Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Difference between revisions

{{quote| '''Phil Moskowitz''': No bullets? Ah, but if all of you in the audience who believe in fairies will clap your hands, then my gun will be magically filled with bullets.}}

* A woman in ''[[Feast]] II: Sloppy Seconds'' tries to believe her way out of terrible situation after terrible situation.

* In ''[[The Matrix]]'' the red pill humans are able to perform seemingly superhuman feats by believing that they can do it, since they're in a virtual reality. As Spoon Boy elaborates: "There is no spoon." There are limits to even their abilities, though, which is what makes Neo, whose belief can transcend those limits as well, so important (at least, that's how it seems at first).

* Used at the end of the first ''[[Power Rangers]]'' movie to repair their decimated hidden base and restore Zordon to full health.

* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[IT]]'', the eponymous shapeshifting monster takes the form of a werewolf, making it vulnerable to silver simply because the child heroes of the book firmly believe that werewolves ''have'' to be vulnerable to silver. Also, believing that his inhaler was full of poison allowed a protagonist to harm It with the contents.

** Established in King's writing much earlier in his short story ''The Boogeyman'', which is in many ways a precursor to ''IT''.

* The page quote isn't the only example from [[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]]: e.g., in the Gospels, Simon Peter walks on water until he starts to doubt.

** [[Stephen Colbert]] (apparently sincerely) believes this to be an instance of comic relief in the Bible, saying Jesus wouldn't be truly human if he could witness that without laughing.

* Lord Dunsany uses this. To say where would spoil an excellent short story.

* [[Gone Horribly Wrong|Goes horribly, horribly wrong]] in regard to the "Stuff" in ''[[The Gone-Away World]]'' by Nick Harkaway. It becomes not what you believe, but what you're ''thinking of''--and if you're thinking of ten things at once, it'll become a splice of all 10 things. This gets [[It Got Worse|even worse]] if you [[Transformation Trauma|get covered in Stuff]].

** "Belief" is stated as a very powerful force on the Discworld - if enough people believe something to be true, it will become true, however there are limits. The rules have never been fully stated, but it appears there needs to be a "space" that makes it somewhat reasonable such a thing could be true (hence the non-existence of the Give-The-Dean-A-Big-Bag-Of-Money goblin). In ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Pyramids|Pyramids]]'' the mess of [[Crossover Cosmology|multiple combined mythologies]] that made up the religion of Djelibeybi, much of which was self-contradictory, and a lot of which could be contradicted by simple observation, only became true when the kingdom was pushed into an alternate reality with an even lower reality threshold than the Disc.

** An evil witch set herself up as secret ruler of the Magic Kingdom of Genua in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Witches Abroad|Witches Abroad]]'' by manipulating the lives of people and reality itself by bending fairy tales around herself.

* In ''[[Monster Hunter International]]'' holy symbols have power over undead monsters by virtue of the belief placed in them. However, the biggest act of [[Holy Hand Grenade|faith-based ass kicking]] comes from {{spoiler|Milo, who shares the author's Mormon beliefs}}.

* Deconstructed in ''[[Kingdom Keepers]]''. Enough people believing in them is what causes several [[Disney]] characters to come to life...including the villains, who are putting the world in danger.

* In explaining the history of money [[Dave Barry]] specifically uses the Tinker Bell scene as an analogy for how money works these days (i.e. no longer tied to gold or another precious metal). We all believe currency has value, so it does.

* A rare inversion with a short story ("Obstinate Uncle Otis") about an obstinate Vermonter (and as such, the most obstinate man in the world) whose power of disbelief was legendary, to the point where he could almost convince others that their eyes were tricking them. And then he got struck by lightning, and got a dose of [[Your Mind Makes It Real|Your Mind Makes It Reality]]. The statue in the town square to the man he hated? Gone after he commented about how "No one would build a statue to a nincompoop like that!" The barn that was obstructing a nice view? Also gone when he commented how "No barn there, boy! Nothing but th' view - finest view in Vermont." His nephew realizes the danger this poses (e.g. his hatred of [[Franklin Roosevelt]], his recent disbelief in stars, etc.). It comes back to bite the elderly man on the ass, though, as he got a bit of [[Easy Amnesia]] and believed himself to be a traveling salesman with a different name. "Humph - ain't no such person as Otis Morks."

* The ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' [[Big Bad]] of seasons 9 and 10, [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|the Ori]], are [[Ascend to A Higher Plane of Existence|ascended beings]] who thrive on worship. And they also ''lose'' their powers when not worshiped, {{spoiler|hence how The Ark Of Truth beats Adria, forcing the Priors to realize that the Ori, and by extension, Adria herself, were ''not'' gods.}} A fitting end.

** The [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] of the previous eight seasons, [[A God Am I|the Goa'uld]], are a more figurative example. Once a significant number of people stop believing that a particular Goa'uld is a god, it's usually a sign that said Goa'uld is about to lose out.

* An episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV)|Supernatural]]'' focused on a spirit that was created (and maintained) by people's belief in it. Unfortunately, getting people to ''stop believing'' was not an option.

** Leading Sam to wonder how many of the things they hunt only exist because people believe in them.

** Tech-priests of the [[Machine Worship|Adeptus Mechanicus]] ''are'' taught genuine mechanical skills, just in an odd and highly-ritualised way involving lots of chanting and application of holy oils in order to please the "machine spirits". Except machine spirits are quite real, with many examples of a vehicle functioning long after its crew are dead, or even "going feral" and rampaging across the battlefield, so it isn't certain how much of Imperial technology is this trope and how much is genuine engineering.

** There are also the faith-based powers of the Adeptus Sororitas (aka Sisters of Battle), particularly in [[Dark Heresy (Tabletop Game)|Dark Heresy]], where their Faith renders them immune to the negative effects of Daemonic Presence, and provides many other useful abilities at higher character ranks.

* Yet another White Wolf example: in ''[[Exalted]]'', gods, ghosts, demons, and most supernatural beings (including the Exalted) regain Essence and Willpower faster if enough people pray to them. In Yu-Shan (Heaven) these prayers coalesce into Quintessence and Ambrosia, substances that are the most delicious food and drink in the history of every and are easily transmuted into... anything else, making anyone who has even small amounts fabulously wealthy.

* This is the basic principle in which magic in ''[[Unknown Armies (Tabletop Game)|Unknown Armies]]'' works. An Adept's obsession warps their view of the world so much that he can bend reality with his will simply because he is absolutely sure that what he does is possible.

** It's pretty strong in real life too. There is one instance of rats apparently being tricked into curing themselves of a certain type of cancer by a placebo. (They were given normal water, then the real stuff in flavored water long enough to cause remission, then normal water again long enough for the cancer to cease going into remission, then flavored water without the chemo.)

** And it's getting stronger. More recent drug trials have been seeing larger and larger parts of the placebo control group actually having positive reactions. This is mostly chalked up to people having a much stronger belief in modern medical pharmacology, and hence are more likely to believe the placebo is really a new miracle drug.

** And then things get really interesting and weird: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/22/placebo-effect-patients-sham-drug The placebo effect can happen even when people are TOLD it's a placebo!]

* For that matter, most superstitions work this way too; believing something may encourage someone to try things and do things they might not otherwise. Like athletes who tend to have the most unusual and personalized superstitions.

** In addition, even if you believe you can be hypnotized, you cannot be commanded to do things you are unwilling to do consciously. A man might be able to be hypnotized into thinking an orange is a apple, but if he believes stealing is wrong, there is no way you can force him to take money out of a wallet without permission.

*** Theoretically he can be made to believe that the wallet is his own, but this depends on the skills of the hypnotist and the susceptibility of the subject.

** Incidentally the reason why observation changes objects on the quantum level is that the only way to observe any subatomic particle is to collide it with another subatomic particle. It has nothing to do with consciousness changing the reality, as subatomic particles collide anyway all the time.

* This is the most likely explanation of the Midnight Game.

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]

[[Category:Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]