Phony Psychic: Difference between revisions

* ''Pimp'' -- The button is loneliness or horniness. Best of, all ... both. Steer the mark toward a prostitute/gigolo that understands the play.

 

 

'''[[No Real Life Examples, Please]]'''.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Mai Valentine pulled a fake psychic act at first in the Duelist Kingdom arc of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''; in reality, she scented all her cards with unique scents so she'd know by scent which cards she'd draw. Joey figured out her trick when he closed his eyes and noticed the scents. [[Fridge Logic|Despite having caught a cold a few episodes ago from diving into the ocean in an attempt to recover Yugi's Exodia cards.]]

** Espa Roba also pulls a phony psychic stunt in the Battle City tournament, with help from his brothers spying on his opponents' cards and relaying them through a headset.

* In ''[[Magicians]]'', part of Karl's reinvention of himself as a 'street' magician involves a [[Phony Psychic]] routine complete with [[Cold Reading]]. He's not very comfortable with it to begin with, but when his would-be girlfriend leaves him when she learns he's not a real psychic and upon hearing the sad story of someone coming to see his act who wants to make contact with a loved one on the other side he breaks down and admits he's a fake. At the end of the movie, we then see that a much less-scrupulous magician has filled the niche he left behind.

* The classic [[Film Noir]] ''[[Nightmare Alley]]'' features Tyrone Power as a venal carnie who gets the show's resident "psychic" to give him the secret of a successful con before [[Accidental Murder|accidentally poisoning]] him. Without spoiling too much, it's safe to say [[Laser-Guided Karma|things do not end well for him]].

** Debatably such an awesome idea that [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot]] despite the A-plot being [[Oscar Bait]].

*** A similar idea crops up in the earlier ''[[Ghostbusters]]'': Peter Venkman, the ''de facto'' leader of the team, starts out as a phony parapsychologist (i.e. he treats the science as a joke), but gradually becomes a true believer throughout the course of the story.

 

== Literature ==

* Played for laughs in the [[Diogenes Club]] story "Angel Down, Sussex" by [[Kim Newman]]; a young woman, Catriona, visits a psychic after [[World War I]], and the psychic divines that she is seeking contact with a soldier, Edwin; the psychic assures her that her soldier felt no pain when he died and that he sends his love to her from the afterlife, and a ghostly, indistinct image appears. After a moment, Catriona points out that there's one problem with the psychic's reading: Edwin, the soldier who the psychic has made such direct contact with? ''Isn't actually dead''. Turns out Catriona's a particularly savvy paranormal investigator, and proceeds to deconstruct the psychic's act with devastating accuracy and reveal to her other patrons that she's a sham.

* In the [[Connie Willis]] book ''Inside Job'', the ghost of [[H. L. Mencken]] helps debunk phony psychics, by possessing one during their act. Possibly. Or it's the most complicated scam in existence to make a debunker believe in ghosts.