List of People in fiction with claimed eidetic memory

Eidetic memory (also called photographic memory) is described in many works of fiction. Characters with eidetic memory are found in written works, film, television, and games.

Print

• In the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events, Klaus Baudelaire can remember everything he reads.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's the Vorkosigan Saga, Simon Illyan, a prominent character, has an artificial eidetic memory chip implanted in his brain for most of the saga.
• In the Ender's Shadow series by Orson Scott-Card, Julian Delphiki has an eidetic memory.
• FBI investigator Will Graham, protagonist of Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon and the man who first captured Hannibal Lecter, is explicitly identified as having eidetic memory in both the novel and the second film adaption of the novel. Lecter himself was capable of photographic memory: he could not only recall the Duomo but also possessed a seemingly limitless capacity to memorize literature.
• In Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown, the character David Becker has an eidetic memory geared toward his linguistic abilities. Robert Langdon, the lead character in The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, also claimed to near perfect eidetic memory. He only mentions it in The Da Vinci Code.
• The short story Sucker Bait by Isaac Asimov features the character of Mark Annuncio, who has been trained from a young age to develop an eidetic memory and find correlations between seemingly unrelated pieces of data by absorbing as much knowledge as possible. Another Asimov story, "Lest We Remember," features a man named John Heath who gains perfect memory recollection after having a new, experimental [...] tested on him.
• Cotton Malone, the main character of "The Templar Legacy" and "The Alexandria Link" by Steve Berry has an eidetic memory.
• In Alpha Force, by Chris Ryan, Hex is explicitly identified as being capable of photographic memory.
• Max Jones, The Title character of Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starman Jones, uses his eidetic memory to navigate his ship home following the loss of the ship's astrogation tables.
• The narrator in Will Self's novel My Idea of Fun (1993) has an eidetic memory.
• Severian, the narrator of Gene Wolfe's Book of The New Sun has an eidetic memory, though this is often intentionally misleading; for example, he describes the tower he grew up in without ever realizing it is the remains of an ancient spaceship.
• Catseye, a fictional character in Marvel Comics, had an eidetic memory, and was capable of extremely quick learning.
• Barbara Gordon, AKA Batgirl, a fictional character in DC Comics, has eidetic memory, which she puts to use as the information broker Oracle. Barbara Gordon is the daughter of commissioner Gordon.
• Bart Allen, a fictional character in DC Comics and former Flash, had eidetic memory. When he became the second Kid Flash, he read the entire contents of the San Francisco Public Library.
• Betty Brant, supporting character in the Spider-Man comics, has photographic memory, which she reveals while under oath in She-Hulk #4 (vol 1., August 2004)
• Lesley and Gordon in the book A Cage of Butterflies by Brian Caswell possess eidetic memory which allows them to play chess without a chessboard. In the Deucalion series, also by Brian Caswell, some of the main characters have eidetic memory, making them able to recall every memory they ever had.
• The 15 year old Christopher Boone from the novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, written by Mark Haddon, has eidetic memory, but suffers from Asperger Syndrome.
• Null-ARC Trooper Ordo, from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, had eidetic memory from infancy, a trait of all Null Series Advance Recon Commandos, as revealed in Star Wars Republic Commando: Triple Zero.
• Riane, the prophesied redeemer known as the Dar Sala-at in the Pearl Saga written by Eric Van Lustbader, possesses an immersive eidetic memory. This is revealed slowly as the character recovers from amnesia. The memory is progressively revealed, as a literary device for both character and plot development.
• Sage, a member of the X-men, has an eidetic memory as well as other powers.
• Ivan Efremov in his novel Razor's Edge used the word eidetica as an ability to deliberately have vicarious experiences in dreams (see lucid dreaming), when man dreams in full detail AbOUT something that is known to him only as told by friends, read in books or seen in pictures. In this novel, the capability to see panoramic color images appears in one of the novel's characters after he was injured in the time of the Great Patriotic War. Later on he arrives in Moscow, USSR to ask the doctors to explain this symptom. While healing, he has an even more detailed dream, but he loses his unique ability upon recovery.
• Jennifer "Cam" Jansen , the female protagonist of David A. Adler's Cam Jansen children mystery novels, uses her photographic memory to her advantage when solving crimes. Cam, short for Camera, was appropriately nicknamed due to her idiosyncrasy of saying "click" every time she takes a "picture" of a scene in her head (using her photographic memory).
• In Terry Pratchett's novel Small gods, the main character Brutha has photographic memory, enabling him to recall every page of every scroll in the Ephebian Library, though he does not understand what they say, being illiterate.
• In Chaim Potok's novel The Chosen, the character Daniel Saunders has a photographic memory, which he uses to memorize the Talmud, novels and his school work.
• In Richard K. Morgan's novel Altered Carbon and its sequels, it is stated numerous times that Takeshi Kovacs has total recall as a part of the mental conditioning that all U.N. Envoys go through.
• The eidetic memory of Paul Sweetbread, the protagonist of Tony Eprile's The Persistence of Memory, is one of the novel's major themes.
• Winter, a minor supporting character appearing in several Star Wars novels, can recall anything she has ever seen or heard perfectly.
• In Matt Amerling's novel The Midknight, the main protagonist Jesse SandS is drugged with a liquid that enhances his abilities and gives him eidetic memory, helping him to execute any fighting moves he reads about or sees.
• Ireneo Funes, a fictional character in Borges's short story Funes the Memorious, is able to perceive everything in full detail and remembers it all. He can remember the shape of every cloud or the shape of every flame he has ever seen. He can also relive everything he has thought or done during a day, though this exercise requires another full day.
• In Fahrenheit 451, the men who escaped civilization use photographic memory to memorize books, so that they may not be forever lost.
• In the Shopaholic book series by Sophie Kinsella, protagonist Becky Bloomwood's husband Luke Brandon is said to have a photographic memory.
• In Alistair Maclean's 1975 novel, Circus, Bruno Wildermann of the Wrinfield Circus is the world's greatest trapeze artist, a clairvoyant with near-supernatural powers including photographic memory.

Film

• In The Da Vinci Code, Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) questions Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) as to whether he possesses eidetic memory, while he breaks the code near Jacques Sauniere's body.
• In the movie Hackers, "Lord Nikon" claims to have a photographic memory (his handle Nikon refers to the camera company).
• In the movie The Bourne Identity, the main character Jason Bourne glances at a map before wildly taking off through the streets, seemingly knowledgeable of exactly where he's going. Later, in a restaurant, he discusses his instant awareness of all the license plate numbers on cars parked outside.
• In the movie Good Will Hunting, the main character has eidetic memory and is able to remember large, exact quotes from academic books, as well as their corresponding page(s).
• In the movie Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, James T. Kirk's love interest in the movie, Dr. Gillian Taylor, claims to have a photographic memory, saying she could "see words."
• In Carry on Spying (1964) Barbara Windsor's character Daphne Honeybutt can recall large amounts of information, including once when hit on the head. She doesn't understand it, but can recall scientific formula and the like.
• In the movie Space Camp, Tish Ambrose, one of the teenagers stranded in the space shuttle, claims to have photographic memory.
• River Tam from the television series Firefly and 2005 film Serenity
• In "Rain Man", Raymond, also know as the rain man, has a photographic memory. For example, he memorizes whole sections of the phone book.

Television

• Frank B. Parker, the chrononaut in Seven Days, has eidetic memory.
• Adrian Monk (from the USA Network series Monk) has an eidetic memory. In "Mr Monk and the Wrong Man" (Season 6, Episode 15), the woman who testifies against Max Barton is eidetic. She recalls the [...] scene in great detail.
• Shawn Spencer (from Psych, also on the USA Network) irregularly shows features of an eidetic memory. His bio on the Psych website identifies that he has "extraordinary powers of observation," and he has regularly demonstrated extrodinary recall ability, particularly in relation to technical or medical details. However he has also shown signs of having photographic recall, such as his counting hats trick and being able to recreate an exact mental picture of the room in "Game, Set...Muuurder?" hours after the fact. In the episode "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me, Oops He's Dead", Shawn himself refers to the fact that he possesses "heightened observational skills", and his extraordinary recall May Be due to trained advanced mnemonics devices.
• Spencer Reid, a fictional FBI agent character in the show Criminal Minds, has eidetic memory.
• Ziva David, a fictional Mossad agent in NCIS, has been said to have an eidetic memory
• Theodore "T-Bag" Bagwell, a fictional character in the TV show Prison Break, claims that he has photographic memory. Charles "Haywire" Patoshik does, in fact, possess eidetic memory.
• Rico from Hannah Montana has a photographic memory stated in the episode "(Get Down Study-udy-udy)".
• Seven of Nine, a fictional character on Star Trek: Voyager and former Borg drone is revealed to have an eidetic memory in season four of the show in the episode Vis a Vis. The Doctor also suspected that Kes had an eidetic memory as well when she remembered details about her medical studies easily.
• Max Guevara, from Dark Angel, was able to translate the dial tone on speed dial into numbers.
• Commander Susan Ivanova, a fictional character on Babylon 5, claimed to have eidetic memory. She recalled a once-heard Minbari phrase perfectly.
• Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel possesses photographic memory.
• Kyle from Kyle XY demonstrates an extraordinary memory which could be photographic memory. We learn this as in an episode, he is in school in the library and he reads large amounts of books and can recite them for a test further on into the episode. Additionally in the Pilot episode he mentions he 'draws what he sees' meaning he can recite images he had seen and have enough time to draw them. Jessi has the same ability
• Adam Rove, a character from the television show Joan of Arcadia, possesses eidetic memory.
• Dr. Sam Beckett, the main character of Quantum Leap, is stated to have possessed a photographic (eidetic) memory in the episode "Catch A Falling Star". In addition, in the episode "Trilogy part 3", season 5 episode 10, he says he has a photographic memory.
• Charlie Andrews, a waitress featured in the NBC series "Heroes," has an advanced photographic memory as her superhuman power. This is mentioned in the SFX Heroes Special EDition magazine. She first demonstrated this ability when she was able to speak Japanese fluently after reading a Japanese book Hiro had just given her. Sylar, the series villain, later demonstrates mastery of her ability, which he stole from her.
• Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle indicates that he has photographic memory when he recalls every single item stolen from a home robbery after inadvertently abetting the thief in the episode "Block Party."
• Jimmy Neutron (from Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius) has photographic memory.
• TJ Henderson from the Smart Guy TV show has photographic memory.
• Gibson Kafka, a bartender on the show Birds of Prey has eidetic memory as his metahuman ability.
• Minami Megumi from Tantei Gakuen Q uses her photographic memory to aid her in solving mysteries.
• Edgar Stiles, from the television series 24, has a photographic memory.
• Fox Mulder, from The X-Files, has a self-proclaimed photographic memory (Episode 1-12 "Fire").
• Both Zoe Heriot and Melanie Bush from the original series of Doctor Who had eidetic memories.
• Luke Smith from The Sarah Jane Adventures displays the ability to remember incredibly long number sequences, and also states that he's able to remember every page of every book he's ever read.
• Scieszka from Fullmetal Alchemist has an eidetic memory when it comes to printed material, able to transcribe any text after reading it only once.
• Marshall Flinkman from the TV series Alias has eidetic memory.
• Lex Luthor on Justice League Unlimited episode Panic in the Sky was revealed to have eidetic memory.
• Ingrid Third from the show Fillmore! demonstrates her photographic memory.
• Agents of Section 31 in the Star Trek universe are implied to have some sort of eidetic memory, since they do not have official documents or reports stored on a computer, as revealed in Extreme Measures (DS9 episode); although it is never reveal whether the agent who revealed it was telling the truth or not.
• Tru Davies from Tru Calling often memorized details of objects she had only seen for a moment.
• All Immortals on the tv series Highlander were shown as possessing eidetic memory of the events they had lived through.
• Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls remembers everything she reads. She can recall details of an obituary months after reading it, down to the last family member listed.
• In the Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Vis à Vis", Seven of Nine tells an alien believed to be Tom Paris that she possesses an eidetic memory. She then offers to quote a passage he was reading from a PADD. Later, Captain Janeway says that during Seven's report regarding "Tom's" odd behavior, Seven did actually quote the passage to the captain.
• Natalie Davis (The Miniature Killer in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) had an eidetic memory which allowed her to be able to memorize crime scenes.
• River Tam from the television series Firefly and 2005 film Serenity has eidetic memory.
• Cindy Thomas from the series Women's [...] Club has self proclaimed eidetic memory

Games

• In EVE Online, "Eidetic Memory" is a skill that can be trained to gain a higher memory attribute.
• In White Wolf's World of Darkness core rulebook, "Eidetic Memory" is a Merit (character advantage) that may be selected at character creation.
• In Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds core rulebook, "Eidetic Memory" is a Feat that may be selected that allows a character to make any Knowledge skill check untrained.
• In GURPS, "Eidetic Memory" is an advantage which grants characters a bonus to learning checks, and entitles the player to be reminded by the GM and other players of anything he may have forgotten but which his character would remember.