Oh God, Did She Just Hear That?

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
I would like you all to know that whatever thoughts of mine you're reading are totally made up. They aren't real.
—Marco, Animorphs

A character is thinking something either unflattering or romantic about another character. He's rambling on via internal monologue without a care in the world...until he remembers that the character he's thinking about can read minds. Still speaking only in his head, he gasps, "Oh God, Did She Just Hear That?" The answer is always "Of course she did."

Usually reserved for psychic characters who either have temporary powers or are hanging out with somebody new who isn't used to their abilities yet.

Compare Did I Just Say That Out Loud?, A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read, and Right Behind Me.

Examples of Oh God, Did She Just Hear That? include:

Anime and Manga

  • This is exactly what happens to Ranma in the climax of the Ranma ½ manga, where it's deliberately left ambiguous whether his declaration of love for Akane was internal or external. She reacts as though it was the latter, though.
  • In Shaman King this happens with Hao as the Mind Reader. With Anna too, before she lost that power.
  • In episode 17 of "Ouran High School Host Club", this happens to Haruhi when she wonders how Tamaki and Kyouya compliment each other so well. Kyouya, being the Shadow King that he is, repeats back her pondering almost word for word.

Comic Books

  • Subverted in Ultimate Spider-Man. Spidey meets Storm, Jean Grey, and Kitty Pryde, and Jean makes the mistake of congratulating him on not mentally picturing her naked. Naturally, this causes him to do so... for the next 3 pages, as she gets progressively more annoyed.

Jean Grey: In fact, you're the first person in six months that hasn't pictured me naked, so I appreciate that... until now. Are you done yet?
Spider-Man: ...okay, I'm done. (Jean glares angrily at him) ...okay now I'm really done.

  • Occurred in the first issue of the Legion of Super-Heroes Zero Hour reboot, where Live Wire, upon meeting Saturn Girl, had a number of embarrassing thoughts about her before noticing the Saturn insignia that marked her as a Titanian telepath. In a later issue he starts daydreaming about her while actually on Titan and surrounded by telepaths.
  • Superman Expy the Plutonian from the comic series Irredeemable has superhuman hearing. While not the same as telepathy, it allows him to hear what everyone on earth is saying about him, all the time.
  • Doctor Nemesis of X-Club gets saddled with this problem after a telepathic starfish bonds to his head and starts broadcasting his internal monologues. He and Doctor Rao discovered the starfish was telepathic when it broadcasted that Doctor Nemesis frequently admires Doctor Rao's "shapely behind". The starfish later broadcasts Nemesis' jealousy of Cyclops' costume and his craving for his co-worker Jeffries' friendship.
  • In an early issue of Gold Digger, Gina is introduced to Seance, her father's new apprentice. She's enjoying several naughty thoughts about him when he lets her know that one of his natural magic abilities is reading people's surface thoughts, and he still has no idea how to turn it off.

Film

  • For some reason, this keeps happening in What Women Want, even though most of the female characters have no idea Mel Gibson's character has gained telepathy. One of the more painful examples has to be Helen Hunt's character thinking, "Oh, God, I just stared at his crotch!"—and covering her eyes, because that does not look suspicious at all.
  • In Minority Report main character Anderton kidnaps one of the three children used to predict future crimes and brings her to somebody to have her mind scanned, who wastes no time in wondering out loud if she's reading his mind right now and then blurts out this little gem: "Those thoughts about my cousin Elena, those were *just* - *thoughts*!"

Literature

  • The Animorphs morphed into an alien creature that can read minds, and so the four characters who were present at the time were all suddenly thrust into the position of being able to hear all of each other's thoughts—and, of course, knowing that the others could read their thoughts. The narrating character, Ax, describes the other characters' private thoughts at that moment in much more detail than his own; this is probably explained by the fact that the Animorphs engages moderately in the Literary Agent Hypothesis. (Certainly we can assume that Ax's overheard thoughts were just as angsty as those of the other characters). Marco breaks the tension of the moment by saying:

"I would like you all to know that whatever thoughts of mine you're reading are totally made up. They aren't real."

  • The sparkly, occasionally psychic vampires in Twilight seem to experience a slight degree of this—grossly inflated in Fanon for cheap jokes. (Edward being forced to listen in on his vampire parents having vampire sex... squick! Of course, they're fully aware. Or... "Dear diary... today I made Carlisle think he was in love with Edward. AGAIN! Laterz ~ Jasper." )
  • Subverted in the Artemis Fowl series: villain Opal Koboi has her none-too-bright henchmen convinced to the point of paranoia that she can read minds, simply by turning on them at random and shrieking "I heard that!"
    • Right up until one of them decides to test her with the thought "Holly Short is prettier than you" and gets no real reaction.
  • Almost used in the first Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) novel when he realizes that Amberley Vail is a member of the Inquisition. His first thought is that she's a psyker, and is utterly terrified that she can read his mind, and will expose all the lies of his completely undeserved reputation as a Hero. Turns out she's not a psyker, just really good at reading people.
    • Later he finds out psykers can't just read people's minds like that, unless they want to (and kill the person).
    • Besides, he most often stays in Gunner Ferik Jurgen's area of effect.
    • He also needn't worry because although Amberley Vail is an Inquisitor, she knows enough about the universe that any self-serving cowardice that doesn't directly count as treason is perfectly justifiable. She also has a soft spot for him.
  • Older Than Feudalism: In the Book of Genesis, Sarah hears one of the guests saying she will have a child in her very old age, and laughs in her heart. Then, that guest tells her husband (a softened up version of) what she thought—and Sarah realizes she was laughing at the all-knowing God...
  • There's a novel, which I unfortunately cannot recall the title of, where in order to protect himself from the mind reader he's confronting, one character will repeatedly picture himself performing gratuitous sex acts with said mind reader, repelling her.
  • There is a novel that I cannot remember the title of myself that subverts and then pokes fun at this trope. A female character can read minds through some genetic defect, and she's turned off all men because of it. However, in the story her fiancé is a French Canadian. He apparently thinks in French, thus she cannot understand him. When she asks him what his first thought of her was when he met her, he says "nice ass". They have a laugh about it.
  • Robin Wednesbury of The Stars My Destination is a reverse telepath, a telesend, who has to constantly worry that others are hearing what she thinks.

Live-Action TV

  • Buffy gets the "temporary powers" version and finds out what Xander's really thinking:

Xander: "What am I gonna do? I think about sex all the time! Sex! Help! Four times five is 30. Five times six is 32. Naked girls. Naked women! And naked Buffy! Oh, stop me!"

    • Wesley hangs a lampshade on it in the same scene, admonishing everyone that, unless they exercise mental discipline, they will very likely be thinking the things they really don't want Buffy to overhear—and immediately realizes that he is broadcasting his awkward attraction to Cordelia, and excuses himself, embarrassed.
    • Cordelia, of course, was completely fine. Her thoughts exactly matched what she said!
      • Well, she thinks tact is just not saying true things.
    • Needless to say, everyone tries to overcompensate for it. When Buffy finally retreats to her bedroom because the psychic din is getting to be too much, Joyce becomes the archetype of a mother caring for a sick child... in hopes that Buffy won't realize she had sex with Giles. On the hood of a police car. Twice.
  • Used word-for-word (save for "he" instead of "she") in Heroes between Audrey and the telepathic Matt.
  • Subverted in an episode of The X-Files. After being shooed out of a room by a TV psychic for his "negative energy", Mulder meets the psychic in the hallway and shows him what negative energy really is with three words: "Read this thought."
    • "And so's your old man!"
  • In one episode of Babylon 5, resident telepath Talia Winters is explaining to someone that telepaths sometimes cannot avoid picking up particularly strong emotions and thoughts before entering a lift with Security Chief Garibaldi. Talia elbows Garibaldi in the gut before getting off. Garibaldi responds with, "I think I'm in love."
    • One of them later mentions that they have to constantly recite poems/songs/whatever in their minds in order to keep from picking up every superficial thought. Then a group of rogue telepaths go on to blackmail people by telling them something along the lines of: "We followed every one of you for the past x days. Think, what we might know about you....".
    • In another episode, Garibaldi is having an argument with the Psi Cop Bester, and as Garibaldi glares at him, Bester says, "Anatomically impossible, Mr. Garibaldi, but you're welcome to try, anytime."
    • In another episode, the effect is evoked deliberately by maneuvering a kidnapping suspect into Talia's presence and "cautioning" him not to think about irrelevant facts such as the current location of the kidnapping victim.
  • Something Is Out There (a short-lived sci-fi series on NBC). The alien protagonist Ta'Ra is telepathic; unfortunately she's also a hot chick so she's constantly angry over how these Earth people want to "do that with her body" (her species has a somewhat different way of making love).
  • In the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts", when Toshiko gets hold of an alien device that enables her to read minds she's disgusted at the petty thoughts of her co-workers. However when she's unable to read Captain Jack's mind (unless he wants her to) she's seriously freaked out.
  • Mutant X had an episode where Emma had to fully open her mind, so when Jesse was thinking... Well, this troper will be nice and say he was thinking about his attraction to her; it was never actually specified anyway, but she had also stripped off her shirt, leaving just the tank top underneath.
  • Kelly from Misfits is an involuntary telepath, and always seems to hone in specifically on Nathan's thoughts just as he's thinking something that really would've been best kept private. His panicky attempts to "control" his thought processes usually only make things worse. His fear is certainly justified though. Often he's just fantasizing about sex, leading to mild embarrassment when he's overheard, but occasionally it's something even worse and Kelly—being a rather... boisterous young lady—is more than likely to unthinkingly blurt out whatever secret she's just heard, or simply beat the crap out of him if his thoughts particularly offend her.
  • Lwaxana Troi of Star Trek: The Next Generation loves pointing out embarrassing thoughts non-telepaths around her are thinking just to watch them squirm. On the other hand, she might just be making things up because she thinks it's funny and nobody has evidence to refute her.
  • The Ultroonian race depicted in My Hero (TV) has mind-reading as an optional extra power. When George uses it, many of the unsettling thoughts he hears are Janet's father constantly imagining killing his wife, and Dr. Piers Crispin thinking about sex while draining a cyst. The worst, perhaps, hearing cousin Arnie declaring of Janet "Boy, is she hot."

Newspaper Comics

  • In one Dilbert cartoon, the title character is in the restaurant with his date, and his date has a look of increasing alarm on her faces (yes, faces). The following scene is typed from memory, but in essence it goes as follows:

Dilbert: I must admit, this is the first time I've been on a date with a two-headed telepath. Now I'm sure some of the thoughts you're picking up seem strange and disturbing, but I assure you, these are perfectly normal thoughts for a guy.
The date's hair stands on end and her eyes bug out.
Dilbert: Well, maybe not that last one.

    • In the book, Scott Adams's commentary on the cartoon reads, "It's probably a good idea women don't know what men are thinking most of the time."

Video Games

  • Mint Blancmanche from Galaxy Angel is a mind-reader, which lets her manipulate people very easily; in the Galaxy Angel gameverse and its manga retelling, though, her telepathy is more prone to putting her in these situations with crew members. The third game switches it around—something happens with her powers so that she is broadcasting her thoughts to the entire crew, including some not-so-nice comments about her fellow Angels.
  • Played straight, if externally, in StarCraft, when Kerrigan cuts short her introduction to berate Jim Raynor on the thoughts he was having about her:

Kerrigan: ...and... you pig!
Raynor: Uhhh, what? I... I didn't even say anything to you yet!
Kerrigan: Yeah, but you were thinking about it.
Raynor: Oh, yeah, you're a telepath. Look, let's just get on with this, all right?

    • One of the books shows what he was thinking.
    • The first three lines were lifted almost directly from an episode of Night Court. Christine isn't a telepath, however, she just knows Fielding has a dirty mind. Fielding's final line is a slow "Fair enough..." while nodding and grinning slyly.
  • Happens in Psychonauts, with Raz overhearing Lili's thoughts in a cut scene ("When are you going to shut up and kiss me?" "Shut up and do what?"), though near the end of the game this happens intentionally, in an Ironic Echo of the earlier scene:

Lili: (thinking) When are you going to shut up and kiss me?
Raz: Uhh... I can hear that, you know.
Lili: (flirtatiously) I know...

  • Satori from Subterrenean Animism is a mindreader, to the point where nobody else will come near her. However, it's a bit of a surprise to the heroines when she's able to listen in on their thoughts—and in Marisa's case:

Alice: We still have a long way to go. Let's go the depths of the underworld. Hang in there!
Satori: "Before that, let's search the house...." you think. I won't allow that! Please head to the courtyard immediately.
Marisa: Damn.

Web Comics

Naomi: (Yeah, I'll fix you up real good, you stupid won't-die son of a bitch...)
Mantis: Hello? Mind reader floating right here.

Western Animation

  • Reversed in a notable episode of Dexter's Laboratory. Dexter tries to gain telepathy to read his father's mind and find out what his birthday presents are. He ends up having his every thought uncontrollably communicated to everyone, which leads numerous times to insulting people.
  • Used in Family Guy when Peter turns the microphone on a listening device up way too high, allowing everyone to hear Quagmire's thoughts. Including himself.

Quagmire: Man this itches. I wonder who gave it to me. Probably that skank who needed a ride to the gas station. Last time I do somebody a favor. ...Oh god, they must have heard me. Oh god, I can hear me! Nananananananana!"

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