Apathy Killed the Cat: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Remember that old [[Stock Aesops|saying]], "[[Curiosity Killed the Cast|Curiosity killed the cat]]"? It seems that many fictional characters have taken it so close to heart that it may as well be a pacemaker.

*** He's been seeing ghosts so long he's a little blase about the afterlife?

** He's actually got a little semi [[Catch Phrase]] running on this theme, in call-and-response with his sword: "Retreat and you will age. Hesitate and you will die."

** She does have [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] about her previous existence, so it's quite possible that she has no way of knowing if any of this is weird or not. This isn't so strange considering that the entire setting of Haibane Renmei is a rip-off / homage to the dream world in ''Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World'', by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, which the protagonist doesn't question much either. (The bird skeleton in the well is another homage / rip-off of a scene from another of his books, ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'', by the way.)

** In addition to ''all'' of the Haibane having amnesia about their previous existences, the series spends the first five episodes largely just to introduce the setting and characters. And then it turns out that the older Haibane have their own predicament to worry about (and they certainly aren't apathetic about it) and have varying degrees of acceptance of their environment.

* ''[[Potemayo]]'' - Nobody seems to be too interested in the bigger questions about Potemayo and Guchuko- what they are, where they come from, and why they're appearing in people's refrigerators.

* In ''[[To Love Ru]]'', approximately no one (other than Rito, on occasion) seems to care that aliens exist and show up on Earth on a regular basis, or that Lala's father apparently rules the entire galaxy, including Earth, and that he's threatened to destroy it.

** Subverted, by Nishi who is [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] and a [[Social Darwinist]] to boot! He lied to fellow contestant in order to keep all the points to himself (only in the anime)!

* Magic! Flying whales! Demons! See also: vampires, robot girls, immortality, [[Petting Zoo People]], telepathy, time dilation, the entire magical world itself and more. However, don't ask what the hell is going on. You might get turned into an ermine or something. Chisame is the only character to show the slightest interest... by running ''away'' from the answer. Welcome to ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' everyone!

** The other major exception is Haruna; when she finds out about magic, she threatens to torture her three best friends for not telling her sooner.

*** She sort of did.

** Kyon is almost unbelievably lazy. Also an [[Unreliable Narrator]]. It's still ridiculous though.

** To be fair, he does ask questions. It's just that he either gets no answer (Mikuru), an answer that doesn't make sense (Koizumi and Yuki), or an answer that makes sense that has 'unreliable!' written all over it (Koizumi and Mikuru, Yuki claims it). {{spoiler|Oh, and the anti SOS Brigade puts all three together.}}

*** Also, he is extraordinarily genre savvy, to the point that when he pass the first couple of reveals, his reaction goes from mild surprise/annoyance to "checked, checked, checked". In fact, his ability to cope with the increasingly weird situations is (in Itsuke's opinion) what makes him special.

** He even asked the afterlife question we all thought he was ignoring all along, they just don't show us until he's dying. Unfortunately, he's a lot less pleased with the thought of [[The Nothing After Death]] while bleeding out than he was while plotting world domination in his bedroom.

*** And the fact that he elected to ''ignore'' Ryuk's promise to kill him eventually is more denial than apathy.

 

== Comic Books ==

** Problem is, as soon as you bring up the issue of whether any or all religions (''especially'' the Judeo-Christian ones) are false, you run a real risk of losing sales.

*** [[Fridge Brilliance]] here: if your afterlife is based on your beliefs, then Christianity IS true... along with every major and minor religion, cult, credence, for their respective believers.

*** During [[Brightest Day]], [[Lex Luthor]] asked Death why she did not interfere during [[Blackest Night]]. She answers that the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] did not really interest her.

** One DC comic character was questioned as to how he could be an atheist in a world where divinity is manifestedly real. His reply indicated that in a world with Superman, wizards, and multidimensional alien invasions, the mere presence of something supernatural did not prove it came from an all-powerful divinity.

** Therefore there is plenty to ''believe'', very little to ''revere''.

 

== Film ==

* [[Roger Ebert]] got into an amusing rant about the film ''Over Her Dead Body'' and the fact that no one seemed to consider the staggering theological implications a real live ghost (or should that be a real dead ghost) would mean.

* [[Indiana Jones]] has been presented with absolute incontrovertible proof of the truth of the Old Testament and the New Testament (and arguably the Bhagavad Gita). This seems to have had absolutely no effect on his lifestyle, career or (dis)belief in the supernatural.

** Dr. Jones doesn't disbelieve in the supernatural, he just wouldn't be accepting each cheap explanation at face value, because c'mon, he is an archaeologist, and if he goes around accepting that each of world's marvels has been constructed by a god/alien/mage/ etc, he could just make short of it and retire.

== Literature ==

* In Bernard Werber's ''Thanathonauts'' series, the world promptly forgets about the initially worldshaking discovery that there is indeed an afterlife (and that it is quite [[Celestial Bureaucracy|bureaucratic]] at that). In another series, little is expounded upon the ramification of a porcine direct relationships to humans.

** There is also the question about why there would need to be a whole aspect of "muggle studies" when a decent number of wizards and witches were born to muggle families. If there are muggle-born magic users, wouldn't they be able to just bring them a book on how cars work?

** It's even WORSE when Rowling hand waves things from the muggle side. We keep being told that humans just naturally refuse to think about magic at all because they are afraid that they would be labeled as crazy. But in the real world people look for UFOs and ghosts all the time and don't seem too worried. In fact we know that the leaders of the world ARE told about wizards, but are simply too apathetic to think about this potential threat/power source.

{{quote| Here you have God appearing center stage. A direct, incontrovertible divine miracle witnessed by millions. Absolute, doubt-destroying, skeptic-shattering ''proof'' of the existence of God. There's freaking ''divine flame'' in the sky. Yet it produces nary a ripple of wonder, awe or spiritual searching. Alone among the millions who witnessed this event, Buck Williams is slightly prompted to be more "spiritually attuned." The people in this novel are not ''human''.}}

* The whole premise for several of the works of José Saramago -- ''Death with Interruptions'' and ''The Stone Raft'' come to mind -- is to avert this trope: an extremely simple but fantastic setup is provided (death stops operating in a country; the Iberian Peninsula splits off at the French-Spanish border and begins to sail aimlessly around the North Atlantic) and the whole rest of the story analyzes the sociological upheaval it causes.

* Averted and played straight several times in an early Star Trek: Voyager novel. When Neelix leads Voyager to a planet full of wrecked ships (needed for critical spare parts), Torres and Kim promptly began an exhaustive examination of the one powered vessel. Neelix, not caring and deciding that he is useless, decides to take a nap. This sends the ship (a passenger time machine) back in time. Later, we meet an operative who's job is to scare away any "Planet-Hoppers" (The term this people use to refer to the "crazy" races that use dangerous space travel instead of safe time travel) from the abandoned eras of the planet. His main weapon is strange events that the intruders don't care to investigate properly.

* In ''[[The Otherworld]]'' humans occasionally witness surreal incidents and do nothing. In one such instance the witnesses were, in all fairness, stoned, but in ''Bitten'' Elena's fiance watches her turn into a wolf and when she questions him on it later he claims he'd passed out long before she arived and transformed.

** Of course, it's also stated that he was viciously attacked, beaten, left on the floor like trash, and watched as another man was ''also'' brutally beaten, then drugged and dragged off for trying to defend him. Then his fiance came back, freaked out, and changed into a wolf -- something that is considered in-universe to be ''extreme'' [[Body Horror]]. When Elena presses him for the truth, he snaps at her, and it's made clear that he ''did'' see everything; he's just dealing with it by telling himself it wasn't real.

* Wolfram Von Eschenbach's [[wikipedia:Parzival|Parzival]] fails to achieve the Holy Grail even though it's ''meant for him'' because he follows advice to not be too curious and doesn't ask about the [[Fisher King]]'s injury. The poem is based on Chretien de Troyes' unfinished poem, in which [[wikipedia:Perceval, the Story of the Grail|Perceval]]'s failure to ask about an entire procession of miraculous oddities because he's trying to be proper also results in the continued languishing of the [[Fisher King]] and his kingdom.

 

 

* In ''[[The Lost Room]],'' a character gets a key that takes him into a hotel room that exists outside time and space. Walking out of the room takes you to any place in the world with a door. Why, why, '''why''' didn't he start experimenting with things like climbing out the window to see what happens? This is especially glaring considering that other characters do things like put things in the room, then close and open the door (making them disappear) and check if the room has electricity and running water (it does).

** A room that can eat things (such as the protaganist's daughter) is not something you want to poke at quite so much.

** The notorious [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|PrimeDirective]] would give them an incentive to avoid asking those questions. The less they know about the culture, the less intentional their interference in it becomes, and the better excuse they can make to a court-martial.

** In one episode, the planet they visit has is described as being like Garden of Eden and they arrive to see it as nice, relaxed and so are naturally put off guard about the possibility that there may be randomly applied death penalty for even a tiny infractions (though they do find out about it through casual conversation, albeit a little too late). In retrospect, it does make the initial comparison double sided.

** There are multiple explanations for this, and they vary depending on the specific show you are watching. Kirk's Enterprise was an exploratory vessel, most of the places they were going were not explored or had very little know about them. The red shirts sacrificed are the people the (future) history books will cite when they say "Planet 56793-d: Breathable atmosphere, rocky terrain, salt vampires". Picard's Enterprise had this as less of an excuse, though they did encounter new territories and cultures. The ones they were even mildly familiar with were probably cataloged in the ship's computer, and served as intercom messages before departing. Even so, laws change, and the files may be dated. And regardless of which ship you are on, the fact remains that if you go to a foreign country/planet, and break a law, "I didn't know" doesn't tend to work. Still doesn't explain why they don't ask for a copy of all local laws and have a computer program flag any capital punishment or where the punishment is two or more orders of magnitude harsher than Federation average.

* Just about everyone in [[The Prisoner]] apart from the main character. "Questions are a burden to others, answers a prison for ourselves". Brrr. They do have some incentive to avoid questions, what with the giant suffocating bubble lying in the wings.

* In ''[[Warehouse 13]]'', Pete hasn't read the Warehouse's manual, and even the characters who have are still finding out new things about the Warehouse- they were surprised to find an entire Bed and Breakfast inside, for example. Justified in that the Warehouse is impossibly large (stretching on farther than the eye can see) and Artie doesn't like to share information.

 

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[Half Life]] 2'', Gordon Freeman seems perfectly happy to join up with the first faction he meets without asking simple questions like "Who are you fighting?", "Why?" or "Do you have any kind of plan?". Or [[Heroic Mime|saying anything at all, actually.]] There is a bit of a [[Hand Wave]] in that said faction does consist largely of his former coworkers and friends.

** The other faction also tries to kill Gordon before he's made any decisions at all. Which would tend to streamline the decision-making process tremendously.

** Subverted in ''[[Silent Hill 3]]''. Like those before her, Heather assumes the monsters to be either demons or illusions, only to be rebuffed with the famous line: ''"Monsters? They look like monsters to you?"'' {{spoiler|Of course, Vincent is a [[Manipulative Bastard]] of a psychiatrist/cult leader, so he may just be trying to mess with her.}}

* In [[Metal Gear Solid]] Peace Walker, No character on Mother Base cared what happened to Paz after she fell out of the [[Diabolus Ex Machina|Metal Gear you built]]. Except an army of players, of course...

** It also serves as an excellent example of why this trope exists, since most players found Tidus' constant questions to be incredibly annoying.

*** Most Players. Perhaps that in itself is a real life example of this trope?

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==