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One of the easiest ways to distinguish magical realism from other genres is the use given to the omniscient/omnipresent narrator device which can be used one way or another. Should the story be told from a first person perspective, then the work in question tends to side more with other genres. Another feature is that the magic which affects reality comes either from a plurality of sources, such as god, black magic, spirits, all at the same time; or from no source at all, being like the weather instead. It might be worthwhile to point that usually there is a strong correlation between magical realism and [[Surrealism]].
 
Magical realism is often [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|intentionally vague]], and (as in [[Franz Kafka (Creator)|Kafka's]] ''[[The Metamorphosis (Literature)|The Metamorphosis]]'') it can be hard to determine if the protagonist actually is experiencing magical phenomena, or if he's just going insane. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that the story takes place in some sort of mostly normal reality. To sum it up, magical realism is a story that takes place in an ordinary setting (this excludes futuristic space colonies, lost ancient cities et al.), incorporating spiritual elements (ghosts, spirits, angels, heavens, etc...) where extraordinary or even impossible things are viewed as normal and thus, nobody really bothers to explain why such things happen.
 
Also a helpful guideline (again, just a guideline, not a rule): with fantasy, often a character finds out the [[Broken Masquerade]]. However, everybody is the protagonist in their own story; what about the random [[Muggle]] who saw something really strange, but never gets an explanation? Well, that Muggle just got the point of view in [[Magical Realism]]. There may very well be vampires and wizards doing what they do, but the [[Masquerade]] is upheld. What's a [[Muggle]] to do after seeing a guy [[Immune to Bullets]]? Well, go about his life and do his thing of course. After all, magic doesn't exist, right? This is the essence of this genre.
 
The use of [[Magic Aa Is Magic A]] typically helps the audience accept the incongruity. [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone]] is also widespread.
 
Among some people, magical realism is sometimes misused as a term to explain why a work they liked is [[wikipedia:Literary fiction|"literary fiction"]], and thus [[Sci Fi Ghetto|allegedly somehow superior]] to [[wikipedia:Genre fiction|"genre fiction"]] like [[Fantasy]] and [[Science Fiction]]. On the other hand, the inclusion of well-written [[Magic Realism]] into the canons of [[Lit Fic]] is historically well supported, as [[Useful Notes/Latin America|Latin America]]'s major 20th-century authors mostly wrote in this genre. Indeed, the literary world outside of Latin America so closely associates the region with Magic Realism that the McOndo movement (for which see below) exists chiefly to prove that ''no'', not ''everything'' literary that comes from Latin America involves magic and angels.
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* If the cop just goes through his life as a cop, but his partner is a vampire, is greeted with "Hi, Mr. vampire!" by cheerful little children in the street, and casually drinks blood in plain sight out of transfusion packs during coffee breaks, it's a case of [[Mundane Fantastic]].
 
Not to be confused with [[Doing in Thethe Wizard]] where fantastical elements in an otherwise realistic setting are [[Handwavium|explained away]]. Compare [[How Unscientific]] but can have flavors of [[Domino Revelation]] if the supernatural starts to be revealed slowly.
{{examples}}
 
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* ''[[Haibane Renmei]]'' also fits. Yoshitoshi ABe is a huge fan of the genre.
* ''[[Nagasarete Airantou]]'' is a comedic first-class example. Ikuto, young man of the modern age and the main character finds himself on an island stuck -culturally, at any rate- in the late 19th century. Normal enough at first but before long he's rationalizing away the more... unconventional aspects of his new home, like magic, talking animals, youkai, etc.
* Despite being ostensibly sci-fi, the ''[[Aria (Manga)|Aria]]'' series incorporates the supernatural whenever cats are involved. {{spoiler|This includes time travel.}}
* ''[[Asatte no Houkou (Manga)|Asatte no Houkou]]'' - The setting is mundane except for the wishing stone that changes Karada and Shoukos' ages.
* The over arching plot and background of ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya (Light Novel)|Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' has elements of [[Magic Realism]] even though the individual pieces are [[Urban Fantasy]] and [[Science Fiction]]. This is due mainly to Haruhi's powers being very subtle and especially the lack of certainty about what is really a coincidence and what is outright alteration of reality.
* ''[[Lucky Star]]'' (anime only) dips into this once when the main character's dead mother visits her family as a ghost. This was later in a manga volume.
* ''[[School Rumble]]'' is a normal high school story with normal (if goofy) protagonists. Then Yakumo states that she can magically read people's minds. Another example where it's hard to tell if she really can, if she's just unusually good at reading people, or what.
* The crux of the plot of ''[[Death Note (Manga)|Death Note]]'' is a magical item from another world falling into the hands of an ordinary (albeit with some... personality quirks) human boy in our world and what he chooses to do with it. Aside from the Death Notes and shinigami, the world depicted in Death Note is highly realistic, and much of the plot focuses so heavily on the human characters using real-world methods and technology to try to catch the [[Villain Protagonist]] - and the magic itself is treated in such a mundane and almost scientific fashion - that you might occasionally forget that the plot is founded on the supernatural to begin with.
* ''[[The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service]]'' might seem like [[Urban Fantasy]] -- you've got a psychic, a hacker, a dowser, an embalmer and a channeller of aliens all in the business of physically transporting dead bodies to where ''the dead'' want to go -- but the setting is resolutely realistic, and they've got the [[Footnote Fever|footnotes to prove it]].
* ''[[Monster (Animemanga)|Monster]]'' is about the hunt for a [[Serial Killer]] who may or may not be [[The Antichrist]]. He has an almost supernatural talent for evading justice and detection, [[Complete Monster|despite having murdered probably hundreds of people over a decade,]] and he seems to have the ability to show other characters a visions of [[The End of the World Asas We Know It]], albeit on an individual only basis. Near the end, a character sees him as a dragon with multiple heads, another reference to [[The Antichrist]], but said character was drunk. The killer also survives (with surgery) two gunshot wounds to the head in separate incidents, once as a child, which is yet another reference and, further, which he survives with no obvious brain damage (he was already a murderous psychopath before he was shot), though he seems to have become a little more depressed in the intervening years. Most of the rest of the story in contrast is actually fairly realist.
* ''[[Tekkon Kinkreet]]'' has the main characters be able to fly/glide, alien assassins, and psychic bonds between brothers. None of this is explained or even really acknowledged.
* The works of [[Satoshi Kon]] offer lot of examples of this, specially in ''[[Paranoia Agent]]'' and ''[[Tokyo Godfathers]]''.
* ''[[Clannad (Visual Novel)|Clannad]]'' is mostly a slice-of-life romance in a realistic, present-day setting...Except for the [[Genki Girl]] in a coma somehow astral projecting herself whom only some can see, a cat who temporarily turns into a human boy and can grant one wish, a lonely world no-one can see that exists somewhere between the layers of our own, and the past being rewritten after years of tragedy, finally resulting in a happy ending.
* ''[[Kanon (Visual Novel)|Kanon]]'', another Key anime, is very similar: it's just a normal high school anime, except for the fox that turns into a human girl, the girl {{spoiler|with healing powers}} who fights invisible monsters with a sword, and (yet another) {{spoiler|girl in a coma projecting herself and magically producing a happy ending}}.
* ''[[Skip Beat (Manga)|Skip Beat]]!'' is a story about a girl who sets out to become a star in the Japanese entertainment industry, and follows her ups and downs, new friendships and possible romantic interests, and her burgeoning career. Said girl also has a demon army that gives her anger and resentment a voice and physical presence, and the resident esper is actually ''not'' a fake.
* Arguably the existence of personified countries in ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' would count, especially when their dynamics are played with.
* ''[[Helen ESP (Manga)|Helen ESP]]'' never explains the nature or origin of Helen's psychic powers, and they don't really change that much about her life.
* ''[[Da Capo]]''. The main character is a mage who jumps into people's dreams, there's also a magical cherry tree that grants wishes, a reality altering witch, mind readers, cats becoming human, a human sized cat that the girls see around town, and ever blooming cherry trees, and although it's a bit odd, nobody ever questions their reality.
* [[Mawaru Penguindrum]], where the main characters' souls are represented by penguins only they can see, aphrodisiac potions brewed from frogs really work, and key scenes take place on a strange, alternate version of the Tokyo subway all pass without much comment. For extra credit, the show makes several references to other examples of Magical Realism, such as [[Night Onon the Galactic Railroad]] and [[Haruki Murakami]]'s works.
 
 
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* ''[[Field of Dreams]]'': "If you build it, he will come."
** [[Your Mileage May Vary]]. Field of Dreams shares the same plot as many fantasy ghost stories: the undead communicate with the living in order to achieve a certain goal. Usually, these stories are in the horror genre and Field of Dreams is obviously a drama but otherwise, it's pretty standard.
* ''[[A Hard DaysDay's Night]]''. Most of it is realistic enough that viewers have mistaken it for a real [[Documentary]]; but there are a couple of segments which just cannot happen in even [[The Beatles]]' real life, and (this being a comedy) there isn't even a [[Hand Wave]] for why they happen.
* Nearly every film the Coen brothers make has at least some [[Magic Realism|Magic Realist]] elements, with ''[[O Brother, Where Art Thou?]]'', ''[[The Hudsucker Proxy]]'', and ''[[Barton Fink]]'' being the most obvious examples.
* The [[Film of the Book]] of ''[[Being There]]'' diverges from its source novel in this manner. Hal Ashby, the director, came up with {{spoiler|a different ending than the one scripted}} as a salute to how believable the actors were - since the audience would already accept Chance the Gardener becoming one of the most important men in the world in a matter of days simply through misunderstandings, then they would also accept {{spoiler|the final shot's revelation that he can literally [[Walk On Water]]. There's no explanation given as to how, and Chance is as surprised as the audience is; he even tests the depth of the water with his umbrella...but, being who he is, he accepts it right away as just something he can do.}}
* ''[[Groundhog Day (Film)|Groundhog Day]]'': [[Bill Murray]] gets stuck in a [[Groundhog Day Loop|weird time loop]], for which no explanation is ever offered.
** The original script had an ex-girlfriend curse him using a spell she found in a book.
** A possible example as [[Bill Murray]] often questions why it's happening and nobody believes him when he tells them.
* ''[[LAL.A. Story]]'', written by Steve Martin, applies many of the tropes of Magical Realism. What else can you call a story where a [[wikipedia:Variable message sign|variable-message sign]] on the highway offers a character advice on his love life?
* ''[[Liar Liar]]'': [[Be Careful What You Wish For]] forces [[Jim Carrey]] to tell the truth. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* '' [[PansPan's Labyrinth]]'' At first sight it might seem as a fairy tale, albeit not a happy one, once you take into account {{spoiler|that Orfelia might have just made everything up}} and add to the mix a mandragora... which is ignored by everyone since they are all too busy dealing with this little thing called the Spanish Civil War ... [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane|then it becomes less clear whether it's a straightforward fairy tale]].
** [[Word of God|Guillermo del Toro]] says that all the magical stuff actually happened.
* ''[[Stranger Than Fiction]]''. The movie is more or less like this, Harold is struggling with life, and the only magical thing is that he seems to be the main character of a book. The book in question also seems to have [[Magic Realism]] elements to it, as his watch becomes sentient for a second.
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* Take "magic realism," replace "magic" with "video game," and that's ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]''. Enemies have unique mystical powers, video game graphics show up and may even be interacted with by characters, and people explode into coins once bested in a duel. But otherwise, you know, just the normal lives of twenty-something Canadians. While these elements appeared in the graphic novel source material, the film revels in it all, maybe just because we see it all in motion.
* ''[[Big Fish]]''
* ''[[The Tin Drum (Literature)|The Tin Drum]]'' is both a novel and a film about a boy who [[Never Grew Up|never grew up]], [[No Infantile Amnesia|was perfectly aware while in the womb]], and can [[Make Me Wanna Shout|create destructive screams]]. While the book version of the character is [[Unreliable Narrator|likely insane]], the movie plays it straight. It's a historical/political drama.
* ''[[Don Juan Demarco|Don Juan DeMarco]]'': The [[Johnny Depp|title character]] is a mental patient, with delusions of living in a wonderful world full of romance and adventure. In the movie's final sequence, {{spoiler|he and a couple friends hop on a plane and go to that world.}}
* ''[[Picnic Atat Hanging Rock]]'': When the girls from a Victorian age Australian girl's school go on a picnic, some odd things happen.
* ''[[Midnight in Paris]]''. When [[Most Writers Are Writers|Gil Pender]] waits on a certain street corner of Paris at midnight, a car arrives and takes him to famous Paris locales [[Time Travel|in the 1920s]], where he spends his nights with people like Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. {{spoiler|In the 1920s, waiting in a certain spot allows the protagonist to travel to an even earlier era, and so on and so forth.}}
* Several sequences in ''[[Come and See]]'' are implausible and downright surreal, and intentionally so.
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* [[Diana Wynne Jones]] likes to play with this trope in most of her short stories. ''Plague of Peacocks'', ''Little Dot'', and ''Carruthurs'' are good examples. Even ''[[Dogsbody]]'' has this from Kathleen's point of view.
* [[Magical Realism]] is very prominent in 20th century Latin American literature. In fact, [[Magical Realism]] is so prevalent in Latin American literature that the [[wikipedia:McOndo|McOndo movement]] was formed specifically to distance itself from its clichés.
** [[Jorge Luis Borges (Creator)|Jorge Luis Borges]]' body of short stories pretty much invented [[Magical Realism]].
** Mexican Laura Esquivel's ''[[Like Water for Chocolate]]'', wherein the protagonist's feelings for her beloved are transferred into the food she is preparing, which her sister then eats, which causes her to literally burn up in passion -- she goes to use the outdoor shower and ends up ''setting it on fire'' before a soldier of the revolution rides by on horseback, scoops her up, and they have passionate sex while riding away on the horse.
*** Magical cooking is a popular concept for magical realism and "straight" fantasy both within and without Latin America. See also ''[[Chocolat]]'', for instance.
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*** And don't forget Rudolfo Anaya.
* ''And The Ass Saw the Angel'', by [[Nick Cave]], is either the paragon of [[Magical Realism]] or [[Unreliable Narrator|the narrator is even crazier than he seems]]. Or both.
* [[Franz Kafka (Creator)|Franz Kafka]]
* Italo Calvino is a famous Italian writer whose works skirted Magical Realism. His book ''[[Invisible Cities]]'' consisted entirely of [[The Travels of Marco Polo (Creator)|Marco Polo]] describing to Kublai Khan various cities he had visited which become less and less real as the book continues. These include a city where the buildings have washed away leaving only the pipes, a city where the streets are filled with soil instead of air, and a city which is never finished being built so that it cannot be destroyed.
* The ''[[Illuminatus|Illuminatus!]]'' trilogy and most of the other novels by Robert Anton Wilson tend to alternate between this genre and [[Science Fiction]]; the world is mostly as we know it, but there's usually some technology that can't exist in the era the stories are set in, such as a sentient computer in ''Illuminatus!''. There are always [[Psychic Powers]] as well, some more subtle than others.
* Writer George Saunders is big on this. In the short story collection ''CivilWarLand in Bad Decline'' he has several examples, as most of his stories are very dreamlike. In the title story, the main character works in a Civil War themed Amusement Park where he regularly encounters a family of ghosts who lived on the land during the Civil War. Another story features a man hounded by the ghost of a child who was killed due to his negligence. Other than these elements the stories are grounded in reality (if perhaps an overly bleak version of reality.)
* Walter M. Miller's ''[[A Canticle for Leibowitz]]'' seems to be straight post-apocalyptic [[Science Fiction]] -- except for the recurrent appearance, over intervals separated by centuries, of a character who is clearly the [[Wandering Jew]].
** Not to mention ''[[Tear Jerker|Rachel]] [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Grales]]''...
* Pick a Salman Rushdie novel. Any Salman Rushdie novel.
** Much of Salman Rushdie's ''[[Midnights Children (Literature)|Midnight's Children]]'' is considered Magic Realism, as the children in the title have various powers and abilities ranging from beauty capable of blinding people to an ability to physically hurt people with words.
* ''[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]'' is a normal life story and period piece, except the title character was born as an old man and ages backward.
* Virtually everything by [[Haruki Murakami]] falls into this category, along with [[Magic Aa Is Magic A]], [[Screw the Rules I Have Plot]], and [[How Unscientific]]. ''[[The Wind -Up Bird Chronicle]]'' and ''[[A Wild Sheep Chase]]'' are probably the best examples.
* ''[[The Time Travelers Wife]]''. [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin]], folks.
* A big portion of Etgar Keret's stories. Few examples: A winged man pretending to be an angel, several magicians [[Magicians Are Wizards|capable of real magic]], [[And I Must Scream|soldiers who got turned into body targets]], a guy with mind-controlling ability (who uses it to get laid) and a boy who can control ants (and uses them to take the school away).
* You could make a point for ''[[House of Leaves|House]] of Leaves'' as Magic Realism, but however you cut it, it sure has a way of straddling reality and unreality.
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* Sarah Addison Allen's books.
* Flemish writers Johan Daisne and especially Hubert Lampo.
* An unusual biographical example in ''[[Stranger Than Fiction: theThe Life Andand Times of Split Enz (Literature)|Stranger Than Fiction the Life And Times of Split Enz]]'', which chronicles the foundation and original run of the New Zealand band ''Split Enz''... oh, and [[God]] shows up at one point.
* Amos Tutuola's books depict magic realism in an African setting. The protagonists live in a world where they often come in contact with spirits of the Bush. A good example is ''[[The Palm Wine Drinkard]]''.
* Grooves: A Kind of Mystery by Kevin Brockmeier has a pretty normal world, but audio messages are encoded in such unusual things as the ripples on rippled potato chips and the texture of blue jeans. The message? "He's stealing the light from our eyes," which is literally what "he" was doing.
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* Elizabeth Goudge's children's novel ''Linnets and Valerians'' rides a boundary very carefully. Certain of the characters believe very much that magic, fairies, and curses exist as verifiable reality. Others don't, seeing only dreams, mystery, and coincidence. While many mysterious events happen over the course of the novel happen that might well be magical in nature, the characters (and reader) never quite get the final confirmation which interpretation is correct.
* The first part of Justine Larbalestier's ''Liar'' is like this. The reader is given subtle hints that Micah is a {{spoiler|werewolf}} but it is never touched on, the majority of the section focusing on Zach's murder. The second part is more explicitly fantasy.
* The novel ''[[Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire (Literature)|Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire]]'' tends to blur the line between reality and folklore.
* Sharyn McCrumb's ''Ballad'' novels, sliceoflife/mysteries set in rural North Carolina featuring Nora Bonesteel an old woman who has "The Sight".
* Happens in two of [[Jodi Picoult]]'s books. In ''Change of Heart'', Shay Bourne is somehow able to cure one of his cellmates of AIDS and cause water to turn into wine. In fact, a priest specifically sees him as [[Messianic Archetype|a Jesus-analogue]]. The main focus of the book, however, is on the ramifications of the death penalty. The trope is in fact double-subverted because some of his miraculous acts have mundane explanations, but then the little girl who he donated his heart to miraculously brings her dog back to life. In ''Harvesting the Heart'', Paige has the ability to draw pictures of people and weave some of their hidden memories or desires into the drawing. The focus of that book is mainly on Paige's problems with being a mother.
* In contrast to his better-known works, [[JRRJ. TolkienR. (Creator)R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] uses this trope in the fragment ''[[The History of Middle Earth (Literature)|The Notion Club Papers]]''.
* [[Ray Bradbury]] relies on this fairly often when not writing straightforward science fiction. The most obvious example is "Uncle Einar", possibly an homage to the Marquez story mentioned above.
* While Janet Evanovich's ''[[Stephanie Plum]]'' series mostly avoids this (except for Morelli's Great Aunt Bella whose curses are a case of [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]) the holiday oriented subseries feture Diesel (now with his own series), a magical bounty hunter who specializes in chasing "specials" (people with mutant powers) gone bad.
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* Diana Gabaldon's ''[[Outlander]]'' series, which would be a normal historical romance set in the 18th century if one of the two main characters wasn't from the 20th.
* Jo Walton's ''Among Others'' about a Welsh girl in an English boarding school trying, with the occasional help of the faerie to cope with life and the psychic attacks of her mother, an evil witch.
* [[Michael Chabon (Creator)|Michael Chabon]]'s ''[[Summerland (Literature)|Summerland]]'' starts out as this. It revolves around a quirky little island community where it always rains (but always has inexplicably perfect weather at the local baseball field), and includes a [[Bungling Inventor]] who builds miniature airships, a teenage boy who's convinced that he's an android, and a 109 year-old retired baseball player. Then the [[Save the World]] plot starts, and it makes a [[Genre Shift]] into full-on [[High Fantasy]].
* Bruce Sterling's ''Zeitgeist'' set in the midst of [[Y 2 K]] hysteria and featuring one [[The Trickster|"Leggy" Starlitz]] and his [[Magical Girl|rather odd daughter]].
 
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** Don't forget, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHBg0pA-2o God likes Rose]
* The unfortunately [[Too Good to Last]] Fox sitcom ''[[Key West]]'' was, in its time, one of the best examples of this on television.
* The [[Britcom|British]] [[Sit ComSitcom]] ''[[Two Point Four Children2point4 (TV)children|Two Point Four Children]]'' is a prime example. It is a perfectly mundane show, with the exception of the strange things that happen to the mother, Bill Porter. Like the number of prophetic dreams she's had, or the time she found herself chased... by a hurricane (the storm literally followed her when she left Miami to avoid it, and was also named Hurricane Bill).
** Odd things occasionally happen to her husband as well. Yes, it's ''possible'' that his [[Sitcom Arch Nemesis]] (who's a ''[[The Prisoner]]'' fan) might kidnap him and leave him in Portmerion ... but then Rover appears...
** And the man on the motorcycle who kept appearing whenever Bill needed help and who may actually have been {{spoiler|[[Dead All Along]]}}.
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** And Angela's psychic may have been more than just deluded.
* ''[[Felicity]]'' broke into this by the end. The main character can't decide between Ben and Noah? Simple; her Wiccan friend will cast a spell that sends her back in time a few years so she has enough time to figure everything out. Yes, kids, J.J. Abrams created it.
* ''[[NCIS (TV)|NCIS]]'' is about as grounded in reality as they come, except for the slightly surreal season four finale, where Jeanne is implied to see the [[The Grim Reaper|Angel of Death]], in the form of a small child. At the end Jeanne mentions the girl and is told that it was a girl who was lost and whose parents were looking for her, so it seems like this is subverted, but then we see the girl... and she looks nothing like the one Jeanne saw before.
** Plus Gibbs' infallible instincts.
*** And his ability to get a boat out of his basement.
*** Be fair, no one really knows for sure what happened to the boat. He may have simply broken it down and started over. Both this and his instincts are justified by [[Rule of Funny]].
* Even ignoring Zack's [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|fourth wall breaking powers]] ''[[Saved Byby the Bell]]'' had some weird stuff going on including an apparently sapient robot and a lightning strike causing a character to temporarily gain precognition.
** ''Speaking'' of the fourth wall powers. Zack could actually say "Time out," and ''everything but him stops,'' and he usually does this to talk to the audience, but he ''was'' capable of actually moving things around while time was frozen, and once quickly used "time out" to avoid being punched in the face. It's not a gag that "doesn't count" story-wise; ''Zack Morris has for-real time altering powers.''
* It's sketchy, but ''[[Lost]]'' fits the definition of [[Magical Realism]] better than it does any other type of [[Speculative Fiction]]. When you boil it down, ''Lost'' is the story of some [[Abusive Parent|seriously]] [[The Woobie|dysfunctional]] [[Dark and Troubled Past|people]] who get stuck together, forge some real connections, figure out how to survive in a hostile environment, [[Character Development|become better people]] and eventually let go of their issues. This story just happens to take place on [[Lost World|an island]] that's been known to move through space and time, can heal people, and is home to ghosts and people with immortality (among other things).<ref>And just so [[Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch|you lot]] are clear, there was absolutely nothing magical or supernatural about [[Misplaced Wildlife|the polar bear]].</ref>
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' sometimes verges into this territory, including events that waver between magical and highly unlikely. (Dopplegangers, some of Barney's schemes.) However, the show can always fall back on the fact that Ted has been established as an [[Unreliable Narrator|unreliable narrator]], leaving it unclear which events happened exactly as described and which have been embellished or misremembered.
** Also, a couple of season five episodes have Marshall seemingly time-traveling as minor elements.
* ''[[Pushing Daisies]]'' was weird about this: the premise is that the main character can bring the dead back to life, so it's clearly [[Urban Fantasy]], but that's the ''only'' explicitly magical element. The rest of the world is a Magic Realism-esque one: there's a car that runs on dandelions, two characters who can [[Sherlock Scan]] by smell and a jockey who {{spoiler|had the legs of his dead horse transplanted into his body to replace his own}}, but none of this is treated as magical, unlike the protagonist's necromancy.
* ''[[Life On Mars]]'' and its spin-off ''[[Ashes to Ashes]]''.
* There has been at least one ghost (maybe) and an alleged vampire on the otherwise reality-based ''[[Diagnosis Murder (TV)|Diagnosis Murder]].''
* The ghosts that visit Tommy in ''[[Rescue Me]]'' may or may not be real.
* ''[[Night Court]]'' was packed with examples of this trope.
* ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' does this with the Rambaldi artifacts with which Arvin Sloan has an obsession. They do things that are on the border of magic and technology, and are never fully explained. In the series finale, {{spoiler|the Rambaldi artifacts become clearly magical, as they preserve Sloan alive forever, trapped underground.}} J.J. Abrams, y'all.
* ''[[The Unusuals]]'' is an otherwise completely normal (if quirky) cop show that has a character who receives occasional prophetic messages from fortune cookies and, in the pilot, is the recipient of a ''[[Pulp Fiction]]''-style miracle. And then there's the episode "42," which seems to indicate that a psychic they question can really see the future.
* While ''[[The Suite Life of Zack and Cody]]'' was firmly based in reality, ''On Deck'' and [[The Movie]] started introducing more fantastical elements. Possibly to make it fit better in the same universe as the less realistic ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]''.
** Don't forget that ''[[The Suite Life of Zack and Cody]]'' had the boys travel to an alternate universe and come back with a coin from said universe thus proving it to not be a dream, a ghost haunting the hotel, [[That's So Raven|Raven]] visiting with her psychic powers and Arwin building a robot.
* The real world portions of [[Once Upon a Time (TV series)|Once Upon a Time]] are this. the Fairy world portions are of course much more explicitly magical.
* ''[[American Horror Story]]''
* Kenneth in [[Thirty30 Rock]] is [[Really Seven Hundred Years Old]]. This is played totally as a [[Running Gag]].
* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'': The time travel stuff and the seldom-seen future setting of [[Mission Control]] were the only non-mundane features of the universe, as the bulk of an episode was the mission to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong]] in the lives of normal people. "That guy runs someone over on Friday if he keeps up the illegal street-racing; help him learn his lesson before then" was the usual mission rather than "prevent [[World War Three]]." But we once met the devil, and once had Sam leap into a vampire. He also met a ghost and an angel.
* If Halloween specials count, every sitcom in ABC's TGIF line ran into the supernatural but its characters never saw fit to mention it during the rest of the year or adjust their worldview knowing that [[Boy Meets World|Cory]] traveled through time or that [[Step Byby Step|TJ]] got dating advice from a ghost.
* Another "the fantastic exists, but not ''that'' kind" example: ''[[Power Rangers Time Force]]'' shares [[The Verse]] with magic-based teams, but that particular series was all sci-fi - good guys were a [[Heroes-R-Us]] organization, bad guys were [[Gattaca Babies]] [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]. However, the Yellow Ranger meets the ghost of a previous owner of their clock tower. The ghost is gone once she ends up changing history and giving him a happy ending, and there's some question as to whether or not any of it happened, but we get the [[Or Was It a Dream?]] reveal with a painting that is now different.
 
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== Video Games ==
 
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''. Real world setting, real guns, walking robots, magical floating psychics, autotrophic snipers, bee men, ghosts, and a bisexual, flamenco-dancing vampire. The original title featured a collection of [[Charles Atlas Superpower]] bosses, the [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] of which was a floating, fourth-wall breaking psychic. Later games would expand upon this with a steady increase of [[Magic Realism]]. ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'' dabbled with [[Doing in Thethe Wizard]], but official [[Word of God]] is that Vamp was still immortal in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'' and Ocelot {{spoiler|''was'' possessed, but had the arm removed and started faking possession instead}}.
* ''[[No More Heroes]]'' seems to take place in a fairly dull Californian city. Except for the fact that the protagonist purchases a functioning lightsaber on eBay and proceeds to off progressively more bizarre assassins. At one point {{spoiler|his mentor dies, but afterward the mentor's ghost continues his job working at the gym.}} No one seems to find any of this at all odd.
** Of course, this is from the same mind that brought us ''[[Killer 7]]'', a political thriller starring a man who can transform into seven different people, see and speak to the dead, and fight exploding monsters that possess human bodies. And then there's ''[[No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle]]'', which has Travis Touchdown using dimension warps and fighting ghosts, among other things.
* In the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series, spirit channeling exists but is totally incidental to most cases and really just a way for Phoenix to get help from his [[The Obi-Wan|dead mentor]]. {{spoiler|Except in the cases where spirit channeling was directly involved with the murder.}}
** And then, there's Apollo and Trucy, who both have superhuman perception, which basically makes them living Lie-Detectors.
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*** Though they may have the gene that permits advanced perception, Apollo still has a bracelet that reacts when it senses that someone is feeling tense.
* A recurring element in the ''[[Sly Cooper]]'' series. Mojo and ghosts exist, and raising the dead nets you a life sentence in prison.
* The entire ''[[MOTHER]]''/''[[Earthbound (Video Game)|Earthbound]]'' series has definite elements of [[Magic Realism]], which are especially prominent in ''[[Mother 3 (Video Game)|Mother 3]]''.
* The game of ''[[The Darkness]]'' is about a mafia hitman who just so happens to become possessed by a millenia-old demon that grants him superpowers. The main focus of the plot is still his quest for vengeance against the entirely mortal don who betrayed him.
* ''[[Silent Hill: Shattered Memories]]'' follows an ordinary man journeying through a realistic town... which periodically turns to ice and spawns hideous monsters. Exactly what is causing these things to happen is never fully explained (merely implied, and ambiguously so at that).
** Heck, the [[Silent Hill]] series as a whole. There are various explanations, but they're ambiguous, or contradictory, or there are elements in place suggesting that things aren't quite as they seem.
*** It's not [[Magic Realism]] at all. Regarding Shattered Memories, {{spoiler|None of it happened. It's a metaphor. Cheryl, the protagonist's daughter, is sitting on the couch in the psychiatrist's office. The real protagonist, Harry Mason, died in a car accident some time ago. The player's actions follow a symbolic - and absolutely not literal - [[Journey to Thethe Center of Thethe Mind]] of the conflict in Cheryl. The game uses the player's actions during that journey to try to guess the ''player's'' nature, and then tries to tailor that journey to pull a [[Player Punch]]. Whether it succeeds is up to each player.}} Also, the town and setting is clearly not realistic. The town's residents can be counted on one's fingers, despite some pretty big apartment buildings. There's quite a bit of [[Chaos Architecture]] in Shattered Memories (and the rest of the series). As for the others, Silent Hill I and [[Silent Hill Homecoming]] both have endings which could allow the events to have been fictional or a [[Dying Dream]], but if Silent Hill I is a dying dream, then Silent Hill III could not happen. Silent Hill II's, III's, IV's, and Origin's endings all accept that the events in question ''did'' happen, and only the final outcomes could be in doubt (joke endings excluded). They also lack the restraint that [[Magic Realism]] requires. Blood splattered trips to a hellish alternate reality populated by things which would make Giger wet himself are ''not'' a feature of [[Magical Realism]].
* ''[[Pathologic]]''. The setting is realistic, the characters are very human, one of the playable characters has [[Lovecraftian Superpower|Lovecraftian Super Powers]]. There are a bunch of medicine men wrapped head to toe in bandages who sell herbs that grow from blood. There are loads of children walking around without parents, and occasionally wearing the dead heads of dogs as masks. [[Nightmare Fuel|Disease clouds attack you. They come in the form of horrendous, symbolic abominations]]. We haven't even discussed the rather meta theater themes...
 
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== Webcomics ==
 
* ''[[Shortpacked (Webcomic)|Shortpacked]]'' is an interesting example. The previous webcomic by the same author, ''It's Walky'', was straight-out science-fiction adventure about a group of alien-abductee government agents. ''Shortpacked'' exists in the same world, but in a much more mundane setting -- a toy store. Thus, the elements that took center stage in ''It's Walky'' are pushed to the edges, and the genre shifts to [[Magical Realism]].
** Since the weirdness ''does'' have a canon explanation in [[The Verse]], just not in that series, it's more like [[All There in the Manual]]. Except replace "manual" with "[[Archive Binge|the entire archives of several previous comic strips]]".
* ''[[Pictures for Sad Children]]'' is mainly about the pressures of modern life and the clash between the opposite sides of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]]. The main characters are Paul, a recently-deceased [[Bedsheet Ghost]], and Gary, whose extended family was recently revealed to collectively possess the same powers as [[The Bible|Jesus]].
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*** Though that's still no excuse for why {{spoiler|the Troll universe follows the same mechanics.}}
**** That's because {{spoiler|the Troll universe would have been created by 36 players from a previous game, following the pattern that the game has. The Trolls created the Kids' universe, where there are only 4 players. It's a big confusing loop.}}
* ''[[Penny Arcade]]'' is a [[Two Gamers Onon a Couch]] comic set in what is nominally the real world, although sometimes Jesus Christ comes over to play ''[[Mario Kart (Video Game)|Mario Kart]].''
* In ''[[The DevilsDevil's Panties]]'', which is mostly slice-of-life, the main character occasionally chats with both Jesus and the devil, her shoulder angel and devil seem to have lives of their own and one of her roommates used to keep [[Lord of the Rings|Legolas]] naked and locked in a closet.
* ''[[Think Before You Think]]'' happens in a normal world, but the main character can read minds, and he is the only one, as far as we know.
 
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