Gut Feeling: Difference between revisions

* [[The Profiler]]

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* 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.

 

 

* 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?"

 

* ''[[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".

 

 

* [[Star Trek|Data]], of all people, in the Next Generation episode ''Data's Day''; though, being Data, he doesn't recognise his uneasiness as a gut feeling and wishes he could have gut feelings to back up the information he has on the Enterprise's passenger.

* 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.

 

 

* 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]]s don't usually allow the Sophia's Daughters in their 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 night]]''. He's right about Saber, the main heroine, being a good person, even though he only just met her. He's right about Rin not being what she appears and he's right about Shinji not being a good person. On the other hand, he's wrong about Rin being ''evil'' (she's not), the man he considers to be a brother is an [[Sadist Teacher|amoral teacher]], and he thinks Caster is a good person. {{spoiler|She kills him in one Bad End.}}

 

 

 

* Happens in ''[[Watchmen]]'' with {{spoiler|Rorschach's mask-killer theory}}.

 

 

* 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-Man Band]] of crooks), until it's too late.

* 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.

 

 

* ''[[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]].

 

 

* ''[[24|Jack Bauer]]''.

* [[A Touch of Frost|Jack Frost.]]

 

 

* The ''[[Water Human]]'' correctly guessed the identity, and the aims, of the Spy who tried to impersonate the Large Beetle. Not because the spy looked nothing like the Beetle, but because Water-Human just guessed at random.

** 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.

 

 

* ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'': Raven's psychic flash when Terra returns leads to instant (accurate) distrust, but the reclusive loner disliking someone doesn't raise any alarms.

** 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.

 

 

 

* 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?

 

 

* The following conversation from the third ''[[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.

 

 

* 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.

 

 

* 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.

 

 

* Subverted at the end of [[King Lear]] [[Zeroth Law of Trope Examples|by William Shakespeare]], with {{spoiler|Lear's death scene with Cordelia}}.

 

 

* 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.

 

* In ''[[The Order of the Stick|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.

 

 

* 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.

 

 

 

* 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 [http://web.archive.org/web/20040904153521/http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/feature/20000530/ debunked].

 

 

* 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|Though she knew she'd be checking out other facilities, Pattie had a good feeling about this one. One thing she'd learned from softs was to trust intuition. More times than she cared to recall, one of her crewmates had said something along the lines of "I have a bad feeling about this," and the feeling had proved to be an accurate barometer of the situation. As she walked down the corridor, she fingered the pouch containing the datachip. Yes, I definitely have a good feeling about this.}}

 

 

* [[Stephen Colbert]] pokes fun at politicians who rely on their gut over facts (see quotes page).

 

 

* From ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/agutfeeling/ "I find that when a body part starts making decisions, one must proceed with caution."]

 

 

* ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]'': Scrooge has Launchpad fly him to Cat Island to investigate why his fishing fleet hasn't made contact for weeks, saying, "I have a funny feeling something weird has happened here." When they arrive and find the fishing boats abandoned but no fisherman, Launchpad echoes, "I have a funny feeling your funny feeling was right, Mr. Mc D."

* ''[[Adventure Time|Your gut says he's evil, my gut says he's good/ Why not put our guts together and end this funky feud!]]''