Skepticism Failure: Difference between revisions

The paranormal has a way of creeping into TV shows, even those which don't have a paranormal premise. In real life, being neither skeptical nor a believer of various paranormal forces is the default, and a better option than either dogmatic belief or [[Arbitrary Skepticism|dogmatic skepticism]]. On TV, characters are far less likely to express any doubt, and those who are skeptical are often treated as naive or ignorant, and the plot will go out of its way to prove them wrong.

 

 

For example, a character receives a psychic reading which foretells tragedy. He spends the rest of the episode actively worried about it. Various details foreseen by the psychic are borne out in the episode. A character who challenges the legitimacy of [[Psychic Powers]] will often be confronted with at least one detail he can't explain how the psychic knew.

Ironically the ''more'' heavily focused on the paranormal a show is, the less likely this seems to be the case. In settings with a [[The Masquerade|Masquerade]] ordinary people are often depicted as being ''so'' utterly skeptical that clear evidence of paranormal goings on is dismissed with a flimsy and [[Weirdness Censor|wildly implausible 'rational' explanation]], which itself is a form of [[Arbitrary Skepticism|skepticism failure]].

 

 

Compare [[Arbitrary Skepticism]], [[If Jesus Then Aliens]], [[Flat Earth Atheist]], [[How Unscientific]], and [[Skeptic No Longer]]. The most common manifestation of this trope is [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone]].

 

Contrast with [[Invisible to Normals]] and [[Weirdness Censor]] in which an alien, a robot and a werewolf can be having a fight in right front of someone's nose and still be ignored or dismissed.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* In [[Anime]], ghosts are a fact of life. Whoever doubts it will be proven wrong before the end of the episode. The only major exceptions are detective series, which are full of fake ghosts, and series where there's one type of supernatural creature as a premise of the show, and the "ghost" is one of those in disguise.

** Anime in general holds this trope up due to the underlying Shinto belief system, which has multiple gods and magic forces. In nearly all anime/manga/games, when an event can be attributed to the supernatural, it is rarely questioned due to this cultural system. However, there are exceptions...

* Kyon in ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' experienced this trope when he realizes that aliens, espers, and [[Time Travel|time-travellers]] exist. He now regularly spends much of his time in damage control to make sure ''more'' of this weirdness doesn't manifest -- i.e. [[Defied Trope|he tries to prevent Skepticism Failure]] in the local unconscious [[Reality Warper]], Haruhi in case she ends up destroying the world accidentally.

* Seto Kaiba from ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' is a shining example of a disbeliever to the point of seeing the past, his ancestor, and still brushing it off as fake.

 

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

** Almost this [[Recycled Script|exact same story]] appears in an episode of ''[[Now and Again]]'', an ill-fated science fiction series from the late 90's about a man who was rebuilt out of spare body parts by the government.

* The early run of the 2000s ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined (TV)|Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' employed this trope in an ambiguous and unique way; several characters have had experiences that can be interpreted as prophetic or prescient, but whether they are in fact seeing the future or merely hallucinating was never explicitly revealed.

* ''[[The Bill]]'' had an episode called "Haunted" in which police officers on a stake-out in an allegedly haunted building recounted spooky but just-about-plausible things that happened to them (a lost girl with uncanny similarities to a murder victim; a woman who dies at the around same time as her psychotic and jealous husband, who left a message on her machine saying "I need you with me"), before ending with DS Stanton (the [[Agent Scully]]) quite definitely encountering a ghost.

** Another episode set at Christmas revolved around Sgt. Boydon helping out a guy who eventually disappeared into thin air, with the definite implication being that he was a ghost.

* In different episodes of ''Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal'', this is either played straight or subverted. In one episode, one of the investigators is temporarily replaced by an alien clone with reversed fingerprints. The entire team simply refuses to believe him when he returns to Earth and assume that he was drunk or just playing around. Heck, one of them assumed that it was a Doppelganger, preferring a supernatural explanation over aliens. In another episode, a rich elderly widow complains about her house being haunted. After the team do their investigation, they find out that there are no ghosts and that her family have set up a sound system and countless projectors in the house so that they could drive her insane and get her money.

* In the ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' episode "A Portrait for Troian," Sam Beckett leaps into a paranormal investigator. Over the course of the episode, he plays the skeptic regarding the existence of ghosts, and Al plays the believer. By the end of the episode, {{spoiler|he has proven the primary haunting is a hoax, but then discovers that one of the secondary characters was a ghost all along. This is enforced with a shot of the ghost vanishing.}}

*** {{spoiler|Some of the 'bad luck' was ''deliberately caused'' by Beckett, Esposito and Ryan to freak Castle out.}}

* In the ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' episode "Cold Comfort", a psychic mentions that the victim will be found near a rocky shoreline. She's actually found in the middle of the city, but then the skeptical team member looks out the window... and there's a huge ad with a rocky shoreline on it.

* ''[[Bones]]'':

** Subverted in one episode, since the hints of supernatural activity (the ghost seen by Booth) was ultimately explained by a brain tumor. {{spoiler|Save for the fact that Bones saw the same ghost.}}

** Played straight in the season 5 premiere with the psychic who locates a mass grave. By the end of the episode, even Bones, the [[Agent Scully]] of the cast, is a believer.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* Played with in ''[[The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron]]'', "The Phantom Of Retroland": Jimmy scoffs at the phantom that supposedly haunts an abandoned amusement park. However, Cindy points out that ''everyone'' knows it's fake, but only he would be such a party-pooper about it. At the end, after a string of impostors of the titular ghost, the ''real'' Phantom shows up.

** This is also [[Arbitrary Skepticism]], as the Avatar world has a spirit world, which Sokka is even trapped in at one point. According to Sokka, "that's avatar stuff, it doesn't count."

*** It doesn't follow that because Aang can bend the elements this woman is a fortune teller.