016: Memory Implants

Version 3.00, last updated on January 13, 2008

Logan brainwashed at Weapon X
Mark Texeira, Wolverine #68.

Wolverine #129 (Oct 1998) – “Whatever It Takes…”
Writer: Todd Dezago; Penciler: Leinil Francis Yu; Inker: Edgar Tadeo
Wolverine vaguely remembers his experiences at Experiment X. “Usin’ all sorts o’ medication an’ mind-control, they went lookin’ fer my feral side, strippin’ away every bit of the man I was, leavin’ nothin’ left but the animal inside, primal, savage. While I was in a state o’ constant bloodlust, they studied me, tested me, tried t’find a way t’ control me an’ make me inta their perfect livin’ weapon.”

…This brainwashing seems to have included rearchitecting past memories in order to create a new personality capable of being controlled…

Wolverine #48 (Nov 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase One”
Writer: Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green
As Logan walks through the Alberta, Canada location of Experiment X, he suddenly remembers a false and implanted memory of an espionage mission on his birthday. In Windsor, Canada during the 1960s, Logan, codenamed Wolverine, leads an assault on a group of revolutionaries with Creed, codenamed Sabretooth. As a firefight erupts, both Logan and Creed go down with multiple gunshots wounds as another agent, Mastodon, joins the fray. Logan finally kills the leader who looks exactly like the Professor from Experiment X and confronts another revolutionary who is a dead ringer for Silver Fox.

Wolverine #49 (Dec 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 2”
Writer: Larry Hama; Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green & Barta
Professor Xavier and Jean Grey mind-probe Logan’s memories to assist him remembering his past. In a flash, Logan continues his memory with Sabretooth and Mastodon in Windsor. Sabretooth, unhurt from the gunshots due to a standard-issue bulletproof vest, slaps around the revolutionary who resembles Silver Fox. When Logan asks her if she remembers him, she goes along until she can grab his gun. When she tries to shoot Logan, she finds the gun empty and confesses she has no idea what he is talking about.

Wolverine #50 (Jan 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 3”
Writer: Larry Hama
Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer

Logan discovers a warehouse in Windsor, Ontario, used by Experiment X to alter memories. Specifically, he finds a movie-style set of the location where he, Sabretooth and Mastodon fought the revolutionary who looked like Silver Fox. This would suggest that these events never happened and where created to sow doubt into Logan’s memories. Based on comments by the Professor, it seems that Wolverine, Sabretooth, Silver Fox and Mastodon all had their memories altered at these facilities. The plan was to reinsert the subjects into society without knowledge of their past lives, using a lethal robot named Shiva as a failsafe should the subjects go rogue.

Sabretooth #2 (Sept 1993) – “A Kiss Before Dying”
Writer: Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Mystique tells Sabretooth that he went into a secret program and had memory blocks put in along with Logan who was in the same program.

Wolverine #63 (Nov 1992) – “Bastions of Glory”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Aldo Ferro gives Wolverine a memory jolt so he can remember a time during Experiment X when he used his psi-talents to control Logan in front of the Professor, Cornelius and Hines. Instead of using movie-style sets to create false memories, Ferro proposed using his psychic abilities to more cheaply and effectively alter the memories of the Weapon X subjects. In other words, the Windsor sets that Wolverine comes across were used to create one layer of implanted memories when Logan and Sabretooth first joined the CIA, and a second layer during Experiment X before Aldo Ferro upgraded the program with his psi-talents. Carol Hines argued that it was Aldo Ferro who came up with the idea of tying false memories to pain receptors because he was a sadist who wanted to live forever.

Logan brainwashed at Weapon X
Mark Texeira, Wolverine #63.

Wolverine #64 (Dec 1992) – “What Goes Around…”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Penciller: Mark Pacella; Inker: Dan Panosian
Aldo Ferro reveals to Wolverine that he was promised the same age-suppression factor that all the Weapon X subjects received, but the Professor cheated him.

Wolverine #63 (Nov 1992) – “Bastions of Glory”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Aldo Ferro claims that Logan was a special case in the way that his tissue regenerated suggesting that Logan’s healing ability was a natural mutation instead of an acquired ability like the rest of the subjects.

Wolverine #64 (Dec 1992) – “What Goes Around…”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Penciller: Mark Pacella; Inker: Dan Panosian
Aldo Ferro speculates that the root of the age-suppression factor in the Weapon X subjects was from the adrenaline generated from the physical trauma of the suppressed memories.

Wolverine #76 (Dec 1993) – “Northern Dreams”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Penciler: Tomm Coker; Inker: Al Milgrom
Heather McDonald, accessing the Canadian Government Computer Database for Logan, confirms that Aldo Ferro was employed by the Canadian government, earning large sums of money for research grants.

Wolverine #92 (Aug 1995) – “A Northern Exposure”
Writer: Larry Hama; Penciler: Adam Kubert; Inker: Dan Green
James and Heather Hudson, Dr. Hank McCoy, and Professor Charles Xavier compare biological information from Logan to that of Sabretooth and find amazing similarities along the lines of blood sugar graphs and “anomalies in the neural configuration comparison.” This would suggest that they were both genetically architected during Experiment X along the same procedures and experiments.

Wolverine #68 (Apr 1993) – “Epsilon Red”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira; Backgrounds: Steve Biasi
Epsilon Red, as a psi-talent, explains to Wolverine that his memories have been tampered with. “I have taken a stroll through the corridors of your mind… Your mind is clogged with false memory implants and total blocks. There are implants on top of implants and so much memory tampering that there is now permanent scarring and intermittent firing of synapses.” Epsilon Red further confirms that there are memories that have been erased that are no longer retrievable and some memory blocks were created by Logan’s subconscious to prevent him from going insane. After attempting to remove all the memory blocks for Wolverine, Epsilon Red comments, “There are blocks that are immovable and impervious to the cleansing.”

Wolverine #60 (Early Sept 1992) – “Counting Coup”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Penciler: Dave Hoover; Inker: Keith Williams
When attacked by Shiva, Sabretooth receives a painful memory backlash of when he disciplined his son, a teenage Logan, for dating a young Blackfoot squaw. Considering the youthful appearance of Logan and the genetic evidence that proves Sabretooth is not Logan’s father, we can safely assume that this was Sabretooth’s primary false memory implant.

…Part of Logan’s memory alteration while at Experiment X is centered on Silver Fox. Some 50 years earlier, Sabretooth murdered the first Silver Fox on Logan’s birthday. Upon joining Team X in the late 1950s, Logan and Sabretooth were brainwashed to believe that Sabretooth had not killed Silver Fox, by employing an impersonator (the second Silver Fox) who comes to believe that she is, in fact, the first Silver Fox. During Experiment X, Sabretooth and Logan endure another layer of implants that restores the original sequence of events — Sabretooth killed Silver Fox…

Wolverine #62 (Oct 1992) – “Reunion”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Artist: Mark Texeira
Both Wolverine and Sabretooth believe, based on memory implants that mimicked the original sequence of events, that Silver Fox was murdered by Sabretooth on Logan’s birthday. It is through the Windsor movie sets and Aldo Ferro’s psi-talents that these new memories of actual events, Silver Fox is murdered by Sabretooth, are layered over older, false memories, Silver Fox was not killed.

Wolverine #50 (Jan 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 3”
Writer: Larry Hama
Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer

Logan discovers the warehouse in Windsor, Ontario used by Experiment X to alter memories. Specifically, he finds the movie-style set of the location where he and Sabretooth fought after the murder of Silver Fox. This set was used twice. Once to show Silver Fox was alive, and a second time to show that she was murdered by Sabretooth.

Logan brainwashed at Experiment X
Marc Silvestri and Dan Green, Wolverine #50.

Wolverine #64 (Dec 1992) – “What Goes Around…”
Scripter: Larry Hama; Penciller: Mark Pacella; Inker: Dan Panosian
Aldo Ferro reveals to Wolverine that the memory of being in the cabin with Silver Fox was real. Wolverine specifically remembers Silver Fox preparing the cabin for his birthday and telling him to return in one hour. He further reveals to Wolverine that the trauma he built on to simulate Silver Fox’s death was that Sabretooth had made a pass at her and she knocked out one of his teeth. In other words, it was Aldo Ferro who unwittingly recreated the original events of Silver Fox’s death by implanting a new memory over an older false memory implant.

Wolverine #50 (Jan 1991) – “Dreams of Gore: Phase 3”
Writer: Larry Hama
Penciler: Marc Silvestri; Inker: Dan Green with Hilary Barta and Tom Palmer

Silver Fox’s implanted memory from this period is shown to take place at a high school prom, where Logan is beaten up for taking an Indian to the dance. Logan then tells her that he no longer wants to see her. While Silver Fox fights against that memory, it is interesting to note that such a modern memory implant would only be appropriate if she were not the original Silver Fox. However, she still has a specific memory of living in the cabin with Logan —  a memory leak from the initial set of implants created during the “Team X” sequence of events.

Silver Fox seemingly escapes from the Weapon X program at this time and sets markers in the NSA computers on October 5, 1972 to track anyone accessing files on Logan.

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Chris Hodge
15 years ago

I just found this webite today, and I really enjoy it. I have a couple of questions, and I was wondering what your opinions as long-time dedicated Wolverine fan are. Do you think that Wolverine could take the Hulk in a straight one on one fight? How about Superman?

15 years ago

Heck no.

Superman would crush poor old Logan. XD

15 years ago

Weapon X: First Class kind of destroys the “memory implant” aspect of Wolverine’s past. Especially since they didn’t mention it huh? It was suppose to be the main reason none of the psychics could help Logan, yet Professor X helped him very easily.

crazychris
12 years ago

confusing so the saloomn was used in the early 1900’s as to have creed think he killed fox then creed knocks wolverine out and then logan revives goes vback in the town and slaughters everybody with the axe so the townspeople might have been hired actors or extras to whatever agenda romulus wanted for logan, creed, and fox. if fox died at all she was later brought back to life not uncommon for marvel characters. creed once killed amiko and werapon x broughht her back to life.

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