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{{trope}}
[[File:leveLc4p107_1408.jpg|link=
{{quote|''"In movies and TV series about the paranormal, the stereotypical "skeptic" figure always seems to convert into a believer by the end. And why does this occur? Well, because in ''fiction'', the author can control the laws of nature, and in these fictional narratives (which show an abundant lack of creativity), the supernatural always turns out to be ''real''."''|'''Chris Mooney''', [http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2007/06/hollywoods_offensive_and_deepl.php 'Hollywood's Offensive and Deeply Unoriginal "Skeptic Conversion" Narrative']}}
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* ''[[City Hunter]] II''--an anime which features lots of [[A-Team Firing]] but no science fiction or fantasy elements, has a girl in episodes 41-42 who can read minds with perfect accuracy.
* 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.
* ''[[This Ugly Yet Beautiful World]]'': Everybody is surprisingly easily convinced that Hikari and Akari are aliens. Also, nobody bats an eyelid when Hikari's servant, a [[Ridiculously Human Robot]], shows up.
* An episode of ''[[
** One episode, Watanuki nearly got killed because he cut his toe nails at night.
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* ''Leap of Faith'' (1992) shows fraud and skepticism versus "real miracles".
* ''Night of the Demon'' (1957) walks a very noble line past this trope with a skeptical protagonist who approaches situations in a reasonable way right to the resolution of the film.
* The protagonist of ''[[
== [[Literature]] ==
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** Averted in [[True Blood|the series based on the books]], where those who don't know her mistake Sookie for stupid, but those close to her know she hears thoughts.
* [[Judge Dee]] often proclaims that he is not an impious man, as not believing in the supernatural was positively irreligious in [[Imperial China]]. However he temperamentally prefers natural explanations for apparently ghostly phenomena and usually finds one. Usually. There are however distinct indications that the Judge himself is 'psychic'. Certainly he is extremely sensitive to atmosphere, often sensing evil before he even knows there's been a crime.
* The doctor known as [[Awesome McCoolname|Mr. Chillingworth]] in the penny dreadful ''[[
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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** 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]]'' 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.
* A major plot point of the second season of ''[[
** It's because on Lost's island, there are many things that are crazier than the button. It's a case of [[If Jesus, Then Aliens|If Jesus, Zombies, Bigfoot, Unicorns, Flying Pigs, Tap-Dancing Cutlery And Psychic Hamburgers, Then Aliens.]]
* In the ''[[MacGyver]]'' episode ''GX-1'', MacGyver helps a Russian psychic who is portrayed as real, despite Mac's skepticism.
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* ''[[Touched By an Angel]]'' <s>claims</s> revolves around how God works in mysterious ways even when you don't believe it.
** In one episode, God (represented or channeled by the main character) is "put on trial," but the opposing counsel falls victim to fallacious reasoning, both committing fallacies in his own arguments and being (especially for a trained lawyer) overly credulous of the opposition's reasoning. This in effect sets up the prosecuting attorney as a [[Straw Man]] for the defendant.
* Played straight in virtually every episode of ''[[The X
** Subverted in the episode "Humbug" when Scully explains that she saw the killer, and what he was, but the local sheriff makes fun of her outlandish story (which the viewer knows happens to be true). Mulder, who had been skeptical of her theory himself, walks by and comments, "Now you know how I feel."
** Also, it is implied that Scully, especially in the later seasons, remains skeptical on purpose to make Mulder come up with proof for his [[Epileptic Trees]].
** Whenever the subject was religion, especially miracles, Scully was the believer and Mulder the skeptic.
* There was an episode of ''Diagnosis Murder'' where a series of people were murdered in methods that pointed to a vampire or something similar. It was all played as if the killer was mentally ill and only believed she was a vampire until she flew across the room at Dick Van Dyke. Very unusual for a show that was, as much as a TV show can be, very realistic.
* In the finale of season 4 of ''[[
** The Episode's title is ''Angel of Death.''
* An episode of ''[[
* ''[[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 the circus episode of ''[[
* ''[[My So-Called Life]]'', "So-Called Angels." As Angela tries to help out her friend Ricky, who's just been kicked out of his house, she keeps running into a girl who gives her advice on how to help him. Finally, Angela's mother figures out that the girl's a ghost who froze to death years ago.
* 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.
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* People on [[That Guy With
** For a work to be "realistic" doesn't strictly mean "identical to reality." Most people can easily accept that a universe has FTL travel, or magic, or superheros. ''However,'' accepting characters acting in ways that no human allegedly in possession of a modicum of rationality would, even though the characters ''are supposed to be'' similar to identical in nature to "real" humans, is a whole different issue.
** The works also need to be consistent; if the internal logic of the story is being blatantly broken, it doesn't matter how much magical weirdness it has.
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== [[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.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [[
=== Subversions and Aversions ===
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Considering ''[[
** There was an episode where Watanuki presumed that there was a supernatural cause for the problems of a young woman that he helped. He notice that light flashed from her shoulder and he presumed that it was the cause of the problems. When she met Ms. Yuuko, Yuuko explained to him that it's actually purely physiological and the light just reflected from a buckle on her shoulder bag.
* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
* In ''[[Twentieth Century Boys]]'', the villains make all of humanity think it's faking increasingly outlandish threats: mass germ warfare, giant robot attacks, and finally aliens. The heroes are continually disgusted with how eagerly most people eat it up.
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* Subverted in an episode of ''[[CSI]]'' where one investigator's firm belief in spontaneous human combustion -- as both a phenomenon and the solution to a case -- is debunked by a scientific experiment they conduct.
** There was also an episode where a psychic got killed because she managed to divine the place a murder victim's body had been hidden, and the villain heard of this. In the end of the episode it was revealed that she had no supernatural knowledge, and her assessment of the victim's soul's current location (She is in 'Summerland') got misheard for 'Sommerlin', which was the area the body was hidden.
* In one episode of ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' the patient claims to have been abducted by aliens. It turns out to be a hallucination, just as House repeatedly insisted.
** ''House'' also had a patient who, ironically, was a Christian faith healer. House's adamant belief that the guy was a fraud (while the rest of the protagonists went from skepticism to doubt) turned out to be the key to identifying his disease.
** Another episode had a woman who claims to be able to see the dead. It turned out she had ergotism.
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* On ''John Doe'', a woman believes she's having psychic visions of a serial killer, and reveals key details on his methods and location. It turns out that she'd nearly been murdered by the killer herself, and had escaped, but suffered so much blood loss in the process that her brain retained nothing but fleeting memories of her close call.
* ''[[The Mentalist]]'' is an interesting inversion of this: the main character, Patrick Jane, is a former TV psychic (and [[Phony Psychic|admitted fraud]]) who gave up that line of work after his insulting "psychic reading" of a serial killer wound up [[Death By Origin Story|getting his family killed]]. The skills he picked up while faking psychic powers (a [[Hyper Awareness|keen sense of observation]] and a good understanding of human nature) turn out to be quite useful for police work, though...
* ''[[
== [[Video Games]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[Metalocalypse]]'', of course, as [[Skepticism Failure/Quotes|quoted]]. In a later episode, Dethklok one-upped even ''that'' by negotiating the standard [[Deal
* One notable exception to this rule is ''[[Scooby Doo]]''. [[Scooby-Doo Hoax|The skeptical perspective is consistently proven correct]], to the point where one wonders why the gang continues to even entertain the notion of ghosts and monsters. However, this is inverted ([http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/the_corruption_of_scooby_doo.php disappointing angry skeptics everywhere]) in the ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' movies, both theatrical and [[OAV]], where the monsters are real. Typically in these movies there is also a fake version of the monster that is unmasked before the real one shows up. They [[Lampshade Hanging|Hang A Lampshade On It]] in the first live-action movie, in one scene where Scooby tries to tell Shaggy that his new girlfriend isn't what she appears to be. He says, "Mary Jane is a man in a mask!"
** Also [[Lampshaded]] in the more recent cartoon movies, such as the scene in ''Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island'' where Fred yanks a genuine zombie's head off in an attempt to remove its "mask". When the head moves in his hand and he stammers that it must be animatronic, the girls declare: "You're not a skeptic, Freddy, you're in denial!"
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