Magic Realism: Difference between revisions

* [[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...

* The [[Britcom|British]] [[Sitcom]] ''[[2point4 children|Two Point Four Children]]'' is a prime example. It is a perfectly mundane show, with the exception of the strange things that happen to the mother, Bill Porter. Like the number of prophetic dreams she's had, or the time she found herself chased... by a hurricane (the storm literally followed her when she left Miami to avoid it, and was also named Hurricane Bill).

* ''[[Night Court]]'' was packed with examples of this trope.

* 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 the devil, and once had Sam leap into a vampire. He also met a ghost and an angel.

* ''[[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]].

** 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 Magic Realism at all. Regarding Shattered Memories, {{spoiler|None of it happened. It's a metaphor. Cheryl, the protagonist's daughter, is sitting on the couch in the psychiatrist's office. The real protagonist, Harry Mason, died in a car accident some time ago. The player's actions follow a symbolic - and absolutely not literal - [[Journey to the Center of the Mind]] of the conflict in Cheryl. The game uses the player's actions during that journey to try to guess the ''player's'' nature, and then tries to tailor that journey to pull a [[Player Punch]]. Whether it succeeds is up to each player.}} Also, the town and setting is clearly not realistic. The town's residents can be counted on one's fingers, despite some pretty big apartment buildings. There's quite a bit of [[Chaos Architecture]] in Shattered Memories (and the rest of the series). As for the others, Silent Hill I and [[Silent Hill Homecoming]] both have endings which could allow the events to have been fictional or a [[Dying Dream]], but if Silent Hill I is a dying dream, then Silent Hill III could not happen. Silent Hill II's, III's, IV's, and Origin's endings all accept that the events in question ''did'' happen, and only the final outcomes could be in doubt (joke endings excluded). They also lack the restraint that Magic Realism requires. Blood splattered trips to a hellish alternate reality populated by things which would make Giger wet himself are ''not'' a feature of [[Magical Realism]].

* The [[Everything2]] short story, [http://everything2.com/user/Ignis/writeups/How+to+spot+a+powerful+mage?author=Ignis How to spot a powerful mage].

* ''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".

== Professional Wrestling ==

* 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.