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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:
'''{{color|blue|1) Judge of character.}}'''
The main character is an infallible judge of character: his gut feeling about a person, not necessarily based on more than a couple minutes of interaction, is by far the most accurate measurement available of how good or evil that person is. For example: If a person has an "honest face," we can probably trust them. Perhaps writers think this is a subtler way to [[Designated Villain|quickly point out who the bad guys are]].
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Often the main character isn't aware of this, it's just that the villain conveniently turns out to be someone they were uneasy about all along. Sometimes, though, characters are willing to risk a lot on that gut feeling; when this happens they're usually right. This is also common trait of the [[Mary Sue]]; they're perfect, so anyone who they don't like has to be the bad guy.
Compare [[Evil
'''{{color|purple|2) Reading the villain's mind.}}'''
Another well established piece of heroic gut feeling is that the hero can read the villain's mind. Or close enough. If the hero has a gut feeling about where the villain is hiding, (or the bank robber's getaway method, or where the terrorists have hidden the bomb, or where the arms dealers are meeting, or where the killer hid the body, etc), you can safely disregard any and all evidence to the contrary because the hero will inevitably be proved right.
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Compare: [[I Just Knew]]
'''{{color|maroon|3) He's okay, I can feel it}}'''
If major characters are separated and/or there's a question about one of them surviving or succeeding in their task, but one character says calmly, "I know he's okay, I can feel it," then you can all but guarantee that this character will in fact be okay, despite the character not having anything to base this on. Common in cheesy movies of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and still often found in manga and anime, where such is often attributed to [[The Power of Friendship]] or [[The Power of Love]].
'''{{color|Orange|
* [[Being Watched]]
* [[The Empath]]
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* [[Spider Sense]]
* [[The Profiler]]
'''{{color|blue|E}}'''▼
{{Examples}}
== Anime & Manga ==▼
* This is often used in manga and anime on [[Worthy Opponent|Worthy Opponents]], particularly those whose opposition is caused by a misunderstanding, and those who will be making a [[Heel Face Turn]].▼
▲* This is often used in manga and anime on [[Worthy Opponent
* ''[[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.
** Though in this example the characters were basing their assumptions based on how strong the others were. The Supreme Kai was far stronger than the villians, who turned out to be disposable mooks anyway.
* ''[[
* L and Near in ''[[
* Runge from ''[[Monster (
* Tsuna from ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]]'' has the "vongola hyper-intuition" which gives him various insights over the course of the show about everybody's character; including both knowing which current villians are really good and will defect, and being able to tell {{spoiler|when his guardians are either not themselves or have been replaced by the first-generation guardians he is so good at this that even when HIS first generation guardian attempts to block his intuition it doesn't work.}}
=== Film ===
* Perhaps slightly better [[Justified Trope|justified]] in ''[[Star Wars|Return of the Jedi]]'', with Luke and Vader.
* Joe Cabot in ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' correctly picks out [[The Mole]] in the gang of crooks he recruited, based on his gut. When Mr. White objects Joe just says, "You don't need proof when you've got instinct!"
* In The Return of the King, Gandalf not only Knows that Frodo is OK, he expects Aragorn to Know it as well: "What does your heart tell you?"
=== Literature ===
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'': Frodo chooses to trust Aragorn at their first meeting based largely on a gut feeling.
** Well, that and his logic that if Aragorn was an agent of the Enemy, he would make more effort ''not'' to look so dark and threatening. "An enemy would look fairer and feel fouler".
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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 ''[[
** Be fair. He doesn't ''beat'' it out of them. He doesn't have to. [[Death Glare|He's Gibbs.]]
* Jack O'Neill in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]''. Every. Single. Episode.
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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
** She also veers into Category 2 and maybe 3, as there's constantly things she simply couldn't know - but does. This may or may not be related to her Slayer abilities, as Faith all but literally reads minds.
* Used to show [[Double Standard|double standards]] in one murder mystery (unfortunately I've forgotten which one) where a female detective's opinion was derided as "women's intuition" by her male superior, who a few sentences later was talking about how his "copper's instinct" was telling him who the real killer was.
* Garibaldi from ''[[Babylon 5]]'' has frequently commented on his reliance on gut feelings, and has displayed the judge of character variation on several occasions.
* Betty, from ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' had a lightbulb that went off in her stomach whenever she looked at someone. This lightbulb would immediately tell her what kind of person they were, although the types they were sorted into were or seemed frivolous, such as: Mouth-breather people or talks-on-airplane people.
=== Tabletop Games ===
* In ''7th Sea'', Scryers (male and female alike) can, on top of a buttload of other advantages, automatically tell if another character is a Hero, Villain, or Scoundrel just by looking at them. That's just one of the reasons why most ''7th Sea'' [[Game Master
=== Video Games ===
* In the third ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' game, a prequel set in the 60s, the player's character stops the [[Femme Fatale]] from shooting an adversary for no particular reason ([[Word of God]] suggests a naive crush - ). Later it turns out that adversary is both [[The Mole]] in the organization of the [[Big Bad]] and a very significant character in the timeline of the entire series.
* [[Those Two Guys|Issei]] of ''[[Fate/stay
=== Comic Books ===
* Happens in ''[[Watchmen]]'' with {{spoiler|Rorschach's mask-killer theory}}.
=== Film ===
* Subverted in ''[[The Usual Suspects]]''. Although it could be considered playing to the trope as the crooks are the main characters, the main detective's obsession with one of those crooks leads him to completely miss the true [[Diabolical Mastermind]] (who is responsible for killing off the rest of his [[Five
* In the cop movie ''[[Heat]]'', [[Al Pacino]]'s character and [[Robert De Niro]]'s have a bit of this towards each other. De Niro's character, the crook, stops in the middle of a heist because he can sense that Pacino is watching him. Later, Pacino's investigation team is following De Niro's crooks as they seem to be casing a job. Everyone on the team is puzzled, as there seems to be nothing there worth stealing, until after a few seconds Pacino reads De Niro's mind and figures out that what De Niro and company have actually done is lure the police into exposing their surveillance team.
=== Literature ===
* ''[[Harry Potter]]''. thanks to Harry's mental connection to Voldy, he literally ''can'' read the villain's mind. So this is played straight all through ''Deathly Hallows''. He can roughly chart what Voldemort is doing by his gut feelings. However, in ''Order of the Phoenix'', {{spoiler|his firm belief that the Death Eaters captured Sirius turns out to have been planted by Voldemort himself, resulting in Sirius getting [[Killed Off for Real]]}}. [[He's Just Hiding|Unless you ask the fangirls]].
=== Live Action TV ===
* ''[[
* [[A Touch of Frost|Jack Frost.]]
* [[Burn Notice|Michael Weston]]. In an early episode, he senses that a target is attempting to [[Bluff the Impostor]], (with Michael being the impostor) and instinctively responds in just the perfect way. He later admits to Sam that it was pure luck that it worked.
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=== Web Original ===
* The ''[[Water
** Later on, the Large Beetle, upon realizing that Water-Human is in a city, somehow correctly deduces the entire plot so far, even though he had no idea what was going on since episode one.
=== Western Animation ===
* ''[[Teen Titans (
** Interestingly, in the [[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|original comics]] Raven never trusted Terra, but felt she should wait for evidence before doing anything about it. Considering that she was an actual empath, and Terra was a vicious psychotic, you'd have thought just standing next to her would have been enough.
=== Anime & Manga ===
* Particularly in ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'', but continuing into Digimon Adventure 02, Hikari has this ability for both 1 and 3 (definitely 1, and I think I remember an instance of 3). This is Justified with her crest of light, which supposedly gives her extra good v. evil-related abilities that are vaguely alluded to throughout 02 without ever actually explained. Convenient, right?
=== 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 ''[[
=== Literature ===
* Subverted in the ''[[Left Behind]]'' book series, where one character's wife is believed to have died when a plane crashed into the ocean, but he has a gut feeling she's alive. He investigates the wreckage... and finds her body.
=== Live Action TV ===
* Halfway through the second season of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', Sheppard insists that Ford is still alive despite being caught in a [[No One Could Survive That]] situation, and not escaping with him. Apparently subverted in that Ford is never heard from again, and Sheppard has reason to engage in wishful thinking, as he has obvious issues stemming from his poor (for [[The Hero]]) track record in saving comrades.
* On [[Lost]] the entire first season, Rose calmly asserts to the other survivors that her husband Bernard was alive and that she can feel it despite Bernard being in the tail section that separated during the crash. Early in season two she is proven correct.
=== Theater ===
* Subverted at the end of [[King Lear]] [[Zeroth Law of Trope Examples|by William Shakespeare]], with {{spoiler|Lear's death scene with Cordelia}}.
=== Video Games ===
* Carth Onasi insists in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II'' that Revan is not dead: "I feel like I would know!" By this point, of course, Carth has demonstrated a degree of prescience on several occasions (his Wookieepedia entry questions whether or not he's Force Sensitive), so he's not pulling this particular gut feeling out of nowhere.
** Carth appears to have an extremely well-honed BS detector. Part of it is borderline paranoia after being betrayed so horribly, but even when he's over most of those issues, he will frequently point out that something is very wrong with the whole setup, the Jedi, and your [[Player Character]]. ''And he turns out dead right on all fronts.'' In the comic story, his instincts about Zayne Carrick also turn out to be right, despite the bounty on Zayne's head.
* In [[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]], at the onset of the quest to find Thorald Gray-Mane, the quest giver, Thorald's mother, displays this heavily when told her son is dead. So does Thorald's brother when you talk to him.
== Webcomics ==▼
* In ''[[Order of the Stick (Webcomic)|Order of the Stick]]'', Elan emphatically insisted that Haley "is NOT dead," even though he had no proof and three months' worth of attempts to magically contact her or see what had happened to her had all been unsuccessful. Despite nearly everyone else having given up hope, it turns out he was right.▼
▲=== Webcomics ===
▲* In ''[[The Order of the Stick
== 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]]'' 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.▼
▲=== 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.
'''{{color|Orange|(}}'''▼
== Film ==▼
▲=== 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.
=== Literature ===
* The concept is discussed in one story of the [[Starfleet Corps of Engineers]] as something P8 "Pattie" Blue has learnt to respect, due to influence from the other races she works with:
{{quote|
* In [[Star Trek: Titan]], another alien character, very [[Literal
* In [[Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations]], Agent Dulmur has one of these regarding a connection between a temporal anomaly from the previous year and the vortex phenomenon he's currently investigating. His senior partner Lucsly advises against "gut feelings", saying that everything their Department deals with is counter-intuitive anyway. Nonetheless, Lucsly doesn't entirely dismiss Dulmur's insight, but insists on waiting until he has supporting evidence.
* Finally, the concept is discussed in [[Star Trek: Cast No Shadow]], in which Elias Vaughn is frustrated when his superior dismisses gut feelings.
=== Live
* [[Stephen Colbert]] pokes fun at politicians who rely on their gut over facts (see quotes page).
=== Webcomics ===
* From ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/agutfeeling/ "I find that when a body part starts making decisions, one must proceed with caution."]
=== Western Animation ===
* ''[[
* ''[[Adventure Time
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Gut Feeling]]
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