Skepticism Failure: Difference between revisions

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.

{{examples}}

* 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...

** One episode, Watanuki nearly got killed because he cut his toe nails at night.

 

* ''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 ''[[1408|Fourteen Oh Eight]]'' is deeply skeptical right up until he realizes he's in a ghost story.

 

* A running theme in [[The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries]] is that Sookie is a telepath, a fact she hides with mixed results. But most of the people of Bon Temps, up to and including her own brother, would rather believe "Crazy Ol' Sookie" just has a knack for reading people's body language than accept the fact that they have no privacy around her.

** 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.

* The doctor known as [[Awesome McCoolname|Mr. Chillingworth]] in the penny dreadful ''[[Varney the Vampire]]'' plays this role, both with regard to the vampire and the literal interpretation of the Bible.

 

* ''[[CSI]]'': the episode "Stalker" had a man who kept claiming that he was receiving visions related to the crime, and knew stuff that the CSIs hadn't released to the press. By the end of the episode, he's dead, and there's [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|no explanation either way for how he knew what he did]].

** 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.

** Other instances where spooky stuff comes up, however rare, tend to turn into cases of [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]] by the end.

 

* ''[[Saints Row]] 2'' is a mostly mundane [[Wide Open Sandbox]] game where one of the rival gangs is the Sons of Samedi. For the most part, they just seem to be drug dealers who happen to worship the loa. Then you end up fighting one of their bosses, who has a [[Hollywood Voodoo|voodoo doll]] that can make your character fall on his ass.

** However, it's entirely possible that your character could have been drugged during the fight as voodoo practitioners allegedly use drugs to convince people what they're seeing is real, etc, and your character had already been doped at least once earlier in the game.

 

* People on [[That Guy With The Glasses]] often accuse movies/comic books/video games etc. of not being realistic. This is despite the fact that there are magic guns, people coming back to life, and characters from the things they review. [[Rule of Funny]] usually justifies this, but it is still kind of weird.

** 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.

*** For example, we all know that the world of [[Lord of the Rings]] is pure [[High Fantasy]] and has no basis in reality. However, if Frodo or one of the other characters were suddenly to sprout wings for no explained reason and fly to Mordor, that would still violate the realism of the story.

 

* 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.

* ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' included an episode in which Sokka runs himself ragged trying to discredit a [[Fortune Teller]] that all the people of a town came to rely on. The problem was, she was always right... [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|technically]].

* Brian from ''[[Family Guy]]'' is a [[Flat Earth Atheist]], and the show seems to agree with him... which would hold more water if Brian hadn't met God and Jesus personally, and that Peter has died and met Death several times. Of course, the God and Jesus he runs into bear little resemblance to the religious figures beyond outfit and name.

 

* [[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'s Kat falls victim to this [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=885 while discussing golems]. Her friends include a ghost, a talking shadow, a fox god, and a {{spoiler|descendant of a fire elemental}}, and has met multiple gods and fairies, besides.

 

* Considering ''[[xxxHolic]]'' is a highly supernatural anime, this was a bit of a shocker. Yuuko thoroughly debunks a fake fortune teller, noting and disassembling her verbal sleights of hand and keen psychological tricks. However, they later go on to meet a real fortune teller, who is pretty much spot on legitimate.

** 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.

* 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.

 

* In the original comic, ''[[From Hell]]'', by [[Alan Moore]], one of the main characters reveals that he had been faking his psychic powers... yet every fake vision/prediction turned out to be true.

 

* Averted in ''[[Best in Show]]''. While the book does have a psychic, it does not involve any predictions that need skeptical treatment.

 

* While most of his friends believe in ghosts and a mind reading act, Tom is the one who reveals both to be frauds in the ''Great Brain'' books.

* You wouldn't expect an exception in a series that's all about wizards, but ''[[Harry Potter]]'' nonetheless has Hermione Granger utterly unconvinced by any of Trelawney's predictions or the Lovegoods' beliefs in creatures that, even by ''Harry Potter'' standards, are bizarre. The only correct Trelawney predictions are the ones Hermione doesn't hear in the first place, and the Lovegoods are right about exactly one thing the heroes didn't already know about ({{spoiler|the Deathly Hallows}}).

*** Actually, there's an entirely correct course of action for Hermione that Harry actually points out to her, and that she consistently refuses to do; that is, to take an agnostic attitude towards topics where she substantially lacks information. Or, in plain English, to not make up her mind that something is either proven ''or'' impossible until after she's finished investigating the possibility. But Hermione's consistent character flaw is being so proud that she knows so many things that she refuses to believe that she doesn't know everything.

*** Another example is when Harry reasons out his entire family tree, concluding that he's descended from a legendary trio of wizards. Hermione and Ron both think he's losing it. Granted, he was over-eager in his explanation, which was sort of hard to follow. But it was a sound argument nonetheless.

**** That one borders on [[Arbitrary Skepticism]] given that Harry actually is standing directly on top of written proof of his conclusions, and yet they still deny it.

 

* An interesting subversion comes up in ''[[The 4400]]'' where the show starts off with an event (4400 missing persons who disappeared over a span of 60 years suddenly reappearing, not a day older than when they left, in a ball of light near Seattle) so spectacular and public that not even the most skeptical can deny what has happened, yet everyone remains fairly skeptical about what caused it and what it means until the plot shows up to answer some questions.

* 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.

* ''[[NCIS]]'''s [[Perky Goth|Abby Sciuto]] occasionally floats a supernatural explanation for a death, because it would be cool, but eventually finds a mundane explanation. In one case, she made McGee collect corn stalks from a crop circle, and analyzed them for even the slightest anomaly, before she conceded they were fakes to throw investigators off.

 

* ''[[Scratches]]'' plays it with both sides: First, by reading the diaries and letters it is clear that the former owners of the mansion (where the game is set) were rational and intelligent people, subsequent findings show how they slowly began accepting supernatural explanations for everything that happened to them. The player character also starts experiencing strange unexplained phenomena culminating on fully embracing a supernatural solution, then a major twist occurs and a natural (and shocking) explanation presents. The Director's Cut goes even further by showing more evidence, but the final coda hints that there is still a missing piece while panning to the source of "the curse".

 

* ''[[Metalocalypse]]'', of course, as [[Skepticism Failure/Quotes|quoted]]. In a later episode, Dethklok one-upped even ''that'' by negotiating the standard [[Deal with the Devil]] contract down to a $5 Hot Topic gift card in exchange for options on the soul of ''the Blues Devil himself''.

* 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!"

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Index Failure]]

[[Category:Skepticism Failure]]