Forget About It.

That is the unofficial three-word theme installed this week around Giants Stadium. Other phrases were considered, such as It Doesn’t Matter or Don’t Look Back, but Forget About It seemed to be the most appropriate.

Lest anyone try to persuade them otherwise, the Giants want to make perfectly clear that there is absolutely no carryover effect from last year’s 41-0 humiliation of the Vikings in the NFC Championship Game.

That brilliant performance does not help as far as confidence or strategy or putting together the gameplan for Monday night’s rematch. That’s the Giants story and they’re sticking with it.

“Sometimes the stars just line up,” Jim Fassel said. “We played about as perfect a game as you’re going to play. That was last year and this is this year. Things have changed. Circumstances have changed.”

Not everything has changed. The cast of characters is almost entirely different, but the Vikings on defense continue to play as if they were introduced to each other the day before yesterday. The stakes, while not nearly as significant as deciding a trip to the Super Bowl, remain high, with the fate of the season for the Giants (5-4) and Vikings (3-5) very much in doubt.

Privately, the Giants will take much from the way they overwhelmed the Vikings on both sides of the ball and seek to duplicate their stunning success. A year ago, the Giants looked at Minnesota’s pathetically inadequate secondary and knew on the spot they could throw all day, which they did, with Kerry Collins firing five touchdown passes. The secondary isn’t much better this time around, and it’s likely the Giants will once again try to exploit that weakness.

No one, though, anticipates it being quite as easy as it was the last time.

“This is one in which anybody with football background can look at this game and say, ‘This is going to be a tough game,’ ” offensive coordinator Sean Payton said.

“I think you can throw out comparisons to last year, they’re a different team, we’re a different team,” added Collins. “I’m cautious to talk about, ‘Well, this happened last year so this is going to happen this year.’ I don’t think you can do that.”

The Vikings have deteriorated since the Giants last made them look silly. Their top running back, Robert Smith, retired, and while the defense has as many as eight different starters, it remains impotent, allowing more than 26 points a game.

Randy Moss has caught fewer passes (39) than Amani Toomer (40) for fewer yards (538 compared to Toomer’s 552) and the same number of touchdowns (three apiece).

Cris Carter (35 receptions, 510 yards) is having a season almost identical to that of Joe Jurevicius (33-494), which shows how far the pass-oriented Vikings have fallen.

Just this week, Viking owner Red McCombs blasted his team, saying “We weren’t even competitive” in a 48-17 loss to the Eagles.

Still, the Giants seem convinced that the 41-point blowout was the result of a strange series of events that all worked in their favor. They led 14-0 before their defense ever stepped foot on the field, and signs were everywhere that once they fell far behind, the Vikings were content to quit rather than continue their feeble fight.

That game branded the Vikes as pretenders and thrust upon the Giants heightened expectations that they found impossible to live up to.

“I think it’s very unfair,” Collins said. “First of all, I don’t think our offense is built to score 41 points every game. If I was sitting in the St. Louis locker room I’d say yeah, we should expect that out of ourselves every game. There were so many circumstances with what went into playing the game that way, and I don’t think that can ever be created again.”