perhaps the most notorious, with every segment where he's the POV character starting with extensive detail about the current status of his sunburn or describing that he can burn even when the sun isn't out.

Downplayed in The Dresden Files. At some point early on in each of the first five books, Harry tells the audience that, yes, he really is a bona-fide wizard, followed by a very brief description of the magical world and Extra-Strength Masquerade. Thankfully dropped from Blood Rites on.

On the subject of wizards named Harry, the early Harry Potter books were pretty bad about this. Rowling liked to remind readers of pretty much anything important that happened in earlier books. Even things like mentioning that Harry is going to school to become a wizard. Arguably the most awkward example was when one of Harry's textbooks reminded him of what a Muggle is. By the fourth book, this had tapered down, and it stopped completely around the fifth book.

In Maximum Ride, some concepts are hammered in three or four times just in case they didn't sink in the first time. Ari's jealousy of Max. The fact that Iggy is blind. AND in case anyone forgot what Dylan looked like, James Patterson jams in his perfect features in the form of purple prose. The amount of times that the Flock are birdkids is mentioned...

George Brown Class Clown repeats the events of the first book in EVERY. SINGLE. BOOK. They don't even change the wording!

Live-Action TV

Newspaper Comics

This is very common in episodic newspaper comics, but Alley Oop makes an art of it. Sometimes only a single panel will be devoted to advancing the plot that was summarized in the other two.

E.C. Segar's original Thimble Theater strip, whence Popeye first came, constantly recapped the plot in the first panel during long storylines for those who weren't caught up.

Dick Tracy spends every Sunday rehashing the previous week's action. The Comics Curmudgeon once congratulated Dick Tracy for going Up to Eleven with its recaps; it spent so long in one strip rehashing what happened yesterday that it ended with the plot less advanced than it had been the day before!

It seems that most newspaper comics that follow a storyline do this a lot. Other offenders are Rex Morgan, M.D., Mary Worth, and The Amazing Spider-Man, all of which spent about two panels actually getting something new done and the rest recapping. Justified somewhat when you realize that many of the newspapers that carry Dick Tracy, Rex Morgan, etc., only carry it in their larger Sunday comics section — the much smaller weekday comics section may not have room for it, therefore the writers create the Sunday episodes so they can be readable without the weekday episodes being available.

The new Little Orphan Annie is a repeat offender.

In Buckles, every character addresses every other character by name at least once in every strip, as if readers are likely to forget who's who on a day to day basis.

Mallard Fillmore has very little in terms of actual plot, and yet still manages to abuse this trope by having the first panel recap whatever issue is annoying him this week.

When Dilbert does multi-day storylines, it will often have either a caption explaining the premise that previous comics have set up or a character explaining what happened in the previous comics in the first panel. This is pretty jarring when you're reading the strip online.

Professional Wrestling

Tabletop Games

A smart Game Master will recap what happened last play session if it's been more than a week. Otherwise the first hour of play will be wasted with questions like, "Wait, who was the guy in the gray cape and why are we working for him, again?"

Theater

Lampshaded in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels The Musical. At the beginning of Act Two, the exact last few lines from Act One are repeated, with Freddy then commenting, "Didn't we do this part already?" and Lawrence replying, "I enjoyed it so much the first time."

Similarly lampshaded in Evil Dead: The Musical. Act I ends with a long sun solo consisting of "Die, DIE!" repeated fifteen times — and it lasts for nearly 45 seconds — while he kills his former girlfriend's zombie head, a pile of other zombie bodies in the corner. Act II begins with the exact same solo, but the head is obviously fake, and the place has been cleaned up. When other characters demand to know how this "isn't as bad as it looks", Ash replies: "At least there isn't a pile of bodies in the corner anymore."

Romeo and Juliet has no fewer than three instances where a character has a long monologue recapping the action we just saw on stage.

Video Games

Visual Novels

The Ace Attorney series plays this straight a lot, but subversions are not unheard of either. The games flash back to previous scenes many times, sometimes even to scenes from only minutes ago. However, it also expects the player to remember facts from quite a bit ago. Many contradictions require you to present evidence that doesn't have contradictory text/content in the evidence screen information. Rather you have to remember a specific detail that was stated about the evidence beforehand, yet that's not been put into the evidence information. Notable straight plays: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney has Lamiroir's performance and the scene with the victim's last words replayed near a dozen of times, with the repeats sometimes less than a minute apart! You could argue that it's done for dramatic effect, but even so, it can pretty easily get annoying. Spirit of Justice has an over-the-top example where Phoenix recalls Nahyuta saying X earlier followed by a brief flashback to Nahyuta saying X. Subversions: At the end of case 2-4, you must use the available evidence to take down Matt Engarde while still saving Maya at the same time . You only get one change to present one piece of evidence and there is only one piece of evidence that can do this, plus you are given no help or hints as to what to do. Anyone who can't remember that De Killer, the assassin who has kidnapped Maya, said his bond of trust is one of the keys to his operations with clients, as well as the fact that Matt Engarde stated in a brief encounter that the video tape he had was his "insurance" against De Killer is well and truly screwed at this point. Case 1-4 features a newspaper article about a giant monster that has been reported spotted in a lake. At one point you must present this article to prove that a witness was at said lake looking for the monster. The proof is that the article says the monster made a "BANG!" noise and that the witnesses camera was set to respond to loud bangs . This fact is however not stated in the evidence screen so it is something that the player must remember on their own.

In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, flashbacks to not even a full scene ago happen fairly often, with one flashback showing something that happened roughly thirty seconds beforehand. In particular, flashbacks to the scene where Kyoko first informs Makoto of Mukuro's existence happen on a near-constant basis.

happen on a near-constant basis. In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, during the second trial, the game once flashes back to something Fuyuhiko said earlier in the trial. It's a fairly significant line, but the game has no faith in the players' ability to remember something Fuyuhiko said less than an hour ago.

Web Animation

Homestar Runner: The Strong Bad Email "accent," on the DVD: Strong Bad: Here's my accent a few years ago.

Flashback Strong Bad: Do joo take of jor face and hands before joo go to bed?

Strong Bad: Here's my accent a few seconds ago.

Flashback Strong Bad: Here's my accent a few years ago. Also, the email "trevor the vampire", which ends with a flashback memorial in honor of Trevor, who Strong Bad only met 30 seconds ago.



Web Comics

Web Original

The Irate Gamer: One video set up a leaking gas pipe, and to make sure we see this, he shows it again and again and again and again to make sure we know there's a leaking gas pipe. In the same episode, he is reviewing the educational Super Mario games in two different timelines. Each time the video switches between the two timelines, Bores reminds us which of the two games he is talking about. The Irate Gamer NEO episode for Kirby's Epic Yarn opens with a Previously On of clips of him in earlier episodes making remarks about the game being disappointing, and the actual episode opens with him declaring he's going to explain why he thought the game was disappointing.

A big offender of this are the countless "The X most Y Zs" countdowns found on YouTube. When you finally reach number 2: "Here's a recap of what you've seen so far!", fifteen minutes is often not even the case with the standard 10-minute limit on uploads.

Western Animation

Real Life