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{{trope}}
{{quote|''It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise...to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages that convulsed the ghost of José Arcadio Buendía with impatience and made him wander all through the house even in broad daylight.''
|'''[[Gabriel Garcia Marquez]]''' (after the arrival of the railroad, when dozens of new inventions—the phonograph, the telephone, the electric lightbulb— flooded Macondo), ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]''}}
It definitely isn't [[Science Fiction]] and not quite [[Urban Fantasy]] and yet... stuff happens. Unlikely stuff like tchotchkes telling the heroine what to do (''[[Wonderfalls]]'') or the ghost of your father showing up at odd intervals to offer personal and/or professional advice (''[[Due South]]'') or perhaps it's just a quirky vibe that infuses the environment (''[[Northern Exposure]]'' or better yet, ''[[Twin Peaks]]''). It's '''Magic Realism'''.
One of the easiest ways to distinguish
Also a helpful guideline (again, just a guideline, not a rule): with fantasy, often a character finds out the [[Broken Masquerade]]. However, everybody is the protagonist in their own story; what about the random [[Muggle]] who saw something really strange, but never gets an explanation? Well, that Muggle just got the point of view in
The use of [[Magic A Is Magic A]] typically helps the audience accept the incongruity. [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone]] is also widespread.
Among some people,
When
From another perspective, it's a given that any non-fantasy [[The Musical|musical]] is by definition
Not to be confused with [[Urban Fantasy]]. [[Urban Fantasy]] is an [[Fantasy|old genre]] in a [[Present Day|contemporary]] setting, Magic Realism deals with a different set of genre rules.
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Rule of thumb: Say there's vampires in New York.
* If the cover gets [[Broken Masquerade|blown]] and the protagonists spend a lot of time with vampires, either taking evil ones down, incorporating them into romance stories, etc. it's [[Urban Fantasy]].
* If a cop's partner is very pale, very strong, generally acts odd, and come to think of it, he's never been seen in daylight, but the story focuses primarily on just a [[Police Procedural]] or the interpersonal relationships, it's
* If the cop just goes through his life as a cop, but his partner is a vampire, is greeted with "Hi, Mr. vampire!" by cheerful little children in the street, and casually drinks blood in plain sight out of transfusion packs during coffee breaks, it's a case of [[Mundane Fantastic]].
Not to be confused with [[Doing
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* In this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5DWyg4ylnQ Corona Commercial] the environment shifts between a ski resort and a beach and nobody finds this weird.
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Kino's Journey]]'' portrays what seems to be a normal pastoral world, and in fact much of the technology is very similar to its real-world counterpart. But the show also has a talking motorcycle, a possibly {{spoiler|talking dog}}, and {{spoiler|portions of the countryside that move on their own}}. No one seems to find the unusual parts that unusual. May be set [[After the End]], although this isn't made clear.
* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]'' might fit into this category better than [[Science Fiction]]. Among other things, it seems that dead people go to (or through) the Wired after they die, computer equipment can grow like vines, and the physical reality is as much "data" as the computer-world and can likewise be programmed by gifted individuals.
** And it's perhaps the only cyberpunk, or scienfictionish, narrative to convincingly do so
** Perspective is everything. Lain's point of view perhaps flips towards [[Urban Fantasy]] in the end, but Arisu's remains in the field of
* ''[[Haibane Renmei]]'' also fits. Yoshitoshi ABe is a huge fan of the genre.
* ''[[Nagasarete Airantou]]'' is a comedic first-class example. Ikuto, young man of the modern age and the main character finds himself on an island stuck -culturally, at any rate- in the late 19th century. Normal enough at first but before long he's rationalizing away the more... unconventional aspects of his new home, like magic, talking animals, youkai, etc.
* Despite being ostensibly sci-fi, the ''[[Aria]]'' series incorporates the supernatural whenever cats are involved. {{spoiler|This includes time travel.}}
* ''[[Asatte no Houkou]]'' - The setting is mundane except for the wishing stone that changes Karada and Shoukos' ages.
* The over arching plot and background of ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' has elements of
* ''[[Lucky Star]]'' (anime only) dips into this once when the main character's dead mother visits her family as a ghost. This was later in a manga volume.
* ''[[School Rumble]]'' is a normal high school story with normal (if goofy) protagonists. Then Yakumo states that she can magically read people's minds. Another example where it's hard to tell if she really can, if she's just unusually good at reading people, or what.
* The crux of the plot of ''[[Death Note]]'' is a magical item from another world falling into the hands of an ordinary (albeit with some... personality quirks) human boy in our world and what he chooses to do with it. Aside from the Death Notes and shinigami, the world depicted in Death Note is highly realistic, and much of the plot focuses so heavily on the human characters using real-world methods and technology to try to catch the [[Villain Protagonist]] - and the magic itself is treated in such a mundane and almost scientific fashion - that you might occasionally forget that the plot is founded on the supernatural to begin with.
* ''[[The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service]]'' might seem like [[Urban Fantasy]]
* ''[[Monster (manga)|Monster]]'' is about the hunt for a [[Serial Killer]] who may or may not be [[The Antichrist]]. He has an almost supernatural talent for evading justice and detection, [[Complete Monster|despite having murdered probably hundreds of people over a decade,]] and he seems to have the ability to show other characters a visions of [[The End of the World as We Know It]], albeit on an individual only basis. Near the end, a character sees him as a dragon with multiple heads, another reference to [[The Antichrist]], but said character was drunk. The killer also survives (with surgery) two gunshot wounds to the head in separate incidents, once as a child, which is yet another reference and, further, which he survives with no obvious brain damage (he was already a murderous psychopath before he was shot), though he seems to have become a little more depressed in the intervening years. Most of the rest of the story in contrast is actually fairly realist.
* ''[[Tekkon Kinkreet]]'' has the main characters be able to fly/glide, alien assassins, and psychic bonds between brothers. None of this is explained or even really acknowledged.
* The works of [[Satoshi Kon]] offer lot of examples of this, specially in ''[[Paranoia Agent]]'' and ''[[Tokyo Godfathers]]''.
* ''[[Clannad (visual novel)|Clannad]]'' is mostly a slice-of-life romance in a realistic, present-day setting...Except for the [[Genki Girl]] in a coma somehow astral projecting herself whom only some can see, a cat who temporarily turns into a human boy and can grant one wish, a lonely world no-one can see that exists somewhere between the layers of our own, and the past being rewritten after years of tragedy, finally resulting in a happy ending.
* ''[[Kanon]]'', another Key anime, is very similar: it's just a normal high school anime, except for the fox that turns into a human girl, the girl {{spoiler|with healing powers}} who fights invisible monsters with a sword, and (yet another) {{spoiler|girl in a coma projecting herself and magically producing a happy ending}}.
* ''[[Skip Beat!]]!'' is a story about a girl who sets out to become a star in the Japanese entertainment industry, and follows her ups and downs, new friendships and possible romantic interests, and her burgeoning career. Said girl also has a demon army that gives her anger and resentment a voice and physical presence, and the resident esper is actually ''not'' a fake.
* Arguably the existence of personified countries in ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' would count, especially when their dynamics are played with.
* ''[[Helen ESP]]'' never explains the nature or origin of Helen's psychic powers, and they don't really change that much about her life.
* ''[[Da Capo]]''. The main character is a mage who jumps into people's dreams, there's also a magical cherry tree that grants wishes, a reality altering witch, mind readers, cats becoming human, a human sized cat that the girls see around town, and ever blooming cherry trees, and although it's a bit odd, nobody ever questions their reality.
* ''[[Mawaru Penguindrum]]'', where the main characters' souls are represented by penguins only they can see, aphrodisiac potions brewed from frogs really work, and key scenes take place on a strange, alternate version of the Tokyo subway all pass without much comment. For extra credit, the show makes several references to other examples of
* For what seems to be a [[Slice of Life]] series about cute high school girls riding motorcycles, ''[[Bakuon!!]]'' has a strange undercurrent of Magic Realism -- Hane learns to drive on a talking motorcycle that coaches her through her lessons (and which later has a conversation with one of the driving school's technicians), many of the staff at the school appear to be animate crash test dummies and marionettes, and Hane meets someone who just might be Jesus on the road to Aomori, who gives her the [[Holy Grail]] because she helped him with a breakdown. Among other things.
== Film ==
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** [[Your Mileage May Vary]]. Field of Dreams shares the same plot as many fantasy ghost stories: the undead communicate with the living in order to achieve a certain goal. Usually, these stories are in the horror genre and Field of Dreams is obviously a drama but otherwise, it's pretty standard.
* ''[[A Hard Day's Night]]''. Most of it is realistic enough that viewers have mistaken it for a real [[Documentary]]; but there are a couple of segments which just cannot happen in even [[The Beatles]]' real life, and (this being a comedy) there isn't even a [[Hand Wave]] for why they happen.
* Nearly every film the Coen brothers make has at least some
* The [[Film of the Book]] of ''[[Being There]]'' diverges from its source novel in this manner. Hal Ashby, the director, came up with {{spoiler|a different ending than the one scripted}} as a salute to how believable the actors were - since the audience would already accept Chance the Gardener becoming one of the most important men in the world in a matter of days simply through misunderstandings, then they would also accept {{spoiler|the final shot's revelation that he can literally [[
* ''[[Groundhog Day]]'': [[Bill Murray]] gets stuck in a [[Groundhog Day Loop|weird time loop]], for which no explanation is ever offered.
** The original script had an ex-girlfriend curse him using a spell she found in a book.
** A possible example as [[Bill Murray]] often questions why it's happening and nobody believes him when he tells them.
* ''[[L.A. Story]]'', written by Steve Martin, applies many of the tropes of
* ''[[Liar Liar]]'': [[Be Careful What You Wish For]] forces [[Jim Carrey]] to tell the truth. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* '' [[Pan's Labyrinth]]'' At first sight it might seem as a fairy tale, albeit not a happy one, once you take into account {{spoiler|that Orfelia might have just made everything up}} and add to the mix a mandragora... which is ignored by everyone since they are all too busy dealing with this little thing called the Spanish Civil War ... [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|then it becomes less clear whether it's a straightforward fairy tale]].
** [[Word of God|Guillermo del Toro]] says that all the magical stuff actually happened.
* ''[[Stranger Than Fiction]]''. The movie is more or less like this, Harold is struggling with life, and the only magical thing is that he seems to be the main character of a book. The book in question also seems to have
* The 1998 theatrical film based on the [[Cirque Du Soleil]] show ''[[Alegria]]''. It's obvious the world the characters exist in is a little more colorful and eccentric than ours, but possible magic comes in at the end when {{spoiler|the manager/ringmaster encounters and converses with his own stage character}}.
* ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066516/ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders]'' is a surreal Czech film based on novel of the same name, in which love, fear, sex and religion merge into one fantastic world.
* The revenge western ''[[Seraphim Falls]]'' verges into
* Take "magic realism," replace "magic" with "video game," and that's ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]''. Enemies have unique mystical powers, video game graphics show up and may even be interacted with by characters, and people explode into coins once bested in a duel. But otherwise, you know, just the normal lives of twenty-something Canadians. While these elements appeared in the graphic novel source material, the film revels in it all, maybe just because we see it all in motion.
* ''[[Big Fish]]''{{context}}
* ''[[The Tin Drum]]'' is both a novel and a film about a boy who [[Never Grew Up]], [[No Infantile Amnesia|was perfectly aware while in the womb]], and can [[Make Me Wanna Shout|create destructive screams]]. While the book version of the character is [[Unreliable Narrator|likely insane]], the movie plays it straight. It's a historical/political drama.
* ''[[Don Juan Demarco]]'': The [[Johnny Depp|title character]] is a mental patient, with delusions of living in a wonderful world full of romance and adventure. In the movie's final sequence, {{spoiler|he and a couple friends hop on a plane and go to that world.}}
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* ''[[Midnight in Paris]]''. When [[Most Writers Are Writers|Gil Pender]] waits on a certain street corner of Paris at midnight, a car arrives and takes him to famous Paris locales [[Time Travel|in the 1920s]], where he spends his nights with people like Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. {{spoiler|In the 1920s, waiting in a certain spot allows the protagonist to travel to an even earlier era, and so on and so forth.}}
* Several sequences in ''[[Come and See]]'' are implausible and downright surreal, and intentionally so.
* The 1948 film ''The Boy With Green Hair'' about a war orphan who wakes up one morning to
* ''[[I
* ''[[Enchanted]]'': While there are fairy tale elements (honorary princess Giselle is our heroine after all), there are also realistic elements as well. Nathaniel and Narissa are on the fairy tale side, but it’s not unrealistic for Nathaniel to end up in an abusive relationship because a woman decided to use her good looks to her advantage. Unfortunately for Nathaniel, Narissa doesn’t see him as a friend (or a love interest). She considers him to be a slave.
* ''[[Indiana Jones]]'': While the deaths in Indiana Jones are supernatural a lot of the time, it's because the villains simply weren't careful about what they wished for, which is fairly realistic. Either that, or because they chose to be careless, as with the case of Donovan (he chose the wrong grail, and suffered the consequences). Though in the case of Mola Ram (the main villain of ''Temple of Doom''), he more or less died because Indiana Jones ended up outsmarting him... and because he fell into crocodile-infested water.
* The film ''[[Bewitched (film)|Bewitched]]'' is about a [[Continuity Reboot]] of the [[Bewitched|1960s TV series]] as a vehicle to rescue the career of a floundering actor -- which just accidentally happens to hire a real witch to play its version of Samantha. In addition to her [[Rule Magic]] and that of her [[Witch Species]], though, there is Magic Realism-verging-on-[[Wild Magic]] swirling around her and her [[Jerkass]] costar, which ultimately manifests as characters from the TV series appearing to advise both of them.
== Literature ==
* [[Gabriel Garcia Marquez]]' book ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]'' popularized the term and is often considered to be the master work of the genre, and one of the most important pieces of universal literature written in the 20th century. A few years of rain, a gypsy who keeps coming back to life, a man who just sits in the basement and doesn't speak, and a couple dozen civil wars are some of the more normal aspects of the book. Marquez' other works also tend to feature this to a greater or lesser degree, such as ''A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings''.
* Before Marquez, there was Juan Rulfo and ''[[Pedro Paramo]]''
* ''[[
* [[Diana Wynne Jones]] likes to play with this trope in most of her short stories. ''Plague of Peacocks'', ''Little Dot'', and ''Carruthurs'' are good examples. Even ''[[Dogsbody]]'' has this from Kathleen's point of view.
*
** [[Jorge Luis Borges]]' body of short stories pretty much invented
** Mexican Laura Esquivel's ''[[Like Water for Chocolate]]'', wherein the protagonist's feelings for her beloved are transferred into the food she is preparing, which her sister then eats, which causes her to literally burn up in
*** Magical cooking is a popular concept for
** Other prominent writers include Alejo Carpentier and [[Isabel Allende]].
*** And don't forget Rudolfo Anaya.
* ''And The Ass Saw the Angel'', by [[Nick Cave]], is either the paragon of
* [[Franz Kafka]]
* Italo Calvino is a famous Italian writer whose works skirted
* The ''[[Illuminatus]]'' trilogy and most of the other novels by Robert Anton Wilson tend to alternate between this genre and [[Science Fiction]]; the world is mostly as we know it, but there's usually some technology that can't exist in the era the stories are set in, such as a sentient computer in ''Illuminatus!''. There are always [[Psychic Powers]] as well, some more subtle than others.
* Writer George Saunders is big on this. In the short story collection ''CivilWarLand in Bad Decline'' he has several examples, as most of his stories are very dreamlike. In the title story, the main character works in a Civil War themed Amusement Park where he regularly encounters a family of ghosts who lived on the land during the Civil War. Another story features a man hounded by the ghost of a child who was killed due to his negligence. Other than these elements the stories are grounded in reality (if perhaps an overly bleak version of reality.)
* Walter M. Miller's ''[[A Canticle for Leibowitz]]'' seems to be straight post-apocalyptic [[Science Fiction]]
** Not to mention ''[[Tear Jerker|Rachel]] [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Grales]]''...
* Pick a [[Salman Rushdie]] novel. Any Salman Rushdie novel.
** Much of Salman Rushdie's ''[[Midnight's Children]]'' is considered Magic Realism, as the children in the title have various powers and abilities ranging from beauty capable of blinding people to an ability to physically hurt people with words.
* ''[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]'' is a normal life story and period piece, except the title character was born as an old man and ages backward.
* Virtually everything by [[Haruki Murakami]] falls into this category, along with [[Magic A Is Magic A]], [[
* ''[[The Time Traveler's Wife]]''. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]], folks.
* A big portion of Etgar Keret's stories. Few examples: A winged man pretending to be an angel, several magicians [[Magicians Are Wizards|capable of real magic]], [[And I Must Scream|soldiers who got turned into body targets]], a guy with mind-controlling ability (who uses it to get laid) and a boy who can control ants (and uses them to take the school away).
* You could make a point for ''[[House of Leaves|House]] of Leaves'' as Magic Realism, but however you cut it, it sure has a way of straddling reality and unreality.
* ''Snow In August'' by Pete Hamill pulls out the
* Jonathan Safran Foer's ''[[Everything Is Illuminated]]'' has often been described as magical realist.
* Michael Bishop's ''Brittle Innings'' is a coming-of-age story about a mute teenager who plays on a minor-league baseball team in the Deep South during World War II, when all the 'real' ball players are fighting the war. It's almost an incidental detail that the team's slugging first baseman is {{spoiler|Frankenstein}}.
* In ''[[The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To]]'', nobody knows why Eric can't sleep and doesn't have to (and very few people are even aware that's the case): most of the narrative attention is given to his and Darren's life as geeky high schoolers {{spoiler|until [[The Men in Black]] find out}}.
** Interestingly, there may actually be an explanation for it. [http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Sleep/medical-mystery-boy-sleep/story?id=4828035#.TzR7ulyJfNI Rhett Lamb] almost never slept, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20141226231502/http://thexodirectory.com/2008/03/hai-ngoc-sleepless-man-for-more-than-30
* Karen Tei Yamashita's ''Tropic of Orange'' proudly parades its magic realism and Gabriel García Márquez influence. Seven main characters in modern-day Los Angeles and Mexico's lives interweave in strange and not-very-satisfying ways when an orange causes a gigantic traffic accident, then firestorm on a major freeway. Meanwhile, another orange that happened to grow on the Tropic of Cancer (which was fertilized somehow by the woman who works on the property) causes the geography to shift completely when... well, it still doesn't make much sense, except there were lots of [[Author Tract|Author Tracts.]]
** Similarly, her novel ''Through the Arc of the Rainforest''. The plot revolves around a massive field of [[Green Rocks|plastic with seemingly magical properties]] being uncovered in the middle of [[The Amazon]], and the manner in which the main characters (including an American businessman with three arms, a Japanese railway conductor with a little ball floating in front of his face, and a Brazilian radio evangelist who thinks that the plastic is holy) interact with it.
* In ''[[Skellig]]'', ''a la'' the page quote, the eponymous character is a man with wings who might be an angel and who lives in the young protagonist's garage.
* Jonathan Carroll's novels, especially his earlier work.
* Zenia from [[Margaret Atwood]]'s ''The Robber Bride'' has no provable supernatural abilities, but with her palpable aura of evil she reminds one of a fairy tale witch.
* Pretty much the entire output of both Kelley Link and her husband Gavin J. Grant. In almost all of the stories the two have written, really weird stuff happens (ghosts, zombie apocalypse, a handbag that holds an entire town, a stream-of-consciousness television show that appears on random stations at random times) but no one reacts as if it was at all strange.
* Anything written by Alice Hoffman. A good example is ''[[Practical Magic]]''.
* Sarah Addison Allen's books.
* Flemish writers Johan Daisne and especially Hubert Lampo.
* An unusual biographical example in ''[[Stranger Than Fiction: The Life and Times of Split
* Amos Tutuola's books depict magic realism in an African setting. The protagonists live in a world where they often come in contact with spirits of the Bush. A good example is ''[[The Palm
* ''Grooves: A Kind of Mystery'' by Kevin Brockmeier has a pretty normal world, but audio messages are encoded in such unusual things as the ripples on rippled potato chips and the texture of blue jeans. The message? "He's stealing the light from our eyes," which is literally what "he" was doing.
* There's a whole sub-genre of historical fiction that fits this. Generally the earlier the era and/or the more non-western the culture dealt with, the more likely this is. Common features are prophetic dreams/visions, an individual or group of individuals with mystic knowledge and something like the Australian Dream Time.
** Steven Barnes' ''Ibandi'' novels set in Late Paleolithic Africa.
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* Sharyn McCrumb's ''Ballad'' novels, sliceoflife/mysteries set in rural North Carolina featuring Nora Bonesteel an old woman who has "The Sight".
* Happens in two of [[Jodi Picoult]]'s books. In ''Change of Heart'', Shay Bourne is somehow able to cure one of his cellmates of AIDS and cause water to turn into wine. In fact, a priest specifically sees him as [[Messianic Archetype|a Jesus-analogue]]. The main focus of the book, however, is on the ramifications of the death penalty. The trope is in fact double-subverted because some of his miraculous acts have mundane explanations, but then the little girl who he donated his heart to miraculously brings her dog back to life. In ''Harvesting the Heart'', Paige has the ability to draw pictures of people and weave some of their hidden memories or desires into the drawing. The focus of that book is mainly on Paige's problems with being a mother.
* In contrast to his better-known works, [[J. R. R.
* [[Ray Bradbury]] relies on this fairly often when not writing straightforward science fiction. The most obvious example is "Uncle Einar", possibly an homage to the Marquez story mentioned above.
* While Janet Evanovich's ''[[Stephanie Plum]]'' series mostly avoids this (except for Morelli's Great Aunt Bella whose curses are a case of [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]) the holiday oriented subseries feture Diesel (now with his own series), a magical bounty hunter who specializes in chasing "specials" (people with mutant powers) gone bad.
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* Jo Walton's ''Among Others'' about a Welsh girl in an English boarding school trying, with the occasional help of the faerie to cope with life and the psychic attacks of her mother, an evil witch.
* [[Michael Chabon]]'s ''[[Summerland]]'' starts out as this. It revolves around a quirky little island community where it always rains (but always has inexplicably perfect weather at the local baseball field), and includes a [[Bungling Inventor]] who builds miniature airships, a teenage boy who's convinced that he's an android, and a 109 year-old retired baseball player. Then the [[Save the World]] plot starts, and it makes a [[Genre Shift]] into full-on [[High Fantasy]].
* Bruce Sterling's ''Zeitgeist'' set in the midst of
* [[The Golden Girls]]: Sophia encountered her husband's ghost twice, Blanche may have encountered her grandmother's ghost once, Dorothy may have been cursed by a witch, Sophia may have been a witch, the girls encountered
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* [[The Golden Girls]]: Sophia encountered her husband's ghost twice, Blanche may have encountered her grandmother's ghost once, Dorothy may have been cursed by a witch, Sophia may have been a witch, the girls encountered bizzare dreams, and let's not get started about St. Olaf...
** Don't forget, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHBg0pA-2o God likes Rose]
* The unfortunately [[Too Good to Last]] Fox sitcom ''[[Key West]]'' was, in its time, one of the best examples of this on television.
* The [[Britcom|British]] [[Sitcom]] ''[[2point4 children
** Odd things occasionally happen to her husband as well. Yes, it's ''possible'' that his [[Sitcom Arch Nemesis]] (who's a ''[[The Prisoner]]'' fan) might kidnap him and leave him in Portmerion ... but then Rover appears...
** And the man on the motorcycle who kept appearing whenever Bill needed help and who may actually have been {{spoiler|[[Dead All Along]]}}.
* Later seasons of ''[[Seinfeld]]'' toyed with
** Also the [[Eldritch Abomination|stink]] in Jerry's car.
* ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' was a straight up teen [[Soap Opera]] [[Dramedy]] and contained absolutely no supernatural elements whatsoever. Except for the episode "Halloween," where Angela encounters a ghost. Or "My So-Called Angels" (widely regarded as one of the best and most [[Tear Jerker|tearjerking]] episodes) where both Angela and ''her mother'' talk to a (sort of) angel.
* ''[[Twin Peaks]]'' actually barely fits here, but it's worth mentioning. Most of the show is fairly mundane, but when it isn't, it's uproariously supernatural. Actually, most of the works David Lynch is known for are like this: mundane human drama interspersed with the '''pants-crappingly bizarre.'''
** Lynch's films have it both ways. Some of them really do fit the definition of
** There is some disagreement over the setting of ''[[Eraserhead]]'', whether it's a
** ''Inland Empire'' straddles the line of this and Absurdism, but ''Mulholland Drive''
* ''[[Spaced]]'' featured elements of light
* As mentioned above, ''[[Due South]]'' allows ghosts, who demonstrate abilities to affect the real world. They do, however, appear mostly only to those with an emotional connection to them. One story, too, involved the likely involvement of the literal Raven trickster, and another a voodoo conflict which may or may not have involved actual magic.
* ''[[Slings and Arrows]]'', depending on your perspective. It's possible, of course, that Geoffrey's just crazy - but it's also not made obvious that Oliver's ghost ''isn't'' hanging around.
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* Even ignoring Zack's [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth wall breaking powers]] ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' had some weird stuff going on including an apparently sapient robot and a lightning strike causing a character to temporarily gain precognition.
** ''Speaking'' of the fourth wall powers. Zack could actually say "Time out," and ''everything but him stops,'' and he usually does this to talk to the audience, but he ''was'' capable of actually moving things around while time was frozen, and once quickly used "time out" to avoid being punched in the face. It's not a gag that "doesn't count" story-wise; ''Zack Morris has for-real time altering powers.''
* It's sketchy, but ''[[Lost]]'' fits the definition of
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' sometimes verges into this territory, including events that waver between magical and highly unlikely. (Dopplegangers, some of Barney's schemes.) However, the show can always fall back on the fact that Ted has been established as an [[Unreliable Narrator]], leaving it unclear which events happened exactly as described and which have been embellished or misremembered.
** Also, a couple of season five episodes have Marshall seemingly time-traveling as minor elements.
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* There has been at least one ghost (maybe) and an alleged vampire on the otherwise reality-based ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]].''
* The ghosts that visit Tommy in ''[[Rescue Me]]'' may or may not be real.
* ''[[Night Court]]'' was packed with examples of this trope -- including an appearance by [[Looney Tunes|Wile E. Coyote]].
* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' does this with the Rambaldi artifacts with which Arvin Sloan has an obsession. They do things that are on the border of magic and technology, and are never fully explained. In the series finale, {{spoiler|the Rambaldi artifacts become clearly magical, as they preserve Sloan alive forever, trapped underground.}} J.J. Abrams, y'all.
* ''[[The Unusuals]]'' is an otherwise completely normal (if quirky) cop show that has a character who receives occasional prophetic messages from fortune cookies and, in the pilot, is the recipient of a ''[[Pulp Fiction]]''-style miracle. And then there's the episode "42," which seems to indicate that a psychic they question can really see the future.
* While ''[[The Suite Life of Zack and Cody]]'' was firmly based in reality, ''On Deck'' and [[The Movie]] started introducing more fantastical elements. Possibly to make it fit better in the same universe as the less realistic ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]''.
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* The real world portions of [[Once Upon a Time (TV series)|Once Upon a Time]] are this. the Fairy world portions are of course much more explicitly magical.
* ''[[American Horror Story]]''
* Kenneth in ''[[30 Rock]]'' is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]. This is played totally as a [[Running Gag]].
* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'': The time travel stuff and the seldom-seen future setting of [[Mission Control]] were the only non-mundane features of the universe, as the bulk of an episode was the mission to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] in the lives of normal people. "That guy runs someone over on Friday if he keeps up the illegal street-racing; help him learn his lesson before then" was the usual mission rather than "prevent [[World War Three]]." But we once met [[Satan|the
* If Halloween specials count, every sitcom in ABC's TGIF line ran into the supernatural but its characters never saw fit to mention it during the rest of the year or adjust their worldview knowing that [[Boy Meets World|Cory]] traveled through time or that [[Step by Step|TJ]] got dating advice from a ghost.
* Another "the fantastic exists, but not ''that'' kind" example: ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'' shares [[The Verse]] with magic-based teams, but that particular series was all sci-fi - good guys were a [[Heroes-R-Us]] organization, bad guys were [[Gattaca Babies]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]. However, the Yellow Ranger meets the ghost of a previous owner of their clock tower. The ghost is gone once she ends up changing history and giving him a happy ending, and there's some question as to whether or not any of it happened, but we get the [[Or Was It a Dream?]] reveal with a painting that is now different.
== Newspaper Comics ==
* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]''
▲* ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' is a wonderful, delightful comic about [[A Boy and His X|a six-year-old boy and his stuffed pet tiger]] who go on all sorts of crazy adventures. It's unclear to what extent Calvin is imagining the whole thing or [[Your Mind Makes It Real|believing makes it real]].
* ''[[Candorville]]'' is usually credible enough, allowing for a pretty serious undercurrent to the punchlines in Lemont's life. But every few months, he'll meet someone like a talking scarecrow, a ghost, or himself from the future.
* A world where one encounters inexplicably sentient plants and animals, mythological creatures who may or may not really exist, buildings that are larger on the inside than the outside, and several young children with unexplained highly-advanced talents and knowledge would probably be considered by many to be a magic realist setting. And that's the world [[Peanuts|Charlie Brown]] wakes up to every day.
==
* The Undertaker. He can apparently control lightning and fire, the arena lights always dim when he makes his entrance and then there's the rolling fog. None of the other wrestlers question this or even seem bothered by the fact that they are sharing a locker room with an apparent supernatural being. Except of course there was that brief time when he went around in a biker costume calling himself the American Badass.▼
** This was later worked into his gimmick as Taker got older and his body couldn't keep up with a rigorous schedule, working (at best) a few months out of the year. It's now explicitly stagecraft; the "power of the Undertaker" is his ability to awe through his mere presence, and being the most [[Badass Grandpa|long-running performer to still look good by his own merits]].▼
* A more recent{{when}} example would be the character Winter in TNA. She only appeared in backstage segments with Angelina Love and kept disappearing whenever she looked away. The announcers never mentioned her and apparently only Angelina could see her. Then Angelina accepted her and now she actively competes on the roster.▼
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''. Real world setting, real guns, walking robots, magical floating psychics, autotrophic snipers, bee men, ghosts, and a bisexual, flamenco-dancing vampire. The original title featured a collection of [[Charles Atlas Superpower]] bosses, the [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] of which was a floating, fourth-wall breaking psychic. Later games would expand upon this with a steady increase of
* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' seems to take place in a fairly dull Californian city. Except for the fact that the protagonist purchases a functioning lightsaber on eBay and proceeds to off progressively more bizarre assassins. At one point {{spoiler|his mentor dies, but afterward the mentor's ghost continues his job working at the gym.}} No one seems to find any of this at all odd.
** Of course, this is from the same mind that brought us ''[[
* In the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series, spirit channeling exists but is totally incidental to most cases and really just a way for Phoenix to get help from his [[The Obi-Wan|dead mentor]]. {{spoiler|Except in the cases where spirit channeling was directly involved with the murder.}}
** And then, there's Apollo and Trucy, who both have superhuman perception, which basically makes them living Lie-Detectors.
*** It's acually explained in the game that it's not a supernatrual power but {{spoiler|rather a biological gene passed down through the Magnifi family line}}. This is based on an acual biological gene that gives people more then average twitch and nervous detection, it exists, just look it up.
*** Though they may have the gene that permits advanced perception, Apollo still has a bracelet that reacts when it senses that someone is feeling tense.
* A recurring element in the ''[[Sly Cooper]]'' series. Mojo and ghosts exist, and raising the dead nets you a life sentence in prison.
* The entire ''[[MOTHER]]''/''[[
* The game of ''[[The Darkness]]'' is about a mafia hitman who just so happens to become possessed by a millenia-old demon that grants him superpowers. The main focus of the plot is still his quest for vengeance against the entirely mortal don who betrayed him.
* ''[[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]'' follows an ordinary man journeying through a realistic town... which periodically turns to ice and spawns hideous monsters. Exactly what is causing these things to happen is never fully explained (merely implied, and ambiguously so at that).
** Heck, the ''[[Silent Hill]]'' series as a whole. There are various explanations, but they're ambiguous, or contradictory, or there are elements in place suggesting that things aren't quite as they seem.
*** It's not
* ''[[Pathologic]]''. The setting is realistic, the characters are very human, one of the playable characters has [[Lovecraftian Superpower|Lovecraftian Super Powers]]. There are a bunch of medicine men wrapped head to toe in bandages who sell herbs that grow from blood. There are loads of children walking around without parents, and occasionally wearing the dead heads of dogs as masks. [[Nightmare Fuel|Disease clouds attack you. They come in the form of horrendous, symbolic abominations]]. We haven't even discussed the rather meta theater themes...
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[Shortpacked]]'' is an interesting example. The previous webcomic by the same author, ''It's Walky'', was straight-out science-fiction adventure about a group of alien-abductee government agents. ''Shortpacked'' exists in the same world, but in a much more mundane
▲== Webcomics ==
▲* ''[[Shortpacked]]'' is an interesting example. The previous webcomic by the same author, ''It's Walky'', was straight-out science-fiction adventure about a group of alien-abductee government agents. ''Shortpacked'' exists in the same world, but in a much more mundane setting -- a toy store. Thus, the elements that took center stage in ''It's Walky'' are pushed to the edges, and the genre shifts to [[Magical Realism]].
** Since the weirdness ''does'' have a canon explanation in [[The Verse]], just not in that series, it's more like [[All There in the Manual]]. Except replace "manual" with "[[Archive Binge|the entire archives of several previous comic strips]]".
* ''[[Pictures for Sad Children]]'' is mainly about the pressures of modern life and the clash between the opposite sides of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]]. The main characters are Paul, a recently-deceased [[Bedsheet Ghost]], and Gary, whose extended family was recently revealed to collectively possess the same powers as [[The Bible|Jesus]].
* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: Within the ''[[Achewood]]'' anything made in Mexico contains "Mexican
** Most recently{{when}}, a Nagel serape that grants wishes {{spoiler|(actually only the "Hecho en Mexico" tag attached to it grants wishes)}}.
* ''[[Questionable Content]]'' slips in a fair amount of this, mostly in science-fiction or alcoholic form.
** "[http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1350 True story, or alcohol-induced fantasy? Either way, Steve's not tellin'.]"
Line 240:
**** That's because {{spoiler|the Troll universe would have been created by 36 players from a previous game, following the pattern that the game has. The Trolls created the Kids' universe, where there are only 4 players. It's a big confusing loop.}}
* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' is a [[Two Gamers on a Couch]] comic set in what is nominally the real world, although sometimes Jesus Christ comes over to play ''[[Mario Kart]].''
* In ''[[The Devil's Panties]]'', which is mostly slice-of-life, the main character occasionally chats with both Jesus and the devil, her shoulder angel and devil seem to have lives of their own and one of her roommates used to keep [[The Lord of the Rings|Legolas]] naked and locked in a closet.
* ''[[Think Before You Think]]'' happens in a normal world, but the main character can read minds, and he is the only one, as far as we know.
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[The Boondocks]]'' is sometimes like this. Notably, the ghost segments, and Stinkmeaner coming back from hell to possess Tom Dubois.
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' started out fairly ordinary but around Season 10 more and more ridiculous elements started showing up.
Line 251 ⟶ 250:
* One episode of ''[[King of the Hill]]'' had Luanne being visited by the angel of her dead boyfriend Buckley, though they kept it ambiguous whether she was imagining it or not.
== Other Media ==
* The ''[[
* ''[[The Residents]]''
▲* The [[Everything 2]] short story, [http://everything2.com/user/Ignis/writeups/How+to+spot+a+powerful+mage?author=Ignis How to spot a powerful mage].
* Many David Firth works, e.g. ''Roof Tiling'', ''World Within a Sock'', can be described as this, although they can also be described as [[Surreal Horror]].▼
▲* ''The Residents'' ' Bunny Boy series is set in what could loosely be construed as "reality", if it weren't for such things as [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone]], people who might not exist-but on some level do anyways, warped Bible prophecy, and just enough little additions and subtractions from what's "real".
▲* Many David Firth works, e.g. ''Roof Tiling'', ''World Within a Sock'', can be described as this.
▲* The Undertaker. He can apparently control lightning and fire, the arena lights always dim when he makes his entrance and then there's the rolling fog. None of the other wrestlers question this or even seem bothered by the fact that they are sharing a locker room with an apparent supernatural being. Except of course there was that brief time when he went around in a biker costume calling himself the American Badass.
▲** This was later worked into his gimmick as Taker got older and his body couldn't keep up with a rigorous schedule, working (at best) a few months out of the year. It's now explicitly stagecraft; the "power of the Undertaker" is his ability to awe through his mere presence, and being the most [[Badass Grandpa|long-running performer to still look good by his own merits]].
▲* A more recent example would be the character Winter in TNA. She only appeared in backstage segments with Angelina Love and kept disappearing whenever she looked away. The announcers never mentioned her and apparently only Angelina could see her. Then Angelina accepted her and now she actively competes on the roster.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Literature Genres]]▼
[[Category:Speculative Fiction]]
▲[[Category:Literature Genres]]
▲[[Category:Magic Realism]]
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