Real After All

""It was a photograph from life!""

- Pickman's Model.

If an episode revolves around a haunting (or alien visitation) (or lake monster sighting) (or whatever) that turns out to be a hoax, the episode will end with a shot of a real ghost/alien visitor/lake monster/whatever.

A variation is for the episode to end with the investigators remarking on one detail of the hoax they found particularly impressive, only for the hoaxer to say, "But... that wasn't me." Or, in haunting cases, for the investigators to remark how helpful Bob was, only for one of the locals to say, "Bob? But he's been dead for five years." Sometimes, the characters won't be around to see it, especially if a real sighting would bring an end to a long-running mystery. Many times, a Scooby-Doo Hoax about a lake monster will end with the real one coming out of the water to watch the heroes leave.

A niche variant: Christmas episodes of children's series often feature the adults setting up the various elements of the Santa Claus pretense, and then end with a shot of the real Santa flying away in his sleigh (often while the children open wonderful presents that none of the adults can remember buying). If the budget doesn't allow for it, they may just play a sound of jingling bells as a hearty "HO HO HO!" echoes in the distance.

Tends to happen in series where hauntings (or alien visitations) (or whatever) are not only uncommon, but usually unconsidered, like Sitcoms or Action Adventure series. Usually avoided in series that are about investigating and debunking hauntings (or alien visitations) (or whatever).

A variant of Skepticism Failure. Compare Or Was It a Dream?. Sometimes a case of And You Thought It Was a Game. Occasionally, the characters do see the creature, but it's Mistaken for An Imposter. Often occurs at the end of a Cryptid Episode.

Contrast Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane where it remains up in the air to the very end. Sometimes, technically, that trope and this one combine when it is established that the hoaxer could not have done one thing, but it is never established that no other mundane cause could have done it.

See also You Imagined It. May result in a character being Horror Struck.

Anime and Manga

 * Samurai Pizza Cats, "Unidentified Flying Oddballs"

Film

 * Not really from "outer space" per se, but Labyrinth has Sarah returning from Jareth's castle and reappearing in her own room, and finding everything just as she left it before she wished for Toby to be taken away—and then her friends (and several former enemies!) from the Goblin City appear in her bedroom. (There is some speculation on whether that means it really happened or if she's just lost her mind, however.)
 * I don't have a copy of the movie to look back over, but I've heard that several of those are visible before she travels there too, implying that the entire journey might have been a dream/hallucination/foretold epic.
 * Some of them appeared as toys in her room, but not as characters as seen in the Labyrinth, so this doesn't discount the madness hypothesis.

Live Action Television

 * In the Baywatch episode Strangers among us, a group of half-crazy UFO believers cause problems for the lifeguards as they misinterpret water phenomena on the beach as signs of aliens and almost drown and so on. They are led by the more sensible Dr. Faye Taylor, who has a more scientific view on UFO's. All seems to be normal until the very last minutes of the episode, where she disappears without a trace during something resembling a strange weather phenomenon.
 * Of all things, British medical soap/drama Casualty pulls this one once. In one episode Tom Baker plays a patient who claims he's an alien; the nurse treating him believes he's delusional until a power cut knocks out the lights and he's shocked at the sight of the patient's glowing green eyes.
 * Eerie, Indiana, "Marshall's Theory of Believability."
 * MacGyver, "The Visitor": after Mac exposed a couple of con artists claiming to be aliens from exploiting a cancer patient and her husband, the oddball vacuum cleaner salesman that helped him suddenly disappears. He and the sheriff then see a UFO taking off...
 * Matt Houston had the titular detective abducted by real aliens in an episode where he's investigating a (fake) claim of abduction covering up a murder. Of course, he doesn't remember, no one else sees it, and the abduction has no relevance to the rest of the plot at all.
 * The Munsters, "If It's a Martian, Hang Up". The alien costume they used at the end was originally seen in The Outer Limits.
 * In the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," a town goes into a panic when they come to believe that aliens have landed nearby and that someone on their street might be helping them.  Tricky.
 * Played for laughs—complete with The X-Files-parodying dream sequence—in an episode of Home Improvement, of all things. The episode starts out with Tim mocking Wilson for believing he'd been visited by aliens. The end implies that Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, and several other NBA players are, in fact, aliens—with "bluish-gray" immigrant cards.

Western Animation

 * Garfield and Friends, "U.S. Acres: Unidentified Flying Orson."
 * Used as a Double Subversion in Jackie Chan Adventures, "The Chan Who Knew Too Much" - Jackie tries to stop a villainous group of modern-day druids who believe Stonehenge is an ancient magical Weapon of Mass Destruction and intend to activate it: he dismisses their claim as a crackpot theory, along the same lines as people who think it's a landing beacon for UFO's. At the climax, they succeed... but nothing happens. Later, after the disappointed druids leave, a UFO appears, drawn by the signal of the activation.
 * But they moved Stonehenge. It would be pointing the wrong way.

Anime and Manga

 * Full Metal Panic!: Fumoffu, "The Patient Of Darkness" - Subverted when it turns out that the last "ghost" really was a living person the hoaxers just didn't know about.
 * In the manga, there's a Beach Episode where the beach is allegedly haunted by soldiers who trained in that area, but committed suicide when they didn't make it to the war zone before the fighting ended. It turns out there's a mundane explanation for the mysterious lights ... but how did those indistinct figures in uniform show up in some of the high-schoolers' group photos?
 * To LOVE-Ru: The old school building is allegedly haunted, but it's really a bunch of extraterrestrials hiding out. Then adorable Oshizu-chan, dead for 400 years, shows up to thank the heroes for calming the situation down.

Comic Books

 * Lucky Luke Live Action Adaptation (an episode about a fake ghost train) (Bob).

Film
"Bernhard: Hey, where did this come from? It's a crow's feather..."
 * In the fifth Friday the 13 th movie, . In the sixth movie, Jason really does come back from the dead.
 * In what's probably the only appearance of the occult in the James Bond series, a voodoo henchman from Live and Let Die appears, laughing, riding the front of the train Bond is aboard, even though he supposedly died when he fell into a coffin full of snakes earlier in the film.
 * Lake of the Dead: This Norwegian thriller revolves around a group of friends trying to solve an ancient mystery that involves an immortal crow leaving its feathers as calling cards. In the end a natural explanation has been found, but there is some disagreement about its feasibility. The protagonist insists that the solution is acceptable and nothing supernatural is involved, and to punctuate his words he picks up something from the table and waves it around...


 * Pee Wees Big Adventure. Be sure to tell'em Large Marge sent'cha!
 * Possibly a parody of the song Phantom 309.
 * In The Screaming Skull, a man attempts to gaslight his second wife into killing herself by faking the haunting of their house by his first wife's ghost. It turns out that her ghost really is haunting the place, apparently seeking revenge for her own murder.
 * The supernatural and bizarre events that occurred throughout the Korean film A Tale Of Two Sisters by The Reveal that, but then.

Literature

 * William Hope Hodgson's "Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder" is an Occult Detective whose stories sometimes feature real supernatural events and sometimes hoaxes. In the story "The Horse of the Invisible" a murderous ghost turns out to be a hoax by a human would-be killer. Until...
 * In Expiration Date by Tim Powers, a psychiatrist decided to emulate a seance as part of a group therapy session; all hell broke loose, and she lost her license. She spends most of the novel discovering that ghosts are real and she had inadvertently called up a few. The main protagonist colorfully compares her actions to an anthropologist re-enacting the quaint tribal ritual of loading a "bullet" into a "gun" and pulling the "trigger".
 * A book based on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., set in Romania, involved an apparent return of Dracula. It was staged by a THRUSH agent. Except ... some of his Mooks were taken down by someone else, and at the end, Solo and Kuryakin found a message which thanked them for defeating the villains who'd disturbed the message-writer's "peace."

Live Action Television
"Bill: Hah-hah! Ah, you certainly frightened him off with that spooky voice, David. David: It wasn't me, it was Graeme. Graeme: I thought it was Bill. Bill: ...No, it wasn't me. Jo: Or me. David: ...Well, if it wasn't any of us...it must have been...(dramatic music) ...somebody else!"
 * The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries:
 * "Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula": In the episode, the Hardy Boys suspect a man of being Dracula, but this is apparently dis-proven. At the end, the villain is in handcuffs and standing in front of a mirror, and Joe Hardy notices that the villain has no reflection, while the other characters conveniently not look at the mirror. The villain is taken away by the cops before Joe can get anyone else to notice.
 * "House on Possessed Hill": The Hardy Boys have supposedly dis-proven a haunted house. Final scene is the brothers driving by the house in their van; Frank is giving logical common-sense explanations for all the haunted phenomena. Cue Joe looking towards the house just as they drive away, in time to see a ghostly figure walk out of the house...which disappears when Frank stops the van to look.
 * Spoofed in I'm Sorry Ill Read That Again, when Tim has been telling the others a ghost story, and towards the end exaggerates it severely to give them a fright. After they've all left, fed up, Tim finishes the story, chuckling slightly...only for the lights to turn off as he's confronted with an ethereal voice. After he's run off, this exchange occurs:


 * An episode of Jonas revolved around the ghost of a volunteer fire fight who swore he would return from the grave so that he could once again "volunteerily [sic] fight fires." He also loved chili and plaid socks. After the episode, we see Joe sitting in a chair narrating, like Kevin had been doing for most of the episode. The two start arguing about which has a better evil laugh, when they suddenly hear another evil laugh, and run. Turns out it was Nick, who was using a voice changer. He tells us there's no such thing as ghost, winks at us then leaves....and we hear the laugh again, and see a nearby bowl of chili get emptied after a voice says "oh, chili".
 * C.J. Lamb on L.A. Law was representing a home owner who claimed his house was haunted. She got her assistant to make the lights in the house go out and on, freaking out the jury when they visited the house. When C.J. and her assistant are outside, the lights in the house start going on and off on their own, causing the two to run away themselves.
 * In one episode of Midsomer Murders, the villains organize a series of 'ghostly' appearances in order to try and drive their victim insane. Right at the end, after the hoax is revealed and all the characters have left the room, we see an empty rocking chair creaking back and forth...
 * Quantum Leap:
 * "A Portrait for Troian". Sam finds himself helping a young woman who seems to be haunted by the ghost of her late husband. The haunting turns out to be a hoax staged by  to drive her to suicide, but at least one member of the episode's supporting cast turns out to be an actual ghost.
 * Another was about a mummy's curse being faked. It ended with the mummy strangling the hoaxer.
 * Yet another episode involved a creepy castle with several characters, including the one Sam leaps into, believing themselves to be vampires. One of them gets zapped by lightning, after which Sam triumphantly takes off the dead guy's fake vampire teeth. Just before leaping, he looks into a metallic tray and doesn't see his own reflection.
 * At the end of the fifth season of Stargate SG-1, a "malfunction in the ventilation systems" is implied to be Daniel Jackson looking after his old team.
 * An episode of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody revolved around a haunted hotel room. They decide to spend the night in it, and weird stuff, including everyone but Zack disappearing, starts happening. Turns out it was all a prank to get back at Zack for the pranks he pulls. Later Zack and Cody go back to get Cody's blanket, and a women (whose portrait is in the room) walks up to them and hands them the blanket. After they thank her, she walks into the portrait. The episode ends with Zack and Cody running and screaming. Interestingly, the portrait did come to life and speak to Zack while the prank was going on, but Zack never brings this up while they're explaining the hoax to him.
 * Hell, she even said "they're out to get you"! She was warning him that it was a prank by his friends!
 * In an episode of Taggart the team are investigating a series of murders centering round an alleged medium. The medium claims to DCI Jardine that he is receiving messages for him from the late Jim Taggart and backs this claim up with a number of facts only someone who knew Taggart could know. Later on Jardine discovers that Taggart actually investigated a crime involving the medium. When confronted with this, the medium agrees but says that in fact he never met Taggart himself.
 * In Veronica Mars it is clear that our titular heroine's dreams and conversations with her dead friend Lilly are happening in her head, and after Lilly's murder is solved they stop. However the second season episode 'Normal is the Watchword' has Lilly briefly appear and save Veronica's life by distracting her at a key moment—the implication being that her (Lilly's) ghost intervened directly.

Music

 * There are likely enough ghostly encounters in various Country songs to make a TV series out of.
 * These range from the somewhat malevolent Ghost Riders In The Sky (the Johnny Cash version), to the friendly ghost of Country Music legend Hank Williams.
 * There are two versions of the song The Ride. The old version has the ghost of Hank Williams as the driver. The newer version has the ghost of Dale Ernheart as the driver.
 * Another popular song is Phantom 309, by Red Sovine, which features the ghost of "Big Joe" (as well as that of the truck, itself), who gives the passenger a dime (the cost of a cup of coffee when the song was made). The story goes that Big Joe crashed his rig (said to be the fastest on the road) in order to avoid hitting a school bus full of children. His ghost sometimes returns to that stretch of road to give hitchhikers a ride to the truck stop.
 * "Big Joe" makes an appearance in a more recent song Big Joe, Red Sovine, and Phantom 309, in which the ghost of Big Joe can't figure out how to operate a modern payphone that lack a coin slot (instead requiring a credit or calling card) and is met by the singer. The singer then invites Joe to join him for lunch and pays for the both of them. Joe's ghost thanks the singer and leaves, saying that his "friend, Red" is waiting for him out in the truck. It doesn't dawn on the singer until later that he has had an encounter with Big Joe and that the "friend" is likely Red Sovine, the singer of the original song.

Theatre

 * The play The Woman in Black plays with this. The premise of the play is that two men are acting out the events, aware that they are doing so (but unaware of the audience). In fact,

Video Games

 * A Wings of The Goddess quest in Final Fantasy XI has you investigate a soldier's father and whereabouts. In the end, you find out someone you meet in the quest wasn't really alive.  At the end, though, it all seems to be a hoax,
 * In the horror adventure game Scratches : Was everything that happened to James Blackwood the product of a curse ? Or was it simply a misfortune that Blackwood in madness blamed to a cursed mask ? If the curse was not real, then how to explain the first dream ? The coda on the alternate ending describes a rational explanation for everything, however it mentions at the end that there is still something that doesn't fit while panning to the cursed mask.

Web Comics

 * At the end of the "Big Haunted Battleship" storyline of Schlock Mercenary, it's pointed out by several characters that the "rational" explanation of the ghostly voices on the PDCL is so contrived that it's more rational just to accept it was haunted. This isn't a throwaway gag, either; Petey's inability either to accept or to deny the existence of ghosts is responsible for both his introduction and.

Western Animation
"Filburt: "Who took that picture?" The rest of the characters: *Jaw drop*"
 * AAAHH!!! Real Monsters - One episode had the Power Trio trapped in a severely haunted house, the rub being that while monsters exist, ghosts do not (this is repeatedly stated by Hermione Oblina). It turned out that the house was the bunker/battle ground for a soldier monster who caused all of the strange happenings - except one.
 * The Ace Ventura: Pet Detective Animated Adaptation, episode about "G.C." (Bob).
 * In The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron episode "Phantom of Retroville": A ghost at an amusement park.
 * In the Season 3 episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender titled 'The Painted Lady', the heroes encounter a small fishing village that is dying out because of pollution caused by the Fire Nation. Shenanigans occur while Katara masquerades as the Painted Lady, the patron spirit of the river and the village, and saves the day despite her ploy coming to light. Valuable lessons are learned regarding honesty and hard work, and it appears that the Painted Lady exists only in the hearts and imaginations of the village. The end! Oh, except for the part where after all this, right before they leave, the REAL Painted Lady appears to Katara to thank her for all that she's done. This sort of makes sense since spirits are real, though mostly intangible, beings in the Avatar universe.
 * In the episode "Grundy's Night" of The Batman, after Solomon Grundy is revealed to be Clayface in disguise, a real zombie hand reaches out of the swamp. Ooooh...
 * In the Funky Phantom Saturday morning cartoon, at the end of the episode the "ghost" was usually shown to be a fake a la Scooby Doo. In a couple of episodes one of the guest characters turned out to be a real ghost.
 * In one episode of Growing Up Creepie, a "haunted" theater is revealed to have just had a termite infestation - except for the part where the termites are eventually revealed to actually be ghosts.
 * Hey Arnold!
 * There was an episode where Arnold, Helga, and Gerald heard the story of a train that went off the tracks. The conductor and the actual train supposedly reappearing as a ghost train and conductor on certain nights at the old station, drawing everyone in with a weird light and taking them straight to hell where the conductor would kill them. The kids go check it out and sure enough a train shows up, draws them in with a light, takes them to hell, and the cursed conductor leaves the front... and turns out it was just an average train that passed through a steelworks, and takes the kids back. The episode ends with Arnold's grandma sitting on a fence playing harmonica while the real ghost engine races by on a nearby track, with the ghostly mad conductor laughing.
 * The other "ghost story" episodes "Weezing Ed" and "Ghost Bride" had this as the ending, too. In "Weezing Ed", the counterfeiters pretend the island was haunted are captured... and then we hear the laughing/coughing that the dead gangster Weezing Ed was supposed to have. In "Ghost Bride", the kids try to scare each other by pretending to be the Ghost Bride, but after the main group leaves the last hoaxer in the graveyard and goes home, the real ghost shows up and isn't very happy...
 * Jem, "Mardi Gras": Jem and the group are invited to stay at a haunted hotel where there are strange things happening. People assume it's the ghost of pirate that loved Lily Rose. Jem is able to use a hologram of him to scare a boy band hired by the Misfits to screw up Jem's group. It turns out the stolen stuff was stolen by a descendant of the pirate's pet, a monkey named Francis. At the end, as the ghost of the pirate and Lily Rose appears.
 * A first-season Pokémon episode concerned a hoax haunting. The spirit of a young bride-to-be who died waiting for her deceased fiancee's return supposedly caused trouble for the protagonists, until the troubles were revealed to be caused by the spirit-like Pokemon Gastly. However, after the protagonists leave, Gastly is then shown to be a friend of the 'real' ghostly maiden.
 * The Ninetales Lokoko might also qualify, as she states (via an illusory proxy) that after being captured and released by Brock, she is now free to go to the afterlife and find her real master, who died a hundred years ago.
 * Scooby Doo itself has done this on occasion. After the gang reveals the main ghost of the episode as a hoax, some minor, benign supernatural event occurs during the denouement.
 * Two animated movies from the late 1990's take this a step further. The Scooby gang believes that everything going on so far is a hoax, and they eventually prove it. At which point the real thing shows up, almost without warning, to drive the climax. In one case, the gang ends up needing to save the real aliens (who had been tagging along with the gang for most of the movie disguised as unremarkable characters) from the humans who had been pretending to be aliens !
 * In Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, when faced with real supernatural events Freddy even goes into a state of denial, frantically trying to pull the zombie mask off of a very real zombie, until the whole head comes off, at which point he tries to argue that it was animatronic.
 * In "Rocko's Modern Life" there's a halloween episode were the main characters go to a cemetery to prove that a legendary ghost is just a legend, turns out that he is not only real but a nice guy that befriend the main character. And takes another twist when one year later the guys and the ghost are looking at pictures of the last year's halloween (most of them are pictures of the characters runing away.)then when they are leaving Filburt is scared at the last picture when he realizes that is a picture of all(5) the characters in that episode.

Anime and Manga

 * The Florian Triangle in One Piece is a place where nearly a hundred ships go missing every year. In the course of the Thriller Bark arc, we learn that the arc's Big Bad Gecko Moria has been assaulting ships that pass through and stealing their crews' shadows to give rise to an army of zombies. At the arc's very end however, a huge shadow watches the crew leave and the narration reveals that something has been destroying ships long before Gecko Moria ever set up shop.

Film

 * A lot of cryptozoological documentaries end with a moody shot of the supposed monster's habitat. Perhaps they're hoping for a Real Life version of this?
 * If so, they're expecting something really weird, given that a documentary is the product of editing, and hence it's their decision to stick footage they know to be monster-free at the end. (Of course, the film may have been shot in order, no editing involved. Or they may hope to evoke this trope for the audience, as if the film has No Ending, and maybe the monster is Real After All… Behind the Black.)

Literature

 * One of Leslie Charteris' short stories featuring The Saint involves a villain faking attacks by the Loch Ness Monster. The villain is then eaten by the Loch Ness Monster. Really.

Live Action Television

 * In one episode of Bones, a person if found dead in the middle of nowhere by a ufologist. At the end of the episode, Brennan and Booth manage to find the real killer. They are lying on the hood of a car in a field, stargazing and talking about whether or not aliens are real. Just then, all the crickets and other natural sounds disappear, leaving both of them a little freaked out in complete silence.
 * In another, a murderer uses a myth about a witch in the woods (an intentional parody of The Blair Witch Project) to cover up the unintentional killing of his filmmaker brother. At the end though, Angela and Hodgins see what appears to be a real ghost on footage of the murder. They promptly decide to never mention it again.
 * Doctor Who, The Abominable Snowmen: An explorer looking for yeti in the Himalayas runs afoul of some yeti that are actually robots controlled by am Eldritch Abomination. At the end, as the explorer is saying farewell to the Doctor, a real yeti appears.
 * The Greatest American Hero, "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"
 * MacGyver: In the episode "Ghost Ship", MacGyver reveals that the monster is just a man in a suit and a prerecorded monstrous roar. At the end, MacGyver and Pete hear the exact same roar from somewhere out in the wilderness while they're looking at the stereo that isn't currently playing the tape.
 * A Halloween episode of Wishbone had an appropriately mild example. A pair of glowing eyes were glimpsed stalking the main characters throughout the episode. At the end they turned out to belong to a stray cat... and after it scampered off screen, followed by the kids, another pair of eyes appeared, just for us. Still cat-sized, though. (Oh my God, another cat).
 * The X-Files, "Quagmire". Mulder and Scully investigate a lake where a Nessie-like monster is rumored to exist. After narrowly surviving an encounter with and killing the "monster", they discover that it was a giant alligator all along. Moments after they leave to report a false lead to Skinner, the real monster mockingly pops up from the lake.

Video Games

 * In Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, there's the Stillwater Giant. One main quest involving you tracking this thing down to get it to a person who can mark your next destination. It's normally hide in form of a blue rabbit, but when you captured one that's marked and sent for examination, it turns out to be a fake, but the guy still gives you the location to Qintarra. After finishing the quest and leaving the town, you will be pulled into an encounter with...a blue rabbit. Attacking it and it turns into the Stillwater Giant.
 * And it looks very much like the fake Stillwater Giant skin that the player can steal or purchase from a museum display.

Web Comics

 * This Irregular Webcomic strip. In a shocking twist there is no link to this very page.

Web Original

 * A video by Smosh titled "Bigfoot Is Gay" has the two main characters looking for Bigfoot after they are shown a video on the news showing footage of him. They are captured by someone who has captured Bigfoot but it turns out to be someone in a costume and it is stated they made up the video shown on the news. Shortly after that, a real Bigfoot comes by.

Western Animation

 * In another episode of Growing Up Creepie, after Creepie and friends fail to find Bugfoot, the camera zooms out to show that the wilderness they're in is actually located on said giant arthropod's back.
 * Jonny Quest TOS: In the episode Monster in the Monastery, a group of Communists dress up as yeti to scare a group of monks. They're eventually discovered dead, ripped to pieces by an unknown force. At the end of the episode, a real yeti, the one that killed them, is seen walking into the mountains.
 * Again in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest there's an episode where in South America main characters encounter a group of natives living in hiding, who protect something by sending a guy dressed as a legendary local monster Amok (looking like hybrid of gorilla, baboon and sloth) to scare curious. Later everybody got caught by a bunch of terrorists (or something like that). Johhny escapes and together with Amok-guy manages to free everybody, but villain's leader escapes to jungle. When Johhny thanks guy in Amok costume for help he respond that he was with everybody else all the time. And then we hear leader's screams and monstrous roar coming from the jungle.
 * In one episode of the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, a monster hunter comes to look for the "green man in the woods" after the turtles are spotted and videotaped; about halfway through the turtles discover that the green man is real and have to keep both it and themselves out of her reach.

Comic Books

 * In an issue of Grant Morrison's Justice League of America run, Plastic Man tells his sidekick's nephew a story about the Justice League saving Christmas and fighting alongside Santa (who has heat vision in Plastic Man's telling), and after he's done with the story, his sidekick's nephew expresses disbelief - only to look out the window and see Santa flying by on his sleigh, blasting "Merry Christmas" into the snow in the yard.
 * Santa exists in the DC universe according to other comics, and he's even more powerful than the regular version - he delivers gifts to everyone in the UNIVERSE and he's a match for Darkseid.
 * Although he apparently is no match for Lobo in their Versus miniseries...
 * In an Archie comic, Archie and the gang are in a living room on Christmas Eve discussing how Santa Claus is an outdated concept, that it's wrong to teach children you can get something for nothing, and so forth. Suddenly they hear jingling bells out the window. When they go outside to check, they find several gift-wrapped packages with their names on them. The contents were items they all needed yet they hadn't told anyone as much. Further investigation revealed hoof-prints and an inexplicable sled-runner trail in the snow.
 * Spider-Man was once pursuing a burglar who wore a Santa costume. Near the end, the burglar escapes Spidey, but then cowers in shock before someone. All we see of that someone is a black mitten, and a red sleeve trimmed at the end with white fur. He tells the burglar, "First, slasher movies. Now this. I'm not laughing." The burglar hands himself over to the police ... and passes on to Peter Parker a note saying, "Call your aunt!"

Film

 * Look Who's Talking Now has a guy hearing Santa... on a CB radio.
 * Miracle on 34th Street (1947) has the scene at the end where the little girl gets exactly the present she wanted, but notably avoids an explicit sleigh shot.

Live Action Television
"Morris: Holy....!"
 * The Basil Brush Show had a Christmas episode where Santa gets food poisoning from the cafe and the gang is forced to make and deliver presents in one night. The next morning when Santa comes round and everyone finds out that he is a department store Santa. After everyone leaves they find the flat full of presents and hear a loud "ho-ho-ho!". It transpires the department store Santa was the real Santa after all.
 * In one episode of Dont Eat The Neighbours, Lucy ends up depressed after she learns that Old Father Bunny has not delivered the bicycle she wanted. So that night, the other adult male characters in the show get up onto the roof, each claiming to Lucy that they are Old Father Bunny and they have brought her the bike she wanted. The next morning Lucy has 7 bikes, but there were only 6 men up on the roof last night. She then finds a note attached to it from Old Father Bunny apologizing that it is a day late, but he and his elves were busy painting it into a multicolour one.
 * In the ER episode "City Of Mercy", Morris unselfishly decides not to have a one night stand with a woman on Christmas Eve. Afterwards, walking outside, he begins mocking himself out loud for being sentimental and being affected by Christmas, finishing his rant by screaming "There's no freaking Santa!!" Immediately, a man calls to him, wishing him a merry Christmas, and as Morris turns around, sleigh bells suddenly jingle (it's left intentionally ambiguous whether they are just the soundtrack or actually audible in the show) and Morris freezes, staring at something in the sky right behind the camera.


 * Family Matters did this, with Carl getting a space helmet he had wished for as a kid.
 * In Home Improvement Wilson visited Mark as Santa Claus when he was told that Santa does not exist - or at least this was what Tim and Jill thought, as the REAL Wilson was revealed to be in his garden the whole time Santa was visiting.
 * Lois and Clark: A Christmas episode sees Superman pull a Santa-suited Perry White around in a sleigh to distribute presents to children on Christmas Eve. Later, as Lois and Clark leave the Daily Planet, they hear sleigh bells and a jolly "Ho Ho Ho!" from high above, and Lois exasperatedly comments that Superman must still be dragging Perry around in the sleigh - unaware, of course, that Superman is actually standing right beside her...
 * My Hero (TV): George is dismayed by the increasing discontent at Janet's Christmas Day party, so he asks all the guests what they'd like. Dr. Crispin is dismissive, but the others answer honestly. He flies out, bringing in a man in a Santa costume (who complains about being very tired)... but just as the guests mock his charade, the man gives them all exactly what they asked for. At the end, Janet wonders how the man got the requested items, and George answers, "I'm glad he decided to help. Normally he sleeps all day today."
 * In the Night Court first season Christmas Episode "Santa Goes Downtown", a man that Harry Stone takes for a street corner Santa turns to be the real thing.
 * In an episode of Gilligan's Island, on the first Christmas Eve they're stuck on the island, the Skipper shows up dressed as Santa Claus. He happily tells the castaways that they should be thankful that they are on an island with food and water, that they all get along with each other, etc. "Santa" then leaves into the jungle. An instant later, the Skipper, dressed normally, emerges—from the opposite direction—out the jungle, carrying the firewood that he went to get a moment ago. Even the professor was puzzled by this one.
 * In the Doctor Who Christmas special "A Christmas Carol", the Eleventh claims to know Santa Claus and Jeff is a good friend.

Western Animation
"The Tick: Odds are it wasn't the real Santa, but how can you ever be sure? Die Fledermaus: Here's a clue: If he runs up and punches you in the stomach, HE'S PROBABLY NOT SANTA!"
 * The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Being a person of logic and science, Jimmy Neutron didn't believe in Santa Claus (it didn't help that he didn't get the present he wanted two years prior), but soon learns that there are some things that can't be proven with facts.
 * In The Mask animated series, a crime wave perpetrated by criminals dressed as Santa Claus prompts the mayor to decree wearing a Santa costume ground for immediate arrest. This causes the real Santa to be thrown in jail.
 * The Great Pumpkin is usually portrayed as Linus simply confusing Christmas with Halloween, however some strips show that the Great Pumpkin is apparently real, or at least believed by other people across the country.
 * Recess: "Santa Shaves".
 * Rugrats, "The Santa Experience".
 * Hilariously subverted in an episode of The Tick (animation):
 * The villain of the episode is a robbing Santa impersonator who has managed to clone himself. This confuses the Tick, who refuses to fight even when his fellow superheroes are viciously attacked by a dozen guys in Santa costumes:


 * Santa later appears, with a Elf Secret Service team, compulsively hands out gifts such as pencil sets, and tells the Tick to get a grip.

Comic Books

 * In Ultimate Marvel.

Live Action Television

 * One episode of Two and A Half Men has Charlie experimenting with marijuana. He ends up having hallucinations of his ex-girlfriends (and ZZ Top). After he makes a date with, it's revealed she's the only one who's real.