Unusually Uninteresting Sight



""In fact, mostly they just swerved and looked irritated, as if they had to deal with a lot of ratty teenagers carrying old hippie women across the freeway.""

- Percy Jackson, The Heroes of Olympus: The Son of Neptune

An Unusually Uninteresting Sight is something that is blatantly unusual, yet nobody seems to take notice of it. It could be an odd costume, Unusual Ears, an external monologue, a visible weapon, or an animal that only vaguely resembles a normal one (such as a blue wolf wearing armor). For some reason, none of the bystanders take notice or comment on it. Or call the police.

When done well, this can help to establish a slightly different reality. When done badly, it can become plain creepy or ridiculous, depending on the show. In some cases this is justified with not being seen by mortals or for some reason if it's a kid's show/book/comic/other its often stated that the weirdness is unable to be seen by adults or doubters.

While unusual hair or eye colors won't get noticed, they don't really count, as they may not actually be there in the first place -- see Hair Colors. When the Unusually Uninteresting Sight is ignored by apathetic folks in a metropolis, then that's City of Weirdos. Of course, the simplest explanation is that people may have simply gotten used to the sight and accept it as normal.

Possibly an extension of Somebody Else's Problem or No Big Deal, contrast with Mundane Made Awesome. Occasionally justified with a Weirdness Censor. Common in Magic Realism and Mundane Fantastic. See also Fantastically Indifferent, Elephant in the Living Room, Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My! and Not Distracted by the Sexy.

Anime & Manga

 * In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rei Ayanami's albinism goes unmentioned, even by Asuka. This is especially odd since the show goes for fairly normal color schemes (also rather odd given the emphasis Japanese society places on conformity when Rei sticks out like a sore thumb in any crowd scene). This can be justified, as Rei's look is arguably one of her least odd aspects. Considering her other traits, it's possible no one would pay much notice her odd appearance.
 * That is odd, that Asuka doesn't mention it. If this wasn't an uncommon mutation after the Second Impact, that would explain why Kaworu's coloring also doesn't rate remarks, but not why Asuka would refrain from making another example of Rei's strangeness another object of her scorn. It's easier to suspend disbelief by assuming that, like noted for Hair Colors, it's only visible to the audience and doesn't really exist in the setting.
 * Well, in the case of Kaworu, they've probably got their hands full already with every other way he's bizarre.
 * By the time Kaworu shows up
 * Otogi Juushi Akazukin brings us a girl wearing an odd costume, another girl with Unusual Ears, and the abovementioned blue wolf, which is apparently easily mistaken for a dog. The dog/wolf confusion seems especially common given Japanese wolves have been extinct for a while. The point remains, however. Blue. Armor. Talks.
 * The at-times extremely elaborate and sometimes impractical outfits worn by the Goddesses of Ah! My Goddess seldom prompt more than mild discussion among others. ** In the TV series, the goddesses generally wear less noticeable getups among normals; in the second episode, Belldandy's outfit garners an amused reaction from a little girl. She promptly changes it via magic and freaks the kid out.
 * Of course, no one ever mentions the Facial Markings, either.
 * Love Hina: Motoko walking around with a sword is just the tip of the iceberg. Other strange phenomena are passed off with a casual note -- Tama-chan the turtle's flying is acknowledged with an off-hand comment. It's usually Keitaro's job to notice such things, like mild amazement when he finds a full-blown jungle growing in Kaolla's room.
 * While most of the weirdness in Mahou Sensei Negima is under the surface, few of the girls in Negi's class ever seem to notice or comment upon Chachamaru's very obvious robotic construction, at least at first. The magic may be under a Masquerade, but that doesn't cover the many other varieties of weirdness.
 * Lampshaded in one chapter (both in manga and anime) when one of the students, Chisame Hasegawa, angrily comments that she doesn't understand how anybody (Chachamaru among them) doesn't notice all the weirdness in the school. She also comments on the abnormal amount of foreigners in the class and how a 10 year-old can work as a teacher if that's against child labor laws.
 * During the Mahora Festival arc, it's explicitly said that normal humans have an innate skepticism towards magic; it takes a rather massive spell to break through it.
 * It also helps that the Negiverse definition of normal includes such things as The World Tree, Ninja, Ki Attacks, and an engineering club that can build a fully functional Mecha-T.Rex just for giggles. After stuff like that, having a classmate with robot antennae doesn't seem that strange.
 * Another example is that, early on, no one sees anything strange about the empty seat for Sayo, who is mentioned on the class roll with "1940-: Don't move her seat" noted.
 * A non-magical example is how during the Mahora Festival it becomes dangerous for people to confess while near The World Tree and Mana deals with it by finding people about to confess and shooting them with a sniper rifle. Yes, she's firing tranq rounds which "only" leave the target unconscious for about 10 minutes and immobilized all day but you'd still thinking people would panic or security would take issue with over a dozen reports of people being shot in the head by (an) unknown assailant(s).
 * Except that Mana is security so....
 * When Mana is seen shooting around 10 people with Guns Akimbo people started to notice, which she waves them off saying that they were shooting a movie. And later in the Magic World people handwave an epic fight going on around them as "are they shooting a movie?" and just continue walking.
 * In Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, there is Mion Sonozaki, who never leaves the house without her gun, which is highly visibly placed in her highly visible shoulder holster. No one ever seems to notice or to care. Possibly justified by the fact that she's a Mafia Princess (and well-known as such in the tightly-knit village.)
 * Usually in omakes, and official art, but we often see Rika in front of her friends. They don't question her, or appear to notice.
 * When Inuyasha travels to the present time, Kagome always covers his dog ears yet doesn't bother to hide his fangs, claws, etc. Other people don't seem to mind about a barefoot man with long white hair walking down a street with a sword.
 * Many think he is just a cosplayer.
 * In Mamotte Shugogetten, no one seems to think it is out of the ordinary for inanimate objects to come to life, giants to stand in the city street, dragons to fly into a school, or any other of the ridiculously outlandish things the spirits do.
 * In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha As when the Wolkenritter visit the hospital no one seems to mind the GIANT BLUE WOLF hanging out with little girls, Or that Arf's red. It's also worth mentioning that nobody seems to take note that Hayate's "family" are all obviously foreigners, while Hayate herself is Japanese.
 * Zafira doesn't go to the hospital very often, but the first time the Wolkenritter are there, while Ishida notes how they're strangely dressed (Hayate notes that they're from an unspecified far off country and are dressed in costume), she doesn't notice his ears or tail. At the end of A's, Zafira starts learning how to turn into a puppy.
 * The most anyone tends to find strange about the Medicine Seller in Mononoke is his exorcism tools and (in a more modern setting) clothing. Not his pale skin, blonde hair, pointy ears, or Facial Markings. On the other hand, it's implied that people are just too self-interested to pay him much mind.
 * In the last storyarc, which takes place during Japan's modernization period his appearance is commented on by one of the charactesrs, and he responds that a person who sells folk remedies has to look exotic to get customers. Not that it explains his inhuman body features, but a Wierdness Censor may be in effect there. His deceptively little sword sometimes draws comments in the Feudal period as well, since as a merchant he shouldn't have the right to carry one.
 * Bleach has (at least, in the beginning, when all of the action still happens on Earth) gigantic undead monsters routinely tearing gashes into buildings in downtown Tokyo. The Hand Wave is that said giant monsters are Invisible to Normals and they use memory manipulating magic to provide rational explanation for the damages, which Fridge Logic suggests is unlikely to satisfy the forensics teams or the insurance assessors.
 * And why hasn't any character ever commented on Nnoitra's spoon getup? Every other character wears moderately normal clothes for the setting, but Nnoitra's outfit is downright bizarre.
 * Maybe they just don't want their ass handed to them. Nnoitra's not exactly the friendliest guy on the planet, mind.
 * When in the Karakura Town, nobody ever questions why Ikkaku is carrying a wooden sword around. Nobody ever questions Yumichika's face feathers. Averted with Hitsugaya, nobody ever mentions his age or hair color, but other Shinigami warn him about how weird him just walking around would look.
 * When they (Toshiro, Rangiku, Ikkaku, Yumichika, Renji) go to Ichigo's school the other students do comment on Yumichika's feathers and the fact that Toshiro looks like an elementry school student.
 * Keigo did wonder why Ikkaku is carrying a sword around. In response, Ikkaku threatens him. This is probably why nobody else brought it up.
 * In the Ghost in the Shell anime, The major's outfit is only mentioned once, only because she had no choice but to change out of it and into something even more revealing. Her hair and eyes are never mentioned (because it's explained that her visual appearance is that of a popular mass-production cyborg model from a few years back.)
 * No seems all that surprised in one episode, about a Tachikoma, a large talking blue spider tank, simply wandering the city by itself.
 * This seems to be because, once again, the time the story takes place in is pretty different from ours. Seeing robots walking around the streets isn't abnormal. Of course, many of them are humanoid, but there are a few humans who actively choose to be put in non-humanoid bodies. Of course, a few police officers do ask the girl it's with what it is, and the Tachikoma responds (imitating the Chief's voice) that it's a war veteran who is using that type of body. It then chews them out for bothering him.
 * Karakurizoushi Ayatsuri Sakon. The main character is a puppeteer who walks around talking to his puppet all hours of the day, and makes it talk back, even arguing with it at times. No character treats him as mentally unbalanced or untrustworthy in any way, to the point where he can question people while trying to solve mysteries, and the people he questions don't say a word about the puppet.
 * It's never made clear if the characters in Code Geass R2 are aware of the color of Lelouch's eye, or if they don't notice it at all.
 * Characters' eyes turn red while they're Geassed, but it's treated as more a thing for the viewer than an actual visual effect normal people can see.
 * At least once a Geassed character is shown in a video recording. She doesn't have the glow, while in the very same scene shown "live" she had and it was visible to viewer for a distance. (It's the Euphie incident and the recording in question is Diethard editing coverage to show it to the world.)
 * Viletta comments that someone acting oddly "didn't have the red ring in their eyes" after she's worked out Lelouch has a memory-altering ability.
 * Rolo commented about Lelouch's 'demon eye' once.
 * But he only knew about Geass. He never actually saw it active (not blocked by lens).
 * The glowing eye effects are probably just for the viewer's benefit. In the broadcast version of the first episode, a group of Britannians react in surprise when Lelouch first activates his eye. The DVD version shuffles the scenes so they react instead to his shift in attitude, and the staff said this was the "right" version.
 * Dokuro-chan parodies this relentlessly. People sometimes laconically comment about the results of her actions as if it were normal and she had nothing to do with it, but mostly they don't even notice. On the other hand, they do pay attention to the minutiae of Sakura-kun's behavior the exact moment it becomes embarrassing. They'll notice Sakura fantasizing about Dokuro-chan, but they won't notice her tearing him in half and then resurrecting him right in front of them.
 * Cromartie High School is practically an entirely series built out of this. Among the classmates there is a robot, a gorilla, a luchador who convinces everyone that he's a missing member of the cast just by telling them he is, and a mute, shirtless Freddie Mercury who rides a huge black stallion.
 * To Love Ru is full of this. No one seems to really care that Lala has a tail, that Zastin wears a suit of armor all the time, that Rito has a giant carnivorous plant in his backyard, etc.
 * Although no mention of the fact of the plant or Zastin's armor warrents comment, people often comment about Lala's tail. When it is revealed that Lala (and most of the rest of the characters) are aliens, everyone seems just fine with it though. Which could explain why no one makes a comment about the plant.
 * In Digimon, any time there's a digimon in the real world. People are perfectly fine with the explanation that digimon are stuffed animals or people in suits, even though it would be freakishly obvious that they look way more realistic and organic than a stuffed animal. Especially because with the massive amount of time digimon exist in the real world, someone would eventually realize that the stuffed animal was warm, or that their mouth was unusually realistic and wet, or that they were, you know, breathing.
 * No to mention the fact that the average digimon looks nothing like any animal of any kind. When their kid marched in with an odd mutant-looking crab-type thing under their arm and said 'it's a cuddly toy', most parents would probably demand to know what the hell it was supposed to be. Not so in the series, where owning a toy that looks like a very large puppet with flowers attached is perfectly unremarkable. Also, Digimon seem to be able to look exactly like people if they put on a large coat and a hat. Yes, it may be three feet tall with claws, wings and horns, but nobody notices as long as it's got it's hood up.
 * Particularly Egregious example in season 1: After all the trouble Taichi goes through to hide Agumon, he wakes up one day to find that the beast has joined his parents for breakfast.
 * In regards to Digimon not looking like animals, in Tamers Digimon is a TV show. It's reasonable to assume that they could just use the "it's a product based on the show" excuse.
 * In the third series, Takato seems to do little to actually hide Guilmon, and for the most part he just wanders through crowds of people with Takato. No one bats an eyelid.
 * Actually, the writer notes something on this on his webpage. He intended Guilmon to be small so he could be hidden easily, but the designer made him the size of an adult. The writer realized that it could be used to make scenarios where Takato struggles to hide him and went with it.
 * Besides the plot point that was used, this is not only Lampshaded by Takato, it is interesting to note that even if the children notice (most do), the adults won't believe them (until Sinjuko is wrecked).
 * The anime takes place in Japan.
 * Hilariously played straight and then subverted in one episode, where Guilmon tries to sneak into school to play with Takato. He sneaks in under a cardboard box. As he walks down the hallway, he crosses by the principal, who greets him with a cheerful "hello, cardboard box!" and continues walking, before suddenly stopping and realizing that a cardboard box should not be moving.
 * Digimon Xros Wars the Young Hunters Leaping Through Time involves Digimon frequently and noticeably affecting the human world, and although people panic during the events, they don't seem to actively try to find out what exactly happened after the heroes resolve the core issues. In one particular instance, two students (both of whom were in on The Masquerade) were pulled into another dimension in the middle of a kendo match for several minutes, then reappeared at the same spot after finishing up the plot there. The referee was confused for a bit, but allowed them to continue the match as if nothing happened.
 * In Beck: Strange Frankenstein dog? Oh, who cares.
 * In The World God Only Knows, no one ever comments on the scarf-like trail of fog that hangs over Elsie's neck. It's either this trope or Invisible to Normals.
 * Considering she can use it, among other things, as an Invisibility Cloak, the latter is not too far a stretch.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! -- The fact that Yugi grows and shrinks a good few inches every time he 'transforms', and everything about his hair.
 * Word of God says that Yugi's appearance doesn't actually change, the difference in art represents how the Pharaoh has more presence than Yugi. The only person who ever thought they different people was blindfolded at the time, and only heard their voices. Oddly enough, the Paradox Brothers do react to Yugi's transformation, but never say anything other than gasping and wondering what he was doing.
 * Additionally, characters occasionally notice that Yugi looks slightly different. During the shadow game against Shadi in one of the first volumes of the manga, both Jounouchi and Anzu wonder if they only imagined that Yugi looks slightly differently. Later, during the Death-T arc, Honda asks them why Yugi looks differently. However, it has to be said that he's never shown to get taller (at least, not in the beginning).
 * Yugi's appearance change when he becomes Yami Yugi is supposed to show the great change in his personality. Yugi is more shy and innocent, hence why his voice is more soft spoken, his eyes are more childish, and why he seems short (he supposedly slouches or keeps his head down too much). Yami Yugi on the other hand is more confident and fierce, hence why his voice becomes deeper (he speaks with more confidence), his eyes become more evil looking, and he appears taller (he stands in a more confident manner). In the end they are both Yugi, just with different personalities.
 * In Free Collars Kingdom, many of the main characters wear clothes, and carry around weapons. The catch? They're cats, and yet none of the humans really notice, or think this strange.
 * Damn near everything Sousuke Sagara does in public barely elicits any reaction from civilians or authorities in Full Metal Panic. From frequently talking about past military experiences, to carrying around loaded guns that he once pulled on a guy bothering Kaname in a crowded subway station, to interrogating that same guy with a toilet after someone posts a bunch of notes around school bad-mouthing Kaname. Oh and did I mentioned he pulled on a gun on guy in a crowded subway station!? In a country where it would probably be very difficult to even OWN a gun legally even if he weren't a minor!?
 * The guy plants land mines on school grounds. Mithril must be paying the school a hell of a lot in order for him to be such a Karma Houdini.
 * Seven syllables: Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. (Beauty, Gasser and Softon are the only people aware of this)
 * Franken Fran has quite a few chapters where she decides to go back to attending school. Unlike most of the people who see her Frankenstein's Monster appearance, none of the students give her a second glance in these stories, nor do they give her as much flak for her weird surgical procedures. Heck, one story had many students casually asking for weirder and weirder cosmetic changes to their bodies, and the chapter ends with her becoming one of the more normal-looking students on the campus.
 * Slayers brings us Zelgadis, who is a cursed chimera consisting of 1/3 human, 1/3 golem and 1/3 blow demon. This gives him rock hard, greenish-bluish skin, scale-like protrusions all over his body, and literal wire-y hair. In early episodes he makes a few comments about preferring to avoid towns and keeps the hood of his cape up, but in most of the later seasons he walks around just like everyone else and never gets a second glance from the innocent townspeople.
 * This is even funnier because in later seasons, the cast heads off to lands where magic is uncommon. Most of the manga spinoffs and the novel series averts this, as shown in his novel special story. The aversion in the novels can be a bit odd, though, because there are far more chimeras present there than in the anime or manga.
 * In One Piece there's Brook, a nine-foot tall walking, talking skeleton with an afro, yet pretty much anyone who sees him comments passingly - "Oh look, a skeleton." - and then moves on with the conversation. This is even stranger in light of the fact that Franky once noted that Brook would have trouble being accepted because of his appearance, which Brook did not attempt to dispute.
 * People probably thought he ate Skull-Skull fruit or some kind of devil fruit. Considering this is a world where there's giants, gigantic sea monsters, mermaids, and people of various shapes and size, a skeleton is a really uninteresting sight.
 * He DID eat a devil's fruit, but some people don't have knowledge of such things. People are extremely freaked out by Luffy's rubber body at the beginning of the story. Justified in that the Grand Line characters are probably more savvy of such pirate things, probably. Anyone in fright would probably be dispelled in learning he has a devil's fruit.
 * Luffy's Devil Fruit powers are apparently fairly strange even among Devil Fruits, as when Luffy fights alongside two other pirates with Devil Fruit abilities (one related to magnetism and one that switches people's body parts around), one tells him that his is the strangest.
 * Part of what makes Luffy's power interesting is that even though it's a paramecia (common, random properties) type, it has abilities very similar to a logia (rare, can turn into, create, and manipulate an element/substance) type. The other part of why his powers are interesting comes from the inventive ways he comes up with to use them, namely using his rubber circulatory system to pump his (rubber?) blood super fast to hyper oxygenate his muscles, and inflating his rubber bones to give himself giant limbs and super strength (since it forces his muscles to stretch out in a way he can't just will them to do). This is actually completely averted later when the group gets broken up and Brook winds up kept in a cage by people who want to exhibit him in a freakshow. Turns out he is pretty interesting. Because he only has one joint in his arms.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist's Alphonse Elric seems to both subvert yet fit this trope. He's a giant seven-foot suit of armor who regularly walks the streets with his older brother, but nobody seems to notice or care. Occasionally somebody will ask him about why he "wears" that armor, though, and it's used to comedic effect when someone mistakes him for the Fullmetal Alchemist (who is actually his brother) due to the armor. Otherwise, passers-by pay him no notice.
 * Justified by the fact that the Elric boys live in a VERY militaristic state and people assume he is a tall guy that just likes to use an impressive armor, and they immediately freak out when they notice the armor is empty.
 * Played hilariously straight in an episode of brotherhood, while running from the military, Ed transmutes a car because they have its description...into an armored car that looks like a chinese new years dragon...it works, granted, they were looking for that car in particular, but the fact they didn't even think that's odd is just mind-blowing.
 * The appearances of Hohenheim, Ed, and Alphonse (when not in the armor) should qualify as this, as it's more than likely that they are the only three people alive with the distinctive Xerxian Eyes of Gold and equally golden hair.
 * In Murder Princess no one seemed to notice that the princess suddenly started hanging around with a purple Frankenstein and Skeleton man.
 * In This Ugly Yet Beautiful World, there is a huge and general lack of skepticism towards two girls falling from the sky as meteors, but the most notable instance is that one of these girls has a sentient levitating robotic companion that remains virtually unremarked-upon. (This is Lampshaded a couple times.)
 * Only Lucy seems to notice that the people who work for the magic council in Fairy Tail are humanoid frogs.
 * In the Umineko no Naku Koro ni anime, Maria's facial distortions and creepy laughter go uncommented on by the others. This is in sharp contrast to the original sound novels and the manga, where people do notice and are understandably creeped out.
 * Although they may just be the artist's way of conveying his personality, Hiruma's pointy ears and fangs go without mention in Eyeshield 21.
 * Seto no Hanayome. Things like a submarine smashing through the floor of a gymnasium, a Kill Sat blowing up a section of the school, or the school literally being turned into a war zone over a schoolgirl rivalry usually elicit mind surprise at best. Given the nature of the series, one would think this is normal...except that hiding the existence of mermaids is the idea that drives the whole plot. Even though the mermaids would be one of the less weird things that occurs.
 * Averted hilariously in Buso Renkin, in which various characters including man-eating monsters attempt to take advantage of this trope, only to find that people do not turn a blind eye to weirdness happening in their vicinity.
 * Magical Pokaan has a girl with wolf ears and a tail, dressed in what could be described as a leather bikini top, daisy dukes, and baggy knee high leggings. No one ever notices.''
 * For that matter, Pachira's pointy ears also apply, or Aiko's oversized steel hands.
 * Sonic X has this, but it's averted in the first episode, where Sonic causes a lot of trouble in the city after being transported there by the Chaos Emeralds. This is averted until Sonic makes an appearance that NOBODY can ignore, and is treated like a hero afterwards to the point where people watch a RACE between him and a member of a special group of police.
 * Chrono Crusade is set in a world chock-full with normal hair and eye colors, yet Chrono can run around with a purple mullet, red eyes, Unusual Ears and fangs and nobody ever seems to be bothered by this. Even if we assume that Chrono's hair and eye color appears normal to the people around him, you'd think someone would comment on his ears and fangs.
 * Also, in general the populous is somehow unaware that demons run around populating their world, even though battles with them often take place in public. There's some hints that the Order is constantly working with the media to keep a lot of stories about their fights with demons under wraps, but you'd think word would get out eventually.
 * In the horror manga Shiki, The Dragon has cat ears growing out of his head and nobody bats an eye.
 * In Ultimo, some passers-by notice Iruma and Jealousy's Icon form and wonder if they're shooting a movie, reacting to the spider-like creature with more disgust than fear.
 * In the Pokémon anime, Team Rocket's Meowth is one of the very few Pokemon to be able to talk. A few people find it strange, but most don't.
 * Though there are a few other Pokemon that could speak normally: the Gastly in the Maiden's Peak episode, Slowking in the second movie (which subverted it, everyone was surprised it could speak). And Psychic and Legendary Pokemon can communicate telepathically.
 * Supposedly Meowth taught himself to speak (and practiced walking erect) in the hope of impressing a female Meowth named Meowzie who liked all things human. The implication is there's nothing restricting most Pokemon to Pokespeech, but there's unusually little interest by Pokemon or their humans in them talking.
 * And then we have Brock in the anime. Only a few people have looked at him strangely - including nurses - when he's being dragged away (by the ear) from a good-looking girl by a three-foot-high Croagunk, Misty, or even a boy who's not even ten years old. And nobody has asked if he was okay, scolded the dragger, or done anything more startled than stare at the spectacle.
 * One episode has him being dragged away by Pikachu and Piplup, both of which are around a foot high at most.
 * Don't forget that he was the Gym Leader of Pewter Gym. Sure, he left his post pretty early, but he probably stayed there for a year or two. And yet, no one seems to recognize him, not even veteran trainers. Gary probably faced him before Ash, right?
 * In Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~, Sora uses her magical powers to prevent a truck from crashing from an overpass onto the subway station underneath. This gets some response, causing Sora to become embarrassed, but after some questioning by the police she continues her trip as if nothing had happened. Sure, magic is fairly common in the world depicted, but it should still be a big deal if someone uses it to save numerous lives and it would likely get a lot of media attention.
 * In contrast, the media do extensively cover the attempts of apprentice mages to save a group of stranded dolphins.
 * The Dead Moon Circus in the Sailor Moon anime are masters of this trope. Nobody seemed to notice (besides Usagi) that a GIGANTIC CIRCUS TENT which manages to dwarf most of the buildings surrounding it in size suddenly appeared. The monsters in the Circus actually mock the citizens because they don't notice them. It isn't until advertisements go out for the show that people notice the circus tent. And still, no one asks just when they arrived, or how they managed to set up a tent that size in such a short time. In the manga, their headquarters is a regular circus tent, and they take a month to get ready for their first performance.
 * Flying House: is set in Biblical times, but no one ever reacts to the flying house itself, the strange clothing, or the robot.
 * In Dragonball Z, people are pretty shocked to discover that Piccolo, a man with green skin and antennae, is an alien. Piccolo himself is shocked to discover this. The same thing happens when they find out that Goku (who used to have a tail and would transform into a giant ape in the full moon) is an alien. Granted, given the kinds of things walking around on Earth in this series that are native to the planet and clearly not human, Goku and Piccolo don't stand out all that much.
 * Also the appearance of the giant dragon Parunga in West City. At first, the inhabitants of the city are shocked but once they realize it's at Capsule Corp, they ignore it and go on with their daily lives.
 * Presumably they're used to weird things popping up at Capsule Corp.

Comic Books
"Linus: ...couldn't he just sleep inside the doghouse instead of on top?
 * In House of Mystery various people from different realities and worlds come to an inn where they pay for their drinks in stories. One patron from an alternate New York City tells the story of that one time he was late for work and got there and found out he left his work boots at home and then went home and got them and he was still on time. While the people in the inn are bored to tears, the audience sees the story unfold with his dull, droning narration, and we learn that his roommate was eaten by a giant spider on the ceiling, he got attacked by flying vampiric cats on the subway, and got accosted by undead homeless people begging for spare brains. Virtually every panel contains at least one completely insane background event. Thing is, he considers all this fairly normal aspects of his everyday life, so he didn't think any of it worth mentioning. Oh, and when he says he works in pest control, he really means he spends all day killing 12-foot monster bugs in a quarantine zone with an assault rifle.
 * Played with in Peanuts. Nobody in this otherwise carefully realistic neigborhood seems to find it at all odd that a beagle should be riding atop his doghouse dressed as a WWI Flying Ace, among many other things. They do however look askance at Peppermint Patty for believing he's 'a funny-looking kid with a big nose'. (Occasionally lampshaded when they do find his behaviour odd - just in passing - then continue on their merry way. It's possible the kids just figure he has doggy ADHD.)
 * Then there's this exchange when Snoopy finds it cold at night and they're trying various methods to keep him warm.

(Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Lucy all stare at him incredulously)

Linus: I guess it was kind of a dumb suggestion."


 * Used in Fray, where Urkonn tries to convince Melaka Fray of his otherworldliness. Melaka, however, works for a large fish. Whose appearance isn't all that unusual, in a world populated by mutants.
 * Hellboy is a huge red-skinned demon guy with filed-down horns, his colleague is a blue-skinned fish-man, yet no one ever comments on how strange or frightening he looks. His existence is not kept a secret by the government, and he often deals with cases in person. The main reason that he's not freaked out around more often in the comics is because 1) he's pretty well known, and 2) he's mostly shown interacting with people that have day-to-day experiences with either him, or things that make him and the rest of the group seem normal. There have been more than a few instances where ordinary, every day citizens at least get the bug-eyed "Holy crap look at him!' reaction when he shows up.
 * Seems to be part of the reason Johnny the Homicidal Maniac never gets caught. Except for Squee, and later Devi (though she was pretty blind to it right up until he pulled out the knives) no one seems to notice how run down and barren house #777 is, or hear the screams, or the little black bags of jingling metal. It's also a major part of why he can walk into a coffee shop and kill everyone, or drain a street vendor of his blood, without getting caught.
 * It is justified somewhat by a weirdness censoring force that is explained later in the series.
 * Wiccan of the Young Avengers lacks a mask and always has, which his team mates do not find the least bit strange, and he is still able to keep his identity a secret.
 * A Wizard Did It. Literally, Wiccan is one of the most powerful magic users in the Marvel Universe.
 * There was a running gag in Wonder Woman for a while concerning Ferdinand, the live-in minotaur chef at the Amazons' embassy in DC. Normal Joes from outside the world of capes and myth would meet him and, quite understandably, be somewhat awed and unsettled by the seven-foot bull-headed monster of legend casually slicing up leeks in a dapper apron. Other members of the cast invariably attributed this shock to something else, like the amazing quality of his food or the shocked character having just met Superman a few minutes prior.
 * Almost no one finds the fact that Tom Strong has a talking gorilla as an assistant to be strange.
 * Upon creating the Milestone Comics imprint, Dwayne McDuffie stated that: "I don't want the Milestone Universe to be the kind of place where you can drop in to borrow Reed Richards' time machine. I want it to be the kind of place where a man flies, and it's the most amazing thing you've ever seen." What McDuffie might have forgotten is that back in Fantastic Four # 1, a flying man was the most amazing thing people in the Marvel Universe had ever seen. But after a while, it was inevitable that they got a bit jaded.
 * In Runaways the gang come across a godzilla sized monster wrecking Los Angeles, and while most everyone in the Leapfrog is screaming for their lives, Xavin the Super Skrull is entirely unperturbed as the only thing s/he has has to say is, "Outstanding."
 * In one story, Rex the Wonder Dog gets a job as a photojournalist. Everybody at the newspaper office pretty much just treats him like he's just an unusually quiet man, instead of a super-intelligent (though non-speaking) German Shepherd, to the point where you sort of wonder if they realize they're dealing with a crime-fighting photojournalist dog. In fact, the people in Rex stories often act this way.
 * In Wurr, the Hounds' cavalier attitude towards their deformities is demonstrated by Iacar's nickname for Pyramos. Pyramos has extra fingers growing out of his sides, Godzilla-like bone protrusions on his shoulders, a spearlike point of bone on the end of his tail, and a front paw so deformed it looks like a skeletal claw. What does Iacar call him? "Stripeface".
 * Freaks' Squeele has Ombre, a very large (but very shy) wolf-man. He helps a mother with her stroller by lifting it over his head and no one notices him until a yappy dog attacks him and then its owner starts shouting. 'Course this is a world with two Super Hero Schoools and Ombre's classmates include a living skeleton, a centaur-like spider-woman, and a girl with no head.

Fan Works

 * In Luminosity, this is justified and taken to what would otherwise be an insane degree. Allirea's vampire power is making people think of her as unimportant. This is wonderful for The Masquerade, or making people not fight back as she kills them/someone near them.
 * In the Both Syllables series and its spin-offs, a crossover between Invader Zim and Lilo and Stitch (and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command) explains that Irkens have a low-level psychic power that keeps most people from noticing anything weird about them; Dib and Gaz happen to be immune, though. Jumbaa creates a technological variant to affect everyone in Lilo's town, which is why nobody notices the experiments' oddness unless they already know about them.

Film
"Musician: [while being choked] Grhng!
 * The live action Super Mario Brothers movie featured a scene in which Bowser turned a Jerkass lawyer into an ape using a devolution gun. This happens in front of a large crowd of people who all react with laughter at the chimp in a suit scratching his butt. It seems like watching a man turn into an ape should have a much more panicky reaction.
 * Well, it was the secondary villain getting his comeuppance, and chimpanzees are funny. The people do start panicking when they start seeing Dinohattan replace Manhattan.
 * Pretty much the whole of the film version of Uzumaki. Entire neighborhoods are continuously deserted, students stand head down in the hallway for an extended period in a line for no apparent reason, and it's all treated as normal. By the end of it you want the main character to get it in the head for being so oblivious.
 * The famous part in Ghostbusters II when the Titanic pulls in and the ghostly passengers walk onto the dock. One dockworker looks shocked at the happening, while another (Cheech Marin in a cameo) just shrugs and says "Well, better late than never."
 * The first Ghostbusters had a brief shot of the skyscraper with the vortex cloud rotating about it, with passersby shown walking past (in front of the camera) oblivious to the scene. Of course, this was a Special Effects Failure.
 * Although they're walking, talking, singing chipmunks, which is apparently highly unusual in this universe given Dave's initial reaction to them, the title characters in the Alvin and The Chipmunks feature films don't seem to garner any unusual attention from anybody. Even biologists aren't knocking down Dave's door to get a good look at them!
 * Referenced in one of the newer movies, where one guy mentions that the success will never die down even after the chipmunks sabotaged the show because they're chipmunks that sing and dance.
 * Kill Bill: The main character carries a katana at all times. Even on an airliner. No one seems to object to this.
 * Although there seemed to be a sword hilt sticking up next to every single seat.
 * People just like to keep their swords handy in this world, it seems.
 * In the first Blade film, Blade walks around in broad daylight wearing goofy hair, a leather duster, and a katana. At one point he beats up a cop on the street and no one seems to notice.
 * One-upped in Blade: Trinity, where Blade and his two sidekicks all walk around in broad daylight carrying weapons. Even more ridiculous is that by this point, Blade is.
 * In Pootie Tang, the title character's father is mauled to death by a gorilla. It's certainly treated as a tragedy, but apparently it's a commonplace work hazard. At a factory. In Philadelphia.
 * Parodied in Shaun of the Dead, where the title character wanders around town going through his daily routine without realizing that everyone around him is a zombie.
 * Well, in fairness, there wasn't that much difference between the zombies and the way his neighbors looked normally.
 * As pointed out during the opening credits.
 * Also, during the scene in question Shaun was heavily hungover.
 * The comic tie-in has him in the midst of depression as every normal aspect of his life has gone right to hell.
 * In A Hard Days Night, three out of four Beatles note that there's "a little old man in the cupboard", in his underwear. They then proceed to sit down and read their fanmail.
 * Also, in Help, no one in the Indian restaurant takes much notice of a gang of cultists strangling, kidnapping, and replacing the musicians.

Man: It's a rather jolly place, isn't it?"

"Passenger: What the heck was that?
 * Kay uses this trope to convince the newly-recruited Jay in Men in Black that there really are aliens on Earth, by offering him a cup of coffee. In the breakroom, the five Worms are sitting on the counter by the coffeepot. Kay simply asks them if there's any cream, because he hates powdered coffee whitener.
 * Also in the first film, after Jay helps deliver a betentacled alien baby that vomits on him, Kay asks, "Anything about that seem unusual to you?". Kay is more concerned about the fact that they were in such a hurry, not the whole experience being totally new and strange to new recruit Jay.
 * The sequel had this situation vice versa. While agent Jay tried to convince now postal worker and brain bleached Kay that there was aliens all around them, he proceeds to do strange things with the other postal workers, who were all aliens. Upon opening the letter sorting machine, exposing a smoking, six-armed thin dude sorting all the letters, Kay simply says "no smoking" and removes his cigarette.
 * The second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film had a nice touch on this. A fight with mutants takes the heroes into a crowded nightclub. In order to stop a riot, the nightclub singer (Vanilla Ice of all people) pretends the resulting fight is a floor show. It works, until Shredder shows up to be an ass.
 * The first film has the following dialogue after one of them almost gets run over by a taxi:

Cabbie: Looked like sort of a big turtle in a trenchcoat. You're going to LaGuardia, right?"

"Robin: When you think, Batman, with those four supercrooks hangin' around, it's amazing somebody hasn't already reported this place to the police!
 * Speaking of the Ninja Turtles, the infamous "Making of..." video for their "Coming Out of Our Shells" tour includes a scene of them performing on top of Radio City Music Hall. For some reason, all the people walking down below don't even seem to be paying attention to them.
 * In Freddie as F.R.O.7, the fact that Freddie's car is alive, has a penchant for jumping on other cars and makes frog noises is never commented on.
 * In The Meteor Man, there is a scene in which the title hero is, despite being in alter ego mode, telekinetically turning a man upside down and tearing out his pockets in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, and not one single human being even NOTICES!!
 * In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indy slides under a table in the library on a motorcycle, with villains in hot pursuit. The students sitting at that table get up... and stop Indiana to ask a question about the homework, then go right back to studying. Possibly justified in that, Indiana Jones being who he is, it may not be all that unusual a sight for one of his students (and who knows when they'll get another chance to ask him about assignments?).
 * People seem remarkably unfazed by Howard the Duck. You'd think having a large, anthropomorphic talking duck wandering around the streets of Cleveland would attract more in the way of astonishment, but apparently not.
 * They do notice, though. "DAT'S A DUCK!"
 * The rapping white guys in Teen Witch. You'd think somebody would notice them, especially with how bad they are.
 * In the movie The Shadow, sword wielding mongol warriors in 13th century attire don't rise anyone's eyebrows.
 * The Big Bad of said movie...his power -was- the classic Weirdness Censor.
 * This is the only explanation for the Christmas Town elves not responding to Jack's presence during his initial visit. One would think a foppish skeleton prancing like a young gazelle would be pretty hard not to notice. Especially if he's singing the whole time. And looking in everyone's windows.
 * In the first TV movie for The Librarian, Judson contacts Carsen through a television set in the lobby of a Far Eastern hotel. The two Asian gentlemen who are watching the TV don't bat an eye when their program is pre-empted by an English-speaking talking head that can apparently see and hear Noah Wyle via the screen.
 * Averted where it counts in the Back to The Future series, with characters noting Marty's odd clothing "Why are you wearing a life preserver?" and "'Nee-kay' ], what is that - some sort of indjun word?"
 * However the trope plays straight in the Indians' reaction to the Delorean when Marty arrives in 1885. True, they are being chased by the US Cavalry and one of the Indians hits the Delorean with an arrow, but you would think at least a few of them would stop dead.
 * In The Blues Brothers nobody ever comments on the song and dance numbers nor the explosions and destruction caused by Jake's girlfriend. Not even the policemen in the exploding building find it remarkable afterwards.
 * In the 1958 film version of Tom Thumb, the only two people in the entire village who think that an inch-high man is at all odd or worthy of some note are the bad guys, who can think only of how they could exploit him in burglaries.
 * Men in Black 2 had a scene where a giant alien worm went straight past a Subway station full of people, who immediately looked back down to what they were reading when it passed.
 * In Kick Ass, The Dragon picks up a bazooka from one of Big Daddy's safehouses, since it's a cool weapon and he's always wanted one. He's still got it when he returns to his boss. The boss calls attention to it, there's a Beat, then he's just like "ok".
 * Batman: The Movie: Lampshaded by Robin and justified by Batman so we can learn An Aesop:

Batman: It's a low neighborhood, full of rumpots. They're used to curious sights, which they attribute to alcoholic delusions.

Robin: Gosh, drink is sure a filthy thing, isn't it? I'd rather be dead than unable to trust my own eyes!"


 * Played With in Se7en. Late in the film, John Doe takes a cab from one place to a police station, and follows Mills and Somerset into the main foyer while his shirt and hands are covered in blood. Almost no one notices him or what he's doing until he stands in the middle of the foyer (and in the open for several seconds) and screams at the detectives, at which point almost every officer grabs their weapon and points it at him. If you look closely, you can see the cop at the start of the clip looking straight at him, presumably assuming he is coming in to get help. That still doesn't explain, oh, everyone else.
 * In Hell Up In Harlem, Tommy Gibbs is shot by a Mafia gunman in broad daylight in the middle of the street. No one stops to see what's going on, nor does anyone bother to remark upon someone brandishing a gun in a crowd of people. Tommy makes a run for it, and manages to make his way to Times Square, where (upon seeing the gunman trying to escape) uses a belt to strangle him in the middle of the square. Several people (including a father and daughter who stare straight at Tommy) don't react at all to what's going on.
 * In The Prince of Egypt, everybody is so busy cheering for the Egyptian priests when they match Moses' miracle that they don't seem to notice Moses' snake eating the two that they conjured. Possibly Justified: if one interprets the whole thing as a trick, then the theatrics are presumably meant to keep people from paying attention.

Literature

 * The character of Rosa in The House of the Spirits is a mermaid. Other than the narrator, this goes unremarked.
 * It's at least partially a Magic Realism novel, so that's par for the course.
 * The Cullens and Hales in Twilight. For the most part they don't claim to be related by blood, but they're all very pale, young-looking, hot (specifically, they are all breathtakingly beautiful and literally snow white, with gold--not brown--eyes) people whom Muggles (with the exception of Bella) have a tendency to avoid, but no one seems to find it strange.
 * To be fair, they do find them strange. They simply have stopped caring way before Bella came to the town.
 * In the first book, Edward stopped a runaway van in the school parking lot from hitting Bella, using his bare hands. The book specifically says that a "sea of faces" in the parking lot turned to look. But nobody except Bella noticed anything unusual, including the van driver.
 * Discworld has the Librarian of Unseen University, who has been an orang-utan since the second book. It's gotten to the point that if someone were to tell the faculty about the 300-pound ape wandering around the campus, they would ask the Librarian if he'd seen it.
 * In Unseen Academicals, everyone seems more focused on the results of the football game than the floating, glowing golden woman.
 * Possibly a truthful reaction, then. It was a close game.
 * Also, this is the Discworld; weird manifestations of gods really do happen all the time. In The Discworld Almanak we're told that the God of Astrology regularly visits the publishers with the rays of the sun coming out of his head, a belt of stars, one foot resting on a lion and the other on a crocodile, and carrying nine daggers in one hand and the crescent moon in the other. The only reason he turns heads when walking through Ankh-Morpork is that the lion moves faster than the crocodile.
 * Justified in The Eyes of Kid Midas, incidentally going one step creepier than a Weirdness Censor. Whenever the eponymous Reality Warper makes a change, everyone else's memories change to match, and furthermore what changed will seem normal to them. (There's a memorable scene where a teacher has it pointed out that one of his students is four inches tall, and he ponders it, says he never noticed, and asks why it's being brought up.)
 * Built up in David Weber's Safehold book, Off Armageddon Reef. King Haarahld and Prince Cayleb each work out that seijin Merlin Athrawes is much more than the already extraordinary person he appears. So much so, that when Merlin has to expose some of his full ability to deliver a warning from Cayleb to Haarahld in a single night (when normal methods would have taken two weeks) neither are especially shocked. When Haarahld in particular fails to react to Merlin's sudden appearance, Merlin ponders if their family has some kind of genetic defect since something is clearly wrong with their "Fight or Flight" instincts.
 * The second book, By Schism Rent Asunder, reveals the reason that Haarahld was less than shocked was because
 * In John T Sladek's satire Roderick, none of Roderick's schoolteachers believe he's a robot. They all assume he's a disabled kid in a mobility suit who's fantasizing about being a robot.
 * Justified in the Belgariad, no one thinks Garion's BFS is at all out of place, becuase the Orb attached to the pommel gives it a built in Weirdness Censor that makes people ignore it.
 * This principle is so well understood in the Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy universe that it has been weaponized as the SEP (Someone Else's Problem) field. If something is so unusual that it doesn't make any sense for it to be there, people will just pretend it isn't.
 * Also from Douglas Adams, in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, Thor the Thunder God has a spectacular fight with a huge golden eagle in a Primrose Hill neighborhood, in which thunderbolts and hammers are tossed and the opponents Roof Hop between the tops of lampposts. When it's over, an elderly lady who'd paused under one of the lampposts simply resumes her dog's evening walk, content to move on without comment now that the ruckus isn't in her way.
 * Justified in the Nightside series, where overtly gawking at the bizarre sights and extraordinary characters on the streets only marks you out as a tourist.
 * In the Earthsea Trilogy Roke Island is home to the School of Magic which results in all sorts of bizarre occurrences such as flying houses, people transforming into an animal (or vice versa), etc. The locals are used to this and barely give a second glance.
 * Inverted in Who Cut the Cheese? by Stilton Jarlsberg. One of the frame story characters ignores the "fable" conceit and guesses that the Lilliputians and talking rats must have come from a "genetic experiment gone wrong".

Live Action TV
"Mickey Smith: There's no police boxes any more so doesn't it get noticed?
 * The Reapers in Dead Like Me often carry on conversations with the newly deceased and can calmly walk away from the scene of death without anyone noticing that it's a little bit strange. Reapers are only partly Invisible to Normals, the rest is probably just a Weirdness Censor.
 * Popular fan theory is that Reapers disappear when dealing with the dead.
 * In the Lexx episode "Mantrid," Kai's eyes keep clouding over with blackness, becoming like completely black marbles, then reverting to normal. The audience knows from the opening narration that he is possessed by Insect essence, but this goes on for quite a while without any of the characters noticing.
 * Similarly, almost nobody in The X-Files ever notices that black oil is coursing through people's eyes and filling up the inside of their corneae.
 * The workers at the Primatech paper factory in Heroes have a tendency to ignore some slightly unusual things. Things like two random men walking into the factory unauthorized. And a passed out Japanese guy magically appearing right next to them. And one of those unauthorized intruders picking up a samurai sword that has magically appeared with the passed out Japanese guy and walking off with it. This seems to occurs every time a hero, or at least a significant character(s), enters a Mook-filled installation that's only given brief screen time.
 * Primatech employees aren't the only ones. At one point during Volume Three, Daphne zips out of the airport while an unpowered person is looking directly at her. His reaction to this bizarre happenstance? He blinks. None of the people on the flight with Elle and Claire seem to notice anything aside from the turbulance, as if they all routinely interact with girls who are being electrocuted without being injured by it.
 * Nor do any of the passengers seem to notice the aroma of lightly-fried teenage girl that would surely be around afterwards.
 * Pretty much any time someone uses a power in public in Heroes can fall under this trope.
 * In the original Power Rangers, no one commented on the ranger's "watches." Watches with their own theme music, no less. Whenever the theme went off, those rangers present tended to snap their hands over the watches, then leave the room in one group, looking more suspicious. Ernie commented on them once, if I recall correctly.
 * In one of the many many explanations as to why it always took Tommy such a long time to appear at the scene of a Monster attack (in the Original, his counterpart was unable to leave a special dimension for long periods of time without dying), He spills a drink on his Watch, causing it to go off at random times. This ends up getting his "watch" taken by a teacher, and he has to ask for it back.
 * Season 10 had cell phone morphers, but the identity-hiding Rangers walked around town (even college classes for Alyssa) in their color-coded, zord-logoed jackets at all times, which also had their animal catchphrase printed on it (noble lion, soaring eagle etc.) that the character would loudly yell when transforming?
 * In the original series, that's actually how Tommy figures out who the Power Rangers are, making it a bit of Lampshade Hanging.
 * It had nothing to with being brainwashed and dragged into the service of the villains, who knew the Rangers' identities and had Tommy confront them in those secret identities, almost as soon as he first appeared?
 * "The Dull Life of a City Stockbroker" from Monty Python's Flying Circus shows the stockbroker walking to work amid gun battles, topless newsagents, etc., oblivious to all. However, all the other characters he passes by also fail to notice anything unusual happening.
 * In Doctor Who and Torchwood, both the TARDIS and the Torchwood hub's "invisible" lift entrance have a "Perception Filter", both of which prevent people from noticing certain goings on. The perception filter on the location of the Torchwood lift is an after-effect of the TARDIS having been parked in that spot.
 * In some of the costumes he's worn, the Doctor himself has been an Unusually Uninteresting Sight.
 * While sometimes the Doctor and his companions will don period clothes before exiting the TARDIS, often they don't. Unless it's a plot point, it might only be mentioned in passing. This includes eras where modern women's fashions would be likely to get his companion arrested for being too revealing. Handwaved in "Tooth and Claw", where Queen Vicky doesn't pay any heed to Rose's nakedness due to her giving birth to many daughters herself.
 * While not a sight, only once did one of the Doctor's companions in the original series ever made mention of people speaking English wherever they go. When it was mentioned by Sarah Jane, it clued in the Doctor that she'd been brainwashed because she wasn't supposed to notice.
 * There is also the tendency of humans to ignore unusual things, as mentioned by the Ninth Doctor to Mickey in "Boom Town".

The Doctor: Ricky, let me tell you something about the human race. You put a mysterious blue box slap-bang in the middle of town, what do they do? Walk past it. Now stop your nagging. Let's go and explore."


 * Charmed had a lot of those. The most common occurences are when Piper freezes the scene, and leaves while the place is still frozen. No one seems to be alarmed by the fact that a woman just disappeared in thin air.
 * Not to mention the dozens of conversations about demons and witches in public, especially in a 'verse where their enemies could be anywhere.
 * Most of Piper's freezes are when people/demons are wildly trying to shoot, throw fireballs and or stab each other. Details get mixed up.
 * The titular character in Being Erica wanders around the streets in pyjamas and slippers kind of a lot, and nobody looks at her twice. Weird for a woman whose defining neurosis is being too hung up on what other people think about her.
 * This might be an example of Truth in Television as it isn't uncommon to see people out and about in their sleepwear.
 * Sketch show Big Train thrived off this trope. A prime example would be when a man goes to meet his friend's new girlfriend, and she turns out to be a mermaid. This is never commented on or referenced in any way.
 * An episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 has a kid meeting Professor Bobo (a talking monkey). The kid says, "That's just a talking monkey! What's so great about a talking monkey?".
 * Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis both share in this trope. Characters are often shown on missions through the Stargate openly carrying weapons at the ready into both cities as well as villages where none of the inhabitants are doing so.
 * I've seen every episode of both series and I can't remember a single one where this is in any way challenged by local authorities nor causing the civilian populace to flee from their presence.
 * To be fair, most of the missions have them interacting with pre-industrial civilizations where the locals would have no idea what their firearms actually are.
 * The Genii have guns, and yet they were ok with armed guests until their bunker was discovered.
 * Also, in the Pegasus Galaxy, gate travel is more or less routine for many planets, so they would've undoubtedly encoutnered firearms, which were independently invented by several civilizations (Genii and Satedans, to name just two). There are also the Travelers who trade with several worlds and carry energy weapons that look like regular large revolvers.
 * SG:1 gets challenged on having weapons pretty frequently, however, a simple "We're not here to hurt anyone" or "We're explorers" is all it takes to calm people down.
 * Hilariously done in Community so that only observant viewers will see it. In the background, Abed can be seen having a subplot involving a pregnant woman. No one takes notice of: Abed comforting woman, Abed in a argument with woman's boyfriend/husband, the woman going into labor in front of Abed and boyfriend/husband, and finally, Abed delivering the baby in the back of a car. At the end of the episode, Shirley asks what he had been doing all week. After staring at the happy new parents in the background for a moment, he says "Not much." None of the main cast ever notices Abed's story and when Abed delivers the baby, no other background characters even bother to look.
 * Lampshaded later on in the season, when Shirley goes into labor during class and Abed offers to deliver the baby for her, saying he's done it before. Troy expresses surprise and then dismay that Abed "has adventures without [him]."
 * This happens once in a while in Buffy and Angel, though not as often as people noticing weird stuff and rationalizing it or pretending they didn't.
 * In the Angel episode "Five by Five," Faith walks up to Angel with a crossbow, shoots a bolt at his back from 5-6 feet away, and he rapidly turns and catches it with his hand. This happens in a hotel lobby full of people who don't notice it.
 * In the Angel episode "Judgment," Angel and some sort of demon in full armor have a jousting duel to the death on horseback in an LA street with cars and people in the street. Nobody is shown to notice.
 * You see a couple of figures watching at one stage, but you'd think a few cars would stop.
 * In Buffy, we get another one when Dracula visits Sunnydale. Apparently, no one had noticed until that day that there was a castle in Sunnydale.
 * In Are You Being Served, Mrs. Slocombe's choices of hair color, including pink, green, purple, and others, are never remarked upon in the entire series. Considering the staff can be fired for minor things (like wrongly-folded hankerchiefs and having the wrong sort of pen in your pocket), it's especailly strange that nobody mentions it.
 * In Young Dracula, the Brannaghs don't seem at all fazed when the Count fires a flaming arrow with a letter attached to it into their garden table (while they are seated eating lunch at it).
 * In one episode of Boy Meets World, Eric gets a job on the Self-Parody Show Within a Show "Kid Gets Acquainted With the Universe", where he meets the show's actors who are played by the other cast members of Boy Meets World, and yet he doesn't seem to notice that they look just like Cory, Shawn, Topanga and Jack.
 * In the UK children's show Brum, the citizens of Birmingham- sorry, the Big City seem rather nonplussed that there's a small, talking/anthropomorphic, yellow car driving merrily around. However it could be argued that they're all just used to the sight, as Brum is often recognised and known known by name to them.
 * Something of a meta-example from Merlin. The show is filmed in the real French castle of Pierrefonds, which features a bizarre stone statue of a pelican with exposed breasts on the balustrade of the castle's exterior staircase. Often it appears in the background of certain shots, but so far none of the characters have commented on it.

Music

 * Several Inugami Circus Dan videos depict the members working in offices, sitting in cafes, meeting old friends and generally going about their business like ordinary people whilst wearing their trademark white and black facepaint. None of the extras notice, let alone comment on it. Particularly noticeable example from about 1:34 in this video
 * Parodied in a Mariah Carey video (Boy - I Need You). It takes place in Tokyo with several giant monsters and mechs running amok, and the locals just go about their businss.

Video Games
""What was in there, Sam?"
 * World of Warcraft: NPCs never think twice about summoned demons, in spite of the burning legion being one of the primary enemies of all life.
 * This is more a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, in lore, strolling into stormwind with a demon would get you hanged, but since they can't up and kill a PC like that, it's considered acceptable.
 * In Neverwinter Nights 2, one character points out that the player's entourage features a combination of characters who'd be unlikely to travel together (like a lawful good human paladin and a neutral part-demon rogue which finds the aura of the former unsettling).
 * And in the second expansion, Storm of Zehir, the yuan-ti-hating Samarachans don't notice if you have a yuan-ti in your party, with one exception on the Overland Map.
 * It also adds the option to have a freaking velociraptor as an animal companion. Nobody comments on it. Ever.
 * Likewise, in the Baldur's Gate series, most people seem not to notice or comment on the fact that you have Viconia the Dark Elf tagging along in your party, despite Dark Elves still being considered an Always Chaotic Evil monster race that should be attacked on sight at that point in the setting's history. There are a few exceptions, though, and they're the encounters that feel jarring.
 * In the Crooked Crane tavern, there is a lich hidden behind a secret door. If you lure it out into the main room, no-one will pay any attention, even if it summons a demon. The innkeeper won't even ask you to refrain from having devastating fights with undead mages in his bar.
 * In the first Neverwinter Nights game NPC's would sometime notice if you ran around with a weapon out or weren't wearing any clothes.
 * Hilariously averted in A Dance With Rogues with various characters' responses when you talk to them while naked, or the Dhorn in the first chapter running up to you and yelling if you have a weapon out on the streets.
 * Chrono Trigger has nobody batting an eye at either Frog, who's a giant anthropormorphic frog, or Robo, who's a robot from the far future. Not even Ayla, the resident cave-woman, pays any special attention to Robo. But that's not the worst of it. You can recruit the Evil Overlord Magus later in the game, go back to 600 AD, and talk to the people with Magus, and they'll just say the same thing they always do. Such as expressing relief that the great terror of Magus has been defeated.
 * Ayla does give special attention to Robo if you bring him with you the first time you go to prehistory, but she just kinda shrugs it off when you're unable to explain what a robot is to her. She also asks if Frog is edible at one point.
 * Crono's mother has a unique greeting each time you visit her with a new party member in tow. She is somewhat surprised by Frog and Robo but as they are both polite she accepts them without further comment.
 * In the DS version she thinks Robo is an invention of Lucca's, but does mistake Frog for an actual frog.
 * Magus also occasionally smirks/giggles at people expressing relief that he's gone. The implication seems to be that while he does look rather strange, he's quite clearly a human and people have a rather exaggerated idea of what he looks like - if they even know at all. Lucca and other 1000 AD scientists can also make robots and they're not out of place in Zeal either. It's possible they were around in 600 AD as well. Frog? Who knows.
 * A possible explanation concerning Frog is that, in 600 AD, everybody knows him; by 1000 AD, humans and Mystics/Fiends are on amicable terms, and so he's just like one of them, a little abnormal but not out of the realm of possibility; and in 12,000 BC everybody's got other things to worry about (landside) or they're just too high on magic to care (in Zeal), never mind that they hang out with Nus and things like Masa, Mune and Doreen all day.
 * The DS version makes it clear the people who have seen Magus' face and the people who know his actual name are mutually exclusive groups - most people call him "The Fiendlord". Only Frog recognizes him on sight, mostly because they've met before.
 * From the characters' point of view, you have the Black Omen. It didn't exist at the start of the game, but in your time travels you have a hand in creating it. Back in your own time, it's now an everyday thing that nobody really pays much attention to, despite being a giant demonic sky palace. There's an old man in Guardia who uses it to tell the weather ("The sun's shining off the Black Omen... it'll be clear today").
 * Justified in that, from the perspective of everybody who's not a time traveler, the Black Omen has always been there. If something that looks like a huge black Star Destroyer suddenly appeared in the sky, everyone would find it odd, to say the least. But if it had been there for all of recorded history, it would just be taken for granted. And when the Black Omen is eliminated by the heroes...that probably wouldn't seem odd to anybody either, because it wasn't destroyed. It was erased from time.
 * Oracle of Tao has a weird combination of this and Mundane Made Awesome. You have an angel, a demon, a wizard, and a bunch of other weird-looking people walk down the street and nobody bats an eye. You have a gateway to a dimension of nothingness open, nobody cares (of course, they could just be Apathetic Citizens). But then you have the hero get angry and they start playing epic horror music.
 * In Fallout 3, no one bats an eyelid at friendly Super Mutant Fawkes tagging along with you, despite Super Mutants being in the game setting an incredibly feared race of Always Chaotic Evil monsters at war with the human race. This is handwaved with a line of random in-game dialogue in which he suggests that it's because people respect you so much, they trust anyone with you that you aren't shooting yourself. This becomes rather amusing when your character is always in Stealth Mode, and therefore all anyone ever sees is this giant Super Mutant ranting about how much people seem to respect a heat shimmer.
 * Some NPCs will refuse to work with you or even open fire on you if they see you with Fawkes or Charon the Ghoul.
 * Also somewhat averted in Fallout 2. Non-human party members are forbidden from entering the highly xenophobic Vault City, and the Deathclaw party member has to wear an all-concealing cloak to avoid being shot on sight. Elsewhere in the game there are towns in which humans, ghouls and non-violent super mutants coexist - nevertheless, humans outside Vault City still seem remarkably blase about you walking around with a ghoul, a super mutant and even a robot dog tagging along.
 * Oddly in Fallout 3 people will shout at you for kicking clutter around ("Be more careful!") and even if you pick thing up and move them around ("You're easily amused aren't you?")
 * In Fallout 2, people will notice you walking around in power armor and make comments like wondering if you're out of some kind of anime.
 * People will also notice what you're looking at and may comment accordingly. This usually involves cash registers and phrases like "Don't even think about it."
 * In the Geneforge series, certain types of creations are Barred for being too willful, dangerous, or intelligent. Nobody cares if the player character shapes them, even in the middle of a Shaper stronghold.
 * In the PS2 game Okami, Amaterasu is in the form of a wolf for the entirety of the game. Most people see Amaterasu merely as a wolf, but some spiritually sensitive individuals (such as a particular little girl) can see her colorful markings and hovering holy weapons. But even then, most of the population finds nothing odd about a white wolf wandering the city, buying items from shops, and offering rides on magically created lily pads to passersby. This is partly handwaved by the town's shrine implying white wolves are seen as special, but a few especially thick peasants think she's just a strange dog.
 * An especially Egregious example, courtesy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: after beating the boss Blizzeta and before you can collect your Heart Container, Yeto (who, keep in mind, is a twenty-foot-tall hulking yeti and the boss's husband) bursts through the door to the burst room, and, with a loud roar, shoves Link out of the way to get at Yeta's fallen body -- which ordinarily rather observant Exposition Fairy sidekick Midna seems to take no notice of. Indeed, there's later a camera rotation around the couple, and from what we can see Midna's still floating in the exit portal, not even sparing a sideways glance at the two yetis, waiting for Link to get the heart piece and vamoose.
 * Making this even more jarring is the fact that the game mostly averts this - the townspeople panic and run from you when you're running through town as a wolf.
 * As well as not allowing you to transform into a wolf where people can see you, as it would freak them out.
 * And then for the series as a whole, there's stuff like this.
 * In The Legend of Zelda Minish Cap, no one seems to mind that Link is running around with what looks like a talking legless mallard on his head while shrinking or growing after jumping onto things.
 * In Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, you can cruise through cities and military bases in obviously stolen military hardware ranging from artillery and missile trucks to tanks and helicopters without any particular reaction from soldiers. However, the entire map is a warzone with a daily dose of bombings, shellings, mafia shootings, and the occasional heavy armor offensive. Maybe they just don't care anymore.
 * The sequel adds a bit of Lampshade Hanging when the citizen of Venezuela, who have been invaded by numerous factions, see your heavily armed Swedish mercernary "Great. Sweden is invading us now!".
 * In the same vein as the above example, in Just Cause 2, as long as you don't currently have any heat level and aren't in a restricted area, the Panauan soldiers will pay you no heed until you do something to provoke them. This in spite of the fact that you're running around armed to the teeth. And you just massacred 20 of them on the other side of town five minutes ago. And you are currently in the process of sticking triggered explosives to their jeeps.
 * In the Pokémon games, you can use the legendaries you caught in battle, and no NPC opponent will bat an eyelash.
 * And in Pokemon Emerald, some of the Frontier Brains use legendaries, which passes without mention. Maybe it's because they use lower tier legendaries, but still...
 * In Pokemon Colosseum you're rescuing Pokemon from bad guys, and they don't seem to care. No one notices the snag machine Wes has with him either.
 * One mook NPC in the sequel actually does comment on his Pokemon going missing after the battle if you snag it.
 * And it's more bizarre in HeartGold and SoulSilver, when you go unde your Pokemon follows you around at all times out of its Poke Ball. Yes, even massive, colorful, one-of-a-kind Legendaries.
 * This gets even more egregious when the player character whips out Arceus, who is literally the God of the Pokemon universe.
 * It's wonderfully averted in Goldenrod City when you go undercover as a member of Team Rocket. Everyone in the town's dialog will change. However, few of them truly show fear of you, but rather pity or disappointment. They're probably just surprised that anyone would join a crime syndicate that a single 10 year old kid was able to bring down.
 * Actually, they seem more disappointed that a 10-12-year-old would join Team Rocket.
 * Random people suffering from a monster-induced illness? A seemingly innocent afterschool curricular club, consisting of the daughter of school's main benefactor, that seems to be on an invitation only basis and don't appear to do anything? A group of teens that represent three separate subcultures and stand out like a sore thumb in the middle of a normal Japanese city? Three transfer students being integrated into one class? Anyone outside of S.E.E.S.  in Persona 3 is mostly oblivious to what is really going on in Port Island.
 * Mysterious Waif Fina's white dress and veil, as shown in Skies of Arcadia. Her outfit, unique to her, does get commented on, mostly in the beginning when Vyse and Aika rescue her, but not frequently.
 * In Dragon Quest V, someone in the Dark World comments, "Did you come from the surface...? No, that's impossible." Come on--if you saw someone wearing a shining golden crown, with a golden breastplate, royal cloak and a dragon-shaped staff that glows,, don't you think that he might be slightly more powerful than average?
 * In the Kingdom Hearts series, no-one from any of the worlds seems to worry about how different the main characters are, which is especially weird in the Pirates of the Caribbean world, which is the closest to 'the real world' the game gets. One would expect Will or Elizabeth to be a little surprised to see a talking wizard duck, but no one seems to care. And the main characters are also so brightly colored in comparison with the rest of the world! Interestingly Sora and his friends do comment that this world is weird for some reason they can't quite put their finger on. The only possible justification is that once Will and Elizabeth got into the whole zombie pirates thing, accepting a talking wizard duck wasn't so bad in comparison, but it still doesn't account for the flatout difference in art styles.
 * Which is interesting because some worlds have Sora, Donald and Goofy wear different costumes to fit in (Lion King, Atlantica, Halloween Town), but most of them don't. It could be explained by the Rule of Cool, but how cool would it be if Sora dressed as a pirate?
 * Oddly enough, King Triton actually DOES call Sora out on being from another world. But only because he doesn't seem to know how to swim right. Goofy and Donald get no such remarks.
 * In Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, Roxas is typically supposed to avoid being seen by the inhabitants of the worlds he goes to on missions, but no one seems to find his appearance or behavior at all strange when they see him, nor do they see the similarity between him and Sora.
 * Your eyes deceive you. Magic Carpet knows that Roxas is Sora, because it doesn't rely on sight. Everybody else relies too much on sight. Besides, what have we ever seen of Phil that would indicate he'd even care enough to notice the similarities?
 * In the Fatal Frame series, characters will often have an opinion on furniture and foliage, but refuse to comment at all about things like trussed-up corpses lying on the floor, apparitions in the kitchen, or dolls with heads that move and hair that grows. They also rarely show any surprise or disbelief when they learn that ghosts exist.
 * Justified in that Miku (first and third game) and Mayu (second game) were born with sixth senses. Miku's brother also has it (but is promptly kidnapped) and Mayu's twin sister Mio has a weaker version.
 * In Jak II Renegade you can steal vehicles right under the Krimzon Guard's nose and no one will comment on it except for the poor soul who just got his zoomer stolen. No one will move a finger to help him either. Also, the Krimzon Guard is supposed to be looking for you everywhere but you can stand in front of one and be completely safe. It's only if you harm one of them when they actually notice you.
 * There is only one instance in the whole series where someone actually reacts to your Talking Animal Sidekick, and it's little more than just the eyes widening for about two seconds. However, considering that there's at least one other Talking Animal in the series (more if you count Lurkers), it may actually be pretty common in that world.
 * Lampshaded in Albion, in which an evil corporation is attempting to terraform an inhabited alien planet by claiming to its workers (who do not interact directly with the planet, and are merely crewing a gianted automated factory ship doing the work) that the planet is actually just a lifeless ball of dirt. You can talk your way out of the final battle by telling The Dragon that (paraphrasing) "One of my party members is a 7-foot-tall anthropomorphic cat. How do you explain that?".
 * Scarface: The World Is Yours. People will react to you waving a gun around and shooting gang members. Once you put the gun away, however, everything is just fine. Of course, this is Tony Montana. Would you say anything?
 * Averted in Assassin's Creed; anytime you climb up a wall in plain sight, people will comment on it. Some might say that the game also plays the trope straight with respect to the arsenal Altaïr carries around with him, but it wasn't all that remarkable for someone to go armed in the 12th-century holy land, even if Altaïr does carry several more blades than are strictly necessary.
 * People still assume The Guards Must Be Crazy when the aforementioned clearly and visibly heavily-armed Altair can pretend to be a monk and get away with it.
 * Listening to people's comments when they notice Altair or Ezio climbing a wall shows that, while some thing it's really strange, others assume you're just exercising.
 * It gets even more ridiculous in Brotherhood, when Ezio (in ancient armor and armed to the teeth no less) can pull any civilian off a horse to steal it from them, usually running over them and several other pedestrians in the process, without nearby guards even batting an eyelash. But if you tear down a wanted poster within sight of the guards, oh boy...
 * The games in the series also feature the Leap of Faith - jumping off tall buildings or other high places in a very stylish manner and landing in hidings spots like carts of hay, without anyone ever paying attention to the fact that a man just fell from the sky and landed in a pile of hay. Best explained by the Rule of Cool.
 * People panic and back away if Ezio attacks civilians, but anyone but Ezio dies on contact with water, so on docks it's pretty easy to wander around killing people without anyone noticing.
 * Both averted and played straight in Golden Sun: The Lost Age... in the same town, even. Upon his arrival in Madra, Piers is promptly associated with the pirates who recently ransacked the place, arrested, and the talk of the town for being a foreigner and an oddity. Once you've rescued him and added him to your group, you can return to Madra and meet Karst there. Nobody comments on her. Apparently a scantily-dressed Cute Monster Girl isn't nearly as weird as a guy with blue hair.
 * In fact, nobody ever comments on the Mars Clan having double-pointed ears, colorful skin, scales, Red Eyes, Take Warning, and bizarre hair (though apparently normal people in the 'verse do rarely have unusual hair colors or styles, usually a visual cue that they're Adepts). Even your own party members don't seem to think them unusual, save for an offhand comment about Karst's clothing.
 * In Dark Dawn, prior to meeting Eoleo, you can hear gossip about the "scourge of the Eastern Sea", his dangerous attacks on civilization, and his capture and pending execution in Belinsk. Only the most sheltered member of the party even objects to being asked to bust him out of prison, and once you do so nobody ever comments on the notorious violent criminal traveling with you.
 * In Knights of the Old Republic, once you rescue Jedi Bastila you can wander around the Sith-patrolled streets of Taris waving her lightsaber around, and nobody so much looks in your direction, despite her being Number One on the Sith's Most Wanted List.
 * Taken to ludicrous extents in Breath of Fire IV, even considering that the setting is a planet full of Petting Zoo People...
 * First noted when Mami is introducing Fou-lu as her war-injured cousin "Ryong". This would be plausible...except for the fact that Fou-lu has red horns on his head and pointed ears. Not to mention the fact Fou-lu speaks entirely in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. In one of the few villages not inhabited by Petting Zoo People, literally the only person who brings this up is the landlord.
 * The only bit of lampshading that is done at all on this in the game, in fact, is Mami excusing Fou-lu's odd speech and general lack of familiarity with the village or anything modern as being essentially the result of a head injury. This is even after Fou-lu dispatches a purported volcano god.
 * The manga doesn't even bother with the "head injury" lampshading, but does imply that people in Sonne do cotton on that Fou-lu isn't quite a normal feller.
 * What happens with Ryu when he enters Sonne actually manages to make the above look completely plausible in comparison. He's called "Ryong", is greeted as if he's actively returning, and otherwise treated as if he were in fact his other half...despite the fact Ryu and Fou-lu look noticeably different. You'd think the fact that Ryu has blue hair rather than white, has a distinct lack of horns, and doesn't speak in Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe would be a clue. The only plausible explanation is that the backwater farming village of Sonne is secretly a village full of psychics
 * In Brutal Legend, Eddie doesn't bat an eye at anything in the age of metal.
 * Generally averted in The Darkness, where everybody reacts properly when you manifest The Darkness (civilians panic and flee, and (Suicidal Overconfidence aside) Mooks scream out loud about being attacked by monsters). However, Captain Shrote doesn't seem at all fazed by The Darkness and even mocks you about it when you confront him and Uncle Paulie face-to-face at the end of Chapter 1. He even works out how to neutralize your powers in the finale of Chapter 4.
 * Both averted and played straight in Star Ocean the Second Story. No one on Expel seems to bat an eye on the fact that Rena has elf's ears, or that Ashton has dragons on his back, or that Opera and Ernest have three eyes; but Claude, with his unusual clothing, turns heads.
 * The series as a whole tends to do this. Your space-age heros wander pre-industrial worlds where nobody notices their bizarre ears, magical devices, lack of Petting Zoo People appendages, and total ignorance of basic local philosophical concepts, events, politics, and geography, but everyone always immediately notices their machine-made synthetic-fabric clothes.
 * While most of your party-members in Mass Effect and its sequel are perfectly normal members of the standard galactic races, one of your Mass Effect 2 party members, Legion, is a member of a race best known for a genocidal war or two, not to mention a recent devastating attack against the center of galactic goverment, yet no-one, including a Citadel security guard bragging about the anti-Geth security, finds this the slightest bit odd. The guard simply assumes that Legion is a robotic assistant.
 * On the same note, no one bats an eye at Shepard, who carries half a dozen weapons (one with radiological markings) on their back, in top-of-the-line body armour, with two other people similarly armed. On the Citadel.
 * Even after you recruit Archangel, you can take him around Omega, the space station where he managed to unite the warring mercenary factions that are in charge solely due to hatred for him, with nobody commenting. Granted, he's thought to be dead, but no one notices that he's wearing the same armor as Archangel.
 * Jack is a wanted criminal on Ilium, complete with an unreasonably large billboard announcing it, yet no one makes any attempts to arrest her. This may have something to do with the fact that she's hanging around the aforementioned heavily-armed undead Commander Shepard, and Ilium has legalized just about everything but murder.
 * Usually played straight in the Sam and Max franchise, with characters only making passing references to the eponymous characters being animals. Sometimes averted for laughs.

"Apparently a bunch of temp workers who have never seen a six-foot-tall dog looking through their window before.""

"Commenter: I had a game where a kitten killed a cyclops, but beyond that my experience mirrors yours.
 * Nobody also cares when a spaceship crewed by alien gorillas lands on their street or when Max starts teleporting all over the place.
 * Granted by that time you had death robots in the streets, Max is President Evil, and Hugh Bliss brainwashed the world, so... business as usual.
 * In Noctropolis, the only people who seem able to process that the two people in front of them are the local superheroes are the local supervillains.
 * Lampshaded in Final Fantasy VIII. If you search the house of the old man in Timber who gives you Owl's Tears, he'll remark on how strange it is for the characters to do that, and he won't give you any more Owl's Tears.
 * Subverted in Final Fantasy XIII-2: Most NPCs do react to Mog, and they'll even come running and crowd around when you use some of his... weirder powers.
 * A disguised Mercer in Prototype can drop out of the sky hard enough to leave an impact crater in asphalt and then stroll around like nothing happened. Even those who briefly noted it will quickly forget by the time he does something else incredibly bizarre. It takes a sustained abuse of powers before his cover is blown.
 * Averted in the Fable games. People actually freak out if you pull out a weapon in a crowded area.
 * Slightly similar to the Jak II example above, in Oblivion you can feel free to either break in and steal, or simply pickpocket an Imperial Guards' suit of armor, then equip it and talk to the Imperial Guards, who still refer to you as "citizen". Presumably similar situations can occur with other types of armor that your character shouldn't legitimately be wearing yet.
 * Averted in Morrowind, where wearing certain types of armor, for example the holy armor of the Ordinators, will get you butchered by angry fanatics.
 * Averted in Custom Robo Arena. At first the protagonist and his friends are dismissed as they bunch of kids they honestly are, but as your fame grows people start to recognize you on sight. By the Playable Epilogue you're a household name and nearly everyone is in awe of you.
 * Played completely straight on Dwarf Fortress community forums, where butchering kittens for food is both normal and commonplace, discussion abounds on how to abuse "dwarven physics" in the interest of a neat-looking fort, magma superweapons are regularly employed against elven traders and the player's own nobility, Urist McEverydwarf can kill a bronze colosseus by throwing a fluffy wambler at it so hard it explodes, and people are usually more surprised if you don't know what the Hidden Fun Stuff is.

Another Commenter: This is the point where I'd normally call bullshit, but having (un)successfully ground no less than ten forts into destruction and abandoning three more to boredom after guaranteeing success I 100% believe that this happened in your game."

"Commenter: I'm slightly terrified by how utterly unfazed everyone is...
 * Taken to the extreme when a spammer started posting some gruesome pictures. The discussions simply went on.

Another Commenter: This from the woman who just explained in another thread how she drops her children into a glass enclosed splatting chamber in her dining room.

Well, not her children, her dwarves' children. But still, she's terrified by us?"

"Johnny: Wait... is it me? Am I a weirdo?"
 * In The Saboteur, you can climb to the tallest chimney you can find which has a group of nazi soldiers nearby, and then just stand there having a smoke like a boss. Nobody gives a royal damn. Now walk a step or two so you jump down and grab the ledge where you were just standing, while the soldiers keep looking at you. Hilarity Ensues.
 * Lampshaded in Shadow Hearts: From the New World. Relatively normal Johnny is generally surprised and unnerved by all the bizarre things everyone else seems to shrug off. When he meets a giant, anthropomorphic, talking cat who also happens to be a Chicago mob boss, it becomes too much. Mao, the cat, asks, "what's so unusual about a talking cat these days, anyway," but Johnny protests that it is unusual and looks to the party for confirmation. When they don't back him up, he finally comes to a different conclusion:


 * In the original PS 1 Resident Evil 1 Barry will a one point walk into a room after Jill has just killed a giant snake, and its melting remains are still a smear on the floor and ask "Jill, have you found anything interesting?"
 * In Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4, you can utilize a cauldron of Polyjuice Potion to turn into any character that you've unlocked so far. Nobody at Hogwarts seems to react any differently if you've suddenly turned into Lord Voldemort.
 * In Liberal Crime Squad, a high enough disguise skill enables you to blend in as a cop, a judge, a soldier, a mercenary, a CIA Agent... Disguise is based on Charisma. Childs recruited at the factory have a high charisma.
 * The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Nothing weird about that guy walking around with a ghost who talks loudly about how they are off to murder and how they both work for the Dark Brotherhood. Even if said ghost and its master are currently walking through a town populated entirely by.
 * Averted with the Thieves Guild armor, which many guards will remark on and say they recognize. Of course, this leads to the Fridge Logic of just why a thieves guild would have a uniform that is instantaneously recognizable.
 * It's a calling card that makes capers all the more daring when you're rubbing your affiliation in the guard's faces the whole time.
 * Skyrim's generally pretty good about averting it, actually (possibly in response to Oblivion being mocked relentlessly for its Artificial Atmospheric Actions and Talking to Himself). It's also averted with standard armors. For instance, guards will compliment you on your fashion sense should you be wearing ebony armor.
 * Also averted when a random dragon encounter happens in town. When you kill it and absorb its soul, the guards will react with awe.
 * Also also averted when you use Shouts in town. "The Thu'um! S/he summons the the Thu'um!" They'll also tell you to cut it out if you do it too often.
 * One your way to the Rank 5 fight in No More Heroes, a trail of blood pools leads you to a dead body (which also leads you to a path to the same fight) and everybody just goes on with their business. Possibly justified, considering what kind of environment Santa Destroy is.
 * Subverted in Street Fighter IV's prologue t Shalsim's rival fight with Rufus. Dhalsim floats around an East Asian market quietly and nobody lifts an eyebrow... until Rufus appears and is FLABBERGASTED. And concludes that Dhalsim is an alien
 * Played straight in Street Fighter X Tekken's Rufus vs. Bob's trailer, when Ry And Ken eat ramen together and don't seem to even notice Rufus flying past them.

Webcomics
"Ms. Hatbrim: Heywood, she has claws, fangs, and a tail!
 * Any number of things in El Goonish Shive, but especially Jeremy. Justified in that most of the characters are used to Tedd's bizarre experiments by now.
 * In Gunnerkrigg Court, Zimmy's Hidden Eyes (which look more like holes where her eyes should be) go without comment from anyone. Or the just as obvious fact that she has More Teeth Than the Osmond Family.
 * Inversely, "Two Strange Girls" (Zimmy's introduction) sees Kat being offended that her anti-gravity device is getting more attention than the real purpose of her research:
 * Then again, it's the Court. One of four Houses is composed entirely of magical creatures -- in at least one class all girls have pointed ears and wear Facial Markings on account of being fairies emigrated to humanity, and tend to act accordingly. They also got Ridiculously-Human Robots milling around and grass in a park is mowed by talking laser cows. The previous generation had a student moving around via drawing huge glowing portals in the air. A talking shapeshifting plush wolf sometimes still get to surprise people, but Zimmy's face isn't the strangest thing they saw -- or not for very long, at any rate.
 * In Misfile, Rumi and Vash's angel ears. They are long and pointy, but no one comments on them. It is implied to be a sort of passive ability in the Ask Ash collum, but is otherwise unaddressed.
 * In Killroy And Tina, nobody except Tina pays much attention to the fact that Killroy is solid blue.
 * Addresed in this comic of The Call of Whatever.
 * Sluggy Freelance has this when it comes to Talking Animals. Most of the time, anyone who's not a main character doesn't seem to find anything weird about them, either treating them like a non-talking animal or like a regular human being. Well, unless their attention is called to it.
 * In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, Bob was greatly concerned about Molly the furry pink monster's safety when she was first introduced to the stripâ€”and indeed, newcomers do occasionally have a Herman Munster-like reaction to herâ€”but for the most part, the neighbors seem oblivious to her. General concensus around town is that she is deformed, but nice.

Heywood: Well we all try not to stare..."

"Oh. Its just that GOD CAT again."
 * Order of the Stick when the sylph Celia is on a date with Roy in Azure City, gossamer wings and all, no one seems to take notice. Even when they are making out while flying in the air over the city. Then again, that was a holiday in a highly magical setting.
 * When Elan and Tarquin get to discussing Tarquin's evil plans, and ultimately dissolve into a sword fight, the Empress of Blood is sitting right above them on her throne during the whole thing (including Tarquin openly stating that he's manipulating the Empress as a pawn to be disposed of at a later date), and there's no indication she even noticed. Possibly justified by the fact that she's a gluttonous moron who doesn't care about anything but food.
 * Venus Envy: To quote Larson, "Okay, I can understand that they do things a little bit differently here on the East Coast ... but am I the only one who realises that the teacher is a chicken?"
 * In Mountain Time, nobody seems to notice that Otto is a four-armed triangle with an eye on a stalk. Of course, most of the people in the comic seem pretty used to the idea of talking to ninja onions, so perhaps they've been primed.
 * Gai-Gin: Foxy has a fox tail and ears, which appear to be real. Miki is a green, fanged, limbless, hovering zombie. Neither of them seem to draw much comment in public.
 * In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, the citizens of Cumberland are apparently fairly used to the eponymous Doctor's antics. For example, their primary reaction to a Zombie Apocalypse is annoyance that the mayor isn't doing more to protect them. Meanwhile, a Captain Ersatz of The Incredible Hulk runs a local convenience store, and nobody thinks twice about a gorilla walking into a pet store to buy a kitten.
 * In Our Little Adventure, the sun travels across the sky and explodes when the day is through, beginning the night which darkens the land in seconds. The moon does the same thing at the end of every night.
 * Stubble Trouble features a world where half the population consists of anthropomorphic animals, superheroes and supervillains regularly fight without much public or media attention, a long-dead president is resurrected as a Frankenstein/Hulk, dinosaurs can be seen at a zoo or while camping, magic raises no eyebrows, some people can live while being decapitated, a giant robot rampaging through a city is deemed "cool," and furries who have shaved their fur off generally aren't noticed.
 * The webcomic Ashen Blade loves to play with this trope
 * In Homestuck, Jane Crocker is perfectly used to and exasperated with an omnipotent cat dicking around with her life.


 * Used deliberately by... someone in Power Nap by way of surprise 3D ads for explosion-filled action movies to disguise the actual attacks of... something.

Web Original

 * In the That Guy With The Glasses anniversary special Kickassia, the citizens of Molossia (all five of them) treat an invasion and then a rebellion as this, simply going "Mmmm-hmmm!" and reading their magazines. The only time any of them showed any reaction was when they were freed, and it was still just a look up from the magazine and a confused "What?"
 * Also from TGWTG, in The Nostalgia Critic's review of My Pet Monster, he criticizes the characters for acting nonchalant about how the protagonist keeps turning into a monster. The Critic then walks off, and comes across The Other Guy reading The Far Side... and is a velociraptor. Both the Critic and The Other Guy act calmly about it. "I'm a dinosaur", indeed.
 * Sometimes, you've got to love the page pictures that go with some Wikipedia articles. Apparently, this is run-of-the-mill for Lego minifigures.
 * Sometimes, you've got to love the page pictures that go with some Wikipedia articles. Apparently, this is run-of-the-mill for Lego minifigures.

Western Animation
"Scorpio: Homer, I understand, you have to do what's best for your family. If you could kill someone on the way out, you'd really be doing me a favor."
 * In almost every Transformers series ever made, those who know about the eponymous Robots in Disguise seem to think giant space robots are an everyday occurrence.
 * The pilot episode of the original series has a plausible explanation for this. The Autobots were recognized by the nations of Earth for what they did to stop the Decepticons. So while most people will never have seen them before then (except for rare television appearances), most will likely say "Oh, so that's what they look like" and go about their business.
 * Likewise in Transformers Animated, the Autobots are recognized as Detroit's local superheroes, and so they are generally accepted as normal...and this is played with in the second season, where the destruction the battle with Megatron caused results in people being much more leery of them.
 * Given that Detroit already had supervillains (Angry Archer, Stilletto, Professor Princess) and superheroes (the Wraith), the giant space robots may not be the strangest thing the city's dealt with.
 * Played with in Transformers Cybertron, where giant transforming robots are actually an urban legend like Bigfoot. One wonders how that happened.
 * It is explained later in the series that their was a tribe of Decepticons imprisoned beneath a glacier who were the basis of all Earth's myths. Also, the series followed on from two others where the Transformers' existence was kept hushed up, although big mechanical men from outer space were never going to stay completely secret, so naturally something leaked out.
 * Lampshaded in Transformers Robots in Disguise, with one unlucky woman convinced she was going crazy because she kept hearing talking cars.
 * The 2007 live-action movie lampshades this and plays it for laughs. Optimus is confident enough in the Autobots' Earth disguises to assume that no one will question the sudden appearance of a fleet of expensive vehicles in the Witwickys' lawn. The denseness of civilians is also highlighted in the sequel but in both movies people (rightfully) start screaming when stuff starts blowing up.
 * Another aspect of the Transformers franchise that people should probably think is odd is the peculiar vehicle forms some of them choose; for example, one of the Combaticons is perfectly able to hide in Earth orbit without anyone commenting on a green space shuttle the same size as a tank. This was lampshaded in an episode of Animated, when Sentinel Prime and Ultra Magnus come to Earth; Sentinel claims he's scanned some Earth forms so they'll blend in, and Prowl remarks "Yes, no one will notice that" when Sentinel becomes a giant snow-plow (oddly similar to the one from the "Mr. Plow" episode of The Simpsons) and Ultra Magnus becomes a giant rolling missile platform.
 * In Danny Phantom, it took well until the later half of Season One before the people of Amity Park actually started noticing the ghosts in the town. This is taken to an interesting extreme when Valerie Gray's dad and his job security at Axiom Labs actually did try to stop him from leaving the buildingbut they clearly did not recognize him as a ghost. This might be somewhat explained that in the show's universe, ghost-hunters Jack and Maddie Fenton are viewed as well---crazy; so why would anyone in the town even support that ghosts actually exist? It's not until one of Danny's most dangerous enemies starts blowing up the town that Amity Park finally begins paying disturbed notice.
 * Invader Zim is able to maintain his anything-but-subtle alien secrecy primarily due to this. Although this may be due to Plot Induced Stupidity.
 * Or just stupidity. Vasquez doesn't seem to have much faith in the intelligence of the general populace, and this is never more evident than in Invader Zim.
 * Same thing goes for Spot/Scott Leadready II in Teachers Pet, who is a dog that is able to pass as human by just standing up and covering his ears with a hat. He was also a blue dog to begin with.
 * Given his owner is chalk white, it probably comes under cartoon racial spectrums. However, nobody notices that he has a protuding jaw.
 * In Megas XLR, nobody seems to find a giant robot with a car for its head weird at all.
 * They do find it awesome, but more as a Cool Car, to the point that Megas is just one of many top competitors at a car show.
 * Or the fact that their city gets destroyed constantly
 * Kim Possible centers around this trope; the main characters travel around the world to thwart evil scientists, fight monkeys that know kung-fu, and generally fight crime with self-learned She Fu. While Kim has occasional fanclubs and interviews, for the most part, Kim leads a relatively normal high school life - right down to boyfriend issues and being scorned by the Alpha Bitch - without even using a Secret Identity. The characters also do not seem to be impressed about Kim's rocket scientist dad and brain surgeon mom, nor the abundance of child geniuses running amock.
 * And Drakken and Shego never attract attention for looking unusual. You'd think a green-skinned woman in a catsuit and a blue-skinned man in a labcoat who both happen to be wanted felons would catch people's attention, but no. Maybe no-one wants to say something about them being differently coloured.
 * In Justice League and Teen Titans, nobody ever seems to notice the heroes wearing costumes in their mundane lives. They're neither starstruck that Wonder Woman is browsing their mall nor find it strange that green-skinned Beast Boy is at the arcade.
 * Averted in the CN movie Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo where Raven leads a one-woman bashfest on Beast Boy's estranged appearance when he marks that he won't be able to pick up chicks because his shirt is dirty.
 * The Simpsons plays this for laughs with a story within the show. Bartly (Bart) is surprised at almost everything, including, on one occasion, a doorknob. When a stool has been brought to life and walks right by him wearing a bowler hat, neither he nor the detective (Lisa) make any comment.
 * In one episode, Homer obtains the Auto-Dialer. When Prof. Frink (it's creator) finds out who has it, he presses a button on a remote control. Meanwhile, at the Simpson's house, the Auto-Dialer mechanically sprouts wheels and trys to escape from Homer, who just goes, "Oh, no you don't!" and removes the wheels.
 * In "You Only Move Twice" Homer is telling boss Hank Scorpio that he has to resign.....While ignoring the MASSIVE GUNFIGHT occurring around him, complete with explosions, acid vats, a soldier getting his neck snapped by a half naked chick (Which Homer notices but does not comment on) and finally Scorpio pulling out a Flamethrower and going to town on the government forces.


 *  I Got a Rockets about a boy who is accompanied by a talking rocket - with eyes and a mouth. Nobody ever seems to think there's anything strange about a talking rocket casually floating around on the street.
 * A great number of people in We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, do not seem to be impressed or curious about the talking dinosaurs that dropped from the sky!!!
 * MTV's Brothers Grunt were remarkably good at blending in with regular society, despite being gray veiny freaks dressed only in shorts and wingtips.
 * In Curious George, nobody seems to find the sight of a monkey walking around the city by himself -much less being treated as a person- as out of the ordinary.
 * Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. A lot of the cats, dogs, mice, chipmunks, birds, etc. wear clothes, but none of the humans seem to notice.
 * Arguably Justified as most people who do see them think they're escaped pets.
 * Semi-subverted in Martha Speaks: people who find out that a dog can talk are surprised, but get used it to it VERY quickly. And then don't think twice about getting advice from a dog
 * An episode of South Park has a statue of the virgin Mary bleeding (out of her butt). The Pope then comes and says that the statue is actually menstruating, and that there is nothing particularly strange about that.
 * What the Pope actually said was along the lines of "a woman bleeding out of her vagina is in no way a miracle; women bleed out of their vaginas all the time".
 * The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3 episode "Toddler Terrors of Time Travel" has Mario and Luigi get turned into babies, but still have their mustaches, right before they visit the woman whose bathtub they're supposed to unclog. When they arrive at her doorstep, she doesn't seem to notice that these babies have mustaches.
 * He did say that the woman was "a little daffy", and she failed to see anything weird about Bowser and Ludwig as "Koopa & Kid Costume Plumbers".
 * On Lilo and Stitch: The Series, no one seems to find all the experiments working around the island to be all that strange, or even remotely believe they're aliens.
 * Oh it goes even further, some of the townspeople who do manage to pull their heads out of their asses and notice them compare them to animals that in no way resemble the experiments (or any real-world animal for that matter). In two instances a pair of tourists thought Yaarp, a blue four armed ring-tailed experiment with a giant megaphone-like antenna on its head was a Hawaiian sheep and in another episode, mistook Kixx, a bulky purple experiment with four oversized arms for a wild pig.
 * The town of Danville from Phineas and Ferb has a local Mad Scientist community, an organization of Cool Hat wearing secret agent animals and two young supergeniuses with short attention spans, so naturally, all sorts of bizarre things seem to happen, almost always crisscrossing with other bizarre things as well. When the boys' new pet lizard suddenly grows fifty feet or their latest invention turns to broccoli, however, no one bats an eye, except for Candace, an Only Sane Girl who seems to be going crazy as a result. (And of course Linda somehow never sees any of it...)
 * Particularly noticeable in "Toy to the World" where Doofenshmirtz goes down a conveyor belt, flipping out because of the platypus toys being put together, and the people on the assembly line just watch him go by before going back to work, discussing local sports.
 * Ned's Newt has a Running Gag where Ned's parents enter his room just as he's talking to his 6-foot-tall Shapeshifting pet newt Newton, upon which Newton quickly transforms into something supposedly innocuous... like the Venus of Milo, or "the big metal thingy for affixing a ship." Ned's parents comment on this, but never seem to mind.
 * The Spectacular Spider-Man plays this for laughs in what wound up being its final episode: both the Osborns' butler and Mrs. Osborn walk into the living room to see Harry (who's been missing for several days) and Norman having a discussion with Spider-Man. Neither comments on it (though for Mrs. Osborn, that's unsurprising).
 * The Superhero Squad Show takes a Fantasy Kitchen Sink approach to the Marvel Universe, and both the Dr. Doom-controlled Villainville and Asgard with the Bifrost Bridge are visible from Superhero City.
 * Nobody ever finds it strange that Scooby Doo is a talking dog.
 * Played with in the Disney animated short Social Lion, where a lion ends up in NYC, only to find out that nobody pays the slightest attention to the fact that he's a lion, not even when he roars. It's not until he tries wearing clothes that everyone suddenly realizes what he really is, and panics.
 * An episode of SpongeBob SquarePants has the Flying Dutchman temporarily move in with SpongeBob, and of course the Dutchman begins scaring him every chance he gets. Eventually SpongeBob becomes desensitized to the Dutchman's pranks and starts treating them like everyday occurrences, so he's unfazed by the Dutchman's horror show later on with him taking on increasingly bizarre forms.
 * In part 1 of the Garfield and Friends episode Grape Expectations, Roy goes to the supermarket in order to by one grape to replace the missing one in the stash, and there are actually humans there. Nobody batted an eyelash about the fact that there was a talking rooster in the store.

Real Life

 * Studies on attention that the human brain is capable of remarkable focus when given a task, to the exclusion of all else. For example, when asked to count the number of passing trucks in a video clip, many viewers will fail to notice the random guy dancing around in a gorilla suit. And despite spending significant time looking at such sights, participants in a driving study could not remember details of a scene or signage passed by.
 * Example here.
 * In a more recent study, a clown on a unicycle.
 * Channel 4 apparently messed this one up when they televised one of Derren Brown's live shows- he had a man in a gorilla suit come on stage and take a banana from a podium that the audience had already been told to watch out for, but at the time it happened they'd been told to concentrate on a woman's reactions shown on screen. Unfortunately for anyone watching on TV, the camera was also focused on the woman, meaning we really couldn't see the gorilla and don't much appreciate being mocked for missing it.
 * People also tend to notice, but not react because they don't want to get involved or interrupt whatever errand they are on unless there is a threat imminently endangering themselves or others.
 * A book about the making of Doctor Who tells about how, before the first Cyberman serial aired, the makers had someone walking around in the middle of London in a Cyberman costume for some reason. No one freaked out, no one asked what was going on, and there were almost no one reacted in any noticeable way.
 * The same thing happened prior to the filming of Star Trek IV. Paramount had people walking around San Francisco in full Starfleet uniform, or dressed as Vulcans, prior to location shooting. No one noticed.
 * This series of images with Bowser doing political protests.
 * "Open carry" is the law in several US states, meaning that unconcealed firearms are legal in public. Notably averted recently by media coverage of protesters outside a presidential event. A Secret Service spokesman noted that the individuals would never have gotten in close proximity to the president, regardless of any state laws on openly carrying weapons. A venue is considered a federal site when the Secret Service is protecting the president and weapons are not allowed on a federal site, he added.
 * Truth in Television: In big cities, you get a lot of strange people to the point where it becomes regular, and many people accept extroverted behavior to not cause a fuss or offend someone for being different. It isn't so much that they don't notice things like strangely-dressed people as that they think it's Somebody Else's Problem.
 * Also weird is relative, the natives of major con sites tend to not really notice cosplayers after they get use to seeing them. To them it's no different than a man dressed as Santa in the mall at Christmas.
 * Inverted in a common symptom in people affected by ADHD: Even things that are actually uninteresting are constantly getting a second and look, making it difficult to stay focused on one object.
 * College towns. There's nothing at all unusual about seeing a bunch of people outside up past midnight in the middle of January wearing who knows what.
 * Colleges themselves are full of this.
 * With the way science and technology has progressed over the last 300 years, this trope has repeated itself time and again as people are at first amazed when they see new sights like cars, mobile phones or TV sets but then come to accept them as normal.
 * There are (or were) some pictures on Facebook of somebody dressed as a Silent in a shopping centre, that no one noticed.
 * Well, Duh.
 * Shuler Hensley, who played Frankenstein's Monster in Van Helsing, said he practiced using the stilts of his costume in Central Park and nobody even looked at him.
 * Just another day in Berkeley.