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{{trope}}
{{quote|"''I don't like him. I don't have any evidence, [[Humans Through Alien Eyes|but like you humans say]], I feel it in my gut.''"
|'''Garrus Vakarian''', ''[[Mass Effect]]''}}
One thing you can count on in virtually any genre of fiction is that the heroes will have an uncanny sense of intuition, often bordering on [[Spider Sense|being psychic]]. If a main character says something and justifies it as being a hunch, gut feeling, or an "I just know", then about 90% of the time he will turn out to be right. There are certain exceptions such as if a character says about another "I got a sudden feeling we might not see each other again", then the chances are only about 50-50 of the main character being right, and if he is wrong it is still guaranteed to be a while (unless this trope is purposely subverted). Gut feeling can be broken down into three categories:
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* [[Spider Sense]]
* [[The Profiler]]
{{Examples}}
=={{color|blue|Category 1}}==
=== Anime
* This is often used in manga and anime on [[Worthy Opponent]]s, particularly those whose opposition is caused by a misunderstanding, and those who will be making a [[Heel Face Turn]].
* ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', while having numerous straight examples of this trope, has subverted it at least once. Before a tournament arc, all the heroes are uneasy about a short blue guy. That short blue guy was (one of the) the Supreme Kais and just about the only good guy there besides the main characters. They'd completely missed the real bad guys there.
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** Harry tends to be an intuitive and perceptive person, but he's also very emotional, and his feelings cloud his judgement - which leads to him mistaking his personal dislike of characters like Malfoy and Snape for evidence that they're up to something (which they may or may not be).
* [[The Sword of Truth|Kahlan]] decided that the men who objected to her taking command of their forces, who had previously been fighting a hopeless battle against the Imperial Order, intended to side with them and ordered all but one of them killed. Surprise, the survivor admitted they did intend to go up to the enemy army and try to join up.
* Invoked in ''[[
* In ''[[The Stand]]'', Lloyd's first reaction to hearing [[Big Bad|Randall Flagg]] wandering around in the prison looking for survivors is to hide under his bunk and hope that he'll go away. Since Lloyd is also dying of starvation in his cell, he quickly reveals himself and begs Flagg for help when Flagg pretends to get ready to leave.
* Herald Talia in the ''[[Heralds of Valdemar]]'' series is [[The Empath]], but the Queen's most trusted advisor makes her profoundly uneasy because she cannot sense anything from him. He turns out to be a traitor of the highest order, though tragically he isn't found out before he gets Talia's close friend (his own ''nephew'') killed.
=== Live
*
* In ''[[NCIS]]'', Special Agent Gibbs' gut instincts are legendary. Give him two minutes with a perp in the interrogation room and he'll either beat a confession out of him or walk calmly out of the room and say "it wasn't him." It's been played to the point where the possibility of his gut feeling being wrong caused a serious mental conflict with himself and an even more serious conflict for Abbey, his groupie down in forensics.
** Be fair. He doesn't ''beat'' it out of them. He doesn't have to. [[Death Glare|He's Gibbs.]]
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* Brennan from ''[[Bones]]'' comments on FBI partner Booth's frequent use of his gut, as opposed to her "facts and logic" method. Booth's skill as an agent come from his judge of character and even some uses of number 3.
* Horatio Caine in ''[[CSI: Miami]]''. In fact, one wonders why the Miami-Dade police department even needs crime scene investigators, given the guilty party always turns out to be the person H doesn't like.
* Zoe also uses this in the ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'' episode "Our Mrs. Reynolds," when she points out (rather angrily) to Wash that Saffron is "trouble".
** Of course, her gut feeling was rather ''wrong'' in "Out of Gas," when she tells Mal that something about Wash bothered her. Later she marries him. Oh, and somewhere in between those he shaves his mustache, presumably.
*** No, she was absolutely right. The ''mustache'' was wrong.
* Several people use this as a basis for their treatment of Baltar in ''[[Battlestar Galactica
** A major problem that their gut feelings frequently result in is they underestimate Baltar, as while he is cowardly, shifty and untrustworthy as they believe, they begin to forget he ''is'' also a genius when it comes to securing an advantage for himself, always reinventing himself and gaining new popularity at their expense, a measure of power coming along with that, such that even outright hating him, they have no choice but to work with him.
* The only two occasions that [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Buffy]] took a seemingly-irrational dislike to someone, that person later turned out to be evil and nonhuman - Ted was a robot serial killer, while Kathy was a demon trying to steal Buffy's soul.
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=== Film ===
* The following conversation from the third ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' movie: "How do we know Frodo is still alive?" "What does your heart tell you?"
* ''[[Star Wars]] - Return of the Jedi'': Leia is completely calm at seeing the explosion of the Death Star, despite knowing that Luke was on it. When Han tries to reassure her that Luke made it off the Death Star, she nonchalantly says "I know he did, I can feel it". (May be a case of [[My Significance Sense Is Tingling]], despite the fact that Leia doesn't have any Force training.) And of course, whenever someone has a bad feeling about this, they're right.
** The [[Expanded Universe]] has more than once called it "[[Twin Telepathy|that semimystical twin thing]]".
* ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'' movie ''[[Serenity]]''. When Zoe, the second-in-command is asked if she thinks their captain succeeded in carrying out the goal of their near suicide mission, Zoe confidently replies that she knows he did. The next scene begins with the captain, not only not having done so but getting knocked flat on his face by the [[Necessarily Evil]] [[Worthy Opponent]] who is preventing him from doing so. However he eventually wins the fight and proves Zoe right.
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=== Western Animation ===
* ''[[An American Tail]]'': Tanya still believes Fievel is alive and somewhere out there... and even sings a song to that effect.
* Subverted in the episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' with Sherry Robins (or whatever the Mary Poppins-clone's name was). At the end, as she's flying off with her umbrella, Homer tells the kids that he has a feeling they'll be seeing her again real soon. Meanwhile, in the background behind him, we see Sherry get sucked into a jet engine and ripped to shreds.
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=== Film ===
* Averted In ''[[Star Wars|Return of the Jedi]]'', Han Solo says, "I've just got a feeling I might not see her again," as the Millennium Falcon flies off to do battle with the Death Star. He does.
** This led to an annoying persistent [[Urban Legend]] saying that the "original script" had Lando actually dying at the end, but was changed because "test audiences" (which Star Wars movies [[Did Not Do the Research|never are screened for]]) disapproved. Thankfully, it's since been [
** Twisted a little in ''[[The Phantom Menace]]'' and ''[[Attack of the Clones]]''; when Anakin leaves his mother behind on Tatooine, she tries to convince him that they will meet again. They do, a film later, but only when she's dying.
* Barton Keyes in ''[[Double Indemnity]]'' can always detect a phony insurance claim by gut feeling, personified as a "little man" who lives in his stomach and ties knots in it when something is wrong with a claim. Subverted in that he apparently fails to get any bad feelings about the guy who actually committed the murder, and almost pins it on an innocent man instead.
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=== Live
* [[Stephen Colbert]] pokes fun at politicians who rely on their gut over facts (see quotes page).
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Gut Feeling]]
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