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{{trope}}
[[File:weirdness-
{{quote|''"Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity [[In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves|when trying to destroy itself]]."''
▲[[File:weirdness-censor_buffy_145.png|link=Buffy the Vampire Slayer|right|<small> "This is our year. If we can focus, keep discipline, and [[Bread Eggs Milk Squick|not have quite as many mysterious deaths,]] Sunnydale is gonna rule!" </small> ]]
|'''The Seventh Doctor''', ''[[Doctor Who]]''}}
In some universes, ignoring the antics of the main characters goes beyond [[Somebody
▲{{quote|''"Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingenuity [[In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves|when trying to destroy itself]]."''|'''The Seventh Doctor''', ''[[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]]''}}
▲In some universes, ignoring the antics of the main characters goes beyond [[Somebody Elses Problem|somebody else's problem]]. It seems that with your average person, their attention span is wholly taken up with the gray mundanity of their everyday lives. They simply ''refuse'' to see anything too strange.
Sometimes invoked for seriousness, such as an explanation in which exploits go on ignored by most people... but often, this is just ''one'' part of the [[Rule of Funny]]. Magic battles, alien invasions, and all other sorts of supernatural happenings often happen ''right'' in front of people's faces... and yet they merely glance out the window, and go back to their morning coffee, sometimes either not noticing it or just saying some excuse.
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If it's ignored because they're incapable of seeing it, it's [[Invisible to Normals]]. Compare [[Bavarian Fire Drill]], which exploits similar psychological tendencies. Contrast the [[Fisher Kingdom]], where the world itself is the censor. Frequently [[Pink Elephants]] are invoked when the only evidence of the character's having drunk anything is what he claims to have seen that is being dismissed as a hallucination.
One of many things that enables the [[Masquerade]], especially its [[Extra
This can sometimes lead to [[Artificial Atmospheric Actions]] where NPCs merely treat all sorts of odd stuff as an everyday occurrence.
Also see [[City of Weirdos]].
{{examples|Examples:}}▼
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Ah
▲* ''[[Ah My Goddess (Manga)|Ah My Goddess]]'': No matter how pyrotechnic the magic, the antics of the goddesses and demons never draw the police (or possibly the Army). Not even [[Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever|humongous monsters]] like Garm. This was explained in the manga as the townspeople being desensitized to weirdness due to the neighborhood kids pulling off epic level pranks on a regular basis, or some similar [[Hand Wave]].
** They ''do'' live in the same town as a technical engineering college. If those people get bored enough, they can disassemble your car and then reassemble it. Inside your living room.
** Amazingly enough, the fire brigade actually turned up in one
* ''[[
* The citizens of the ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' universe seem to quickly get over the fact that several towns and cities suddenly explode when a [[Monster of the Week]] comes by. In one episode, Nappa is seen destroying a naval fleet sent out to stop him, but after that, the military is never seen retaliating against future villains other than against Perfect Cell.
** Perhaps the most blatant example of this was how the entire world became convinced that Cell was just a monster and chi attacks were just special effects. This despite the fact that not two decades earlier one of those special effects ''blew up the moon on global television''.
** The military also goes up again Majin Buu, before sending in [[Fake Ultimate Hero|Mr. Satan]].
* In ''[[Sailor Moon]] SuperS'', a gigantic evil circus tent appears right in the middle of Tokyo, in obvious plain view. Among the other random massive evil fortresses and demonic whatnots that show up in the middle of that same city in other seasons. Part of what makes this one stand out in the show is a lack of this problem in most cases: the evil base in the first season was underground in Antarctica, the base is second season was on a distant planet in the far future, the base in the third season is a covert underground lab, and in the fifth it appears to be located in another dimension. The circus thing was actually [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] by [[Monster of the Week|the Lemures]] immediately after its appearance - they mocked the citizens for not noticing it.
* In ''[[Ikki Tousen]]'' nobody seems to care that students attack each other's high schools and commit openly visible acts of extreme violence. You'd at least expect that the police would try to intervene - or that the army would be called in to do something about the genocide that's taking place.
** In the manga a doctor commented in it being more or less a bunch of delinquents beating each-other to death. He seems to be the only one that has noticed.
* In ''[[Windy Tales]]'', almost nobody notices the huge amounts of cats that ''fly around'' on air streams, not even when they're cluttered together in a huge ball consisting of dozens of them during a typhoon.
* In ''[[Princess Tutu]]'', the typical townsperson (and the majority of the main cast in the beginning) doesn't question any of the "odder" stuff that goes on in Kinkan, including ballerina-dancing Anteaters (and other anthropomorphic animals). Even visitors to the town are
* Nobody seems to notice their friends strange behavior and obvious paranoia, or at least do anything about it, in the answer arcs of ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro
** {{spoiler|This trope is subverted in Tatarigoroshi-hen, or actually ''any'' arc where they try to save Satoko. In Tataragiroshi-hen in particular, Rena and Mion notice Keiichi's paranoia, unlike Onikakushi-hen, and try to cover his actions up.}}
** And in ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has this is spades early on when it seems like the even with [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight
{{quote|
''[[Muggle]] 2: A-a-ah, I see, sure [nod].''
''[[Muggle]] 3: [nod] yep yep''
''[[Meta Guy|Chisame]]: Wait a second! You punks! Doesn't that seem weird to you!?'' }}
** In volumes 1 and 9, a spell version (like a [[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|Somebody Else's Problem Field]]) is mentioned to be used by mages when they do or discuss magic publicly, and don't want to be found out. In vol. 9. Asakura runs head first into it when she and Sayo try to follow Negi, and describes it as a sudden desire ''not'' to go into the area protected by it (Sayo, as a Ghost, is unaffected). Once she's noticed the effect, she can resist it, but is physically straining to do so the further in she goes.
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** Although, there are occasions where the fights actually caused damage to nearby structures, which is hardly ever mentioned. The only times it's mentioned is in the first episode, where a Hollow breaks the glass on a nearby building, (only Ichigo can see what did it). Also when Shinji fights Grimmjow, he mentions that their fight is breaking the roofs of houses and asks him to be more careful.
** It's implied by Yumichika that Soul Society actually factors in this sort of damage into their missions- when the battle against Grimmjow's Fraccion seems to be getting more heated than expected, he calls up [[Mission Control]] telling them to set a 'spatial freeze' around the battling shinigami and add repairs to the mission budget.
* ''[[Detective Conan]]''. In order for [[The Masquerade]] to be sustained, there are [[Elephant in
* Used maybe as irony in ''[[Code Geass]]'': "You will disregard any strange events." The geassed people usually reply if they're asked why they're not doing anything about a crisis situation, or even reassure themselves, or warn the watcher that they are geassed with the line "I see nothing out of the ordinary."
* In ''[[Uta Kata]]'' nobody wonders about the tsunami that threatens Kamakura out of the blue, or about the fact that it is deflected by a flying, screaming young girl.
* In the anime version of ''[[Prétear]]'', Shin's spell Beyondios creates a [[Phantom Zone|dimensional zone]] wherein the Leafe Knights can fight Demon Larvae without destroying nearby real estate. Obviously this is impossible to do when Shin isn't around, or when the monsters can't be placed under the shield for whatever
* In ''[[Venus Versus Virus]]'', only a few people can see a Virus. Not only that, the Virus likes to attack people who are able to see it.
* Played with in ''[[Love
* In ''[[Mononoke]]'' almost no one takes notice of the Medicine Seller's [[Facial Markings]], [[Cute Little Fangs]] and [[Pointed Ears]]. Only once does anyone remark upon his unusual clothing. Usually, the most anyone notices about him is that he's very attractive.
* ''[[
* Much of the humor in [[Buso Renkin]] stems from the fact that the author took all the usual components of sci-fi superhero series, reached over to switch labeled "Weirdness Censor" and flipped it to "off." All of this is completely unknown to the main cast (except Tokiko, who lampshades it occasionally) who behave as flamboyantly as possible, fully believing that the Weirdness Censor is in full effect.
* This is often played for laughs in the typically bizarre world of [[One Piece]]. Particularly because the captain of the Strawhat Pirates, who is ''literally'' [[Rubber Man|made of rubber]], and who has recruited a large cast of truly freaky charaters into his crew, finds extremely random things to be weird. For example, he has a talking reindeer as his ship's doctor, but is shocked and baffled to meet a talking bear on another crew.
* Lampshaded in the yaoi manga Sex Pistols: any "Madararui talk" overheard by the "normal" humans is automatically and subconsciously discarded. The art plays it literal for laughs: inside the normal people thought-clouds, a paper with "Madararui talk" written on it is crushed into a ball and then thrown into a garbage bin.
* In ''[[Berserk]]'', this explains why normal people literally [[Invisible to Normals|cannot see supernatural creatures]] of the less-antagonizing variety, as people only bother to remember what they can explain (or what's not trying to rape and eat them).
== Comic Books ==
* The plot of the comic ''[[Black Hole]]'' centers around a sexually transmitted disease that horribly mutates high school students, yet none of their parents, teachers or, indeed, any adults in the town seem to realize or do anything about it.
* In ''[[The Invisibles]]'', it is revealed that babies are capable of seeing all kinds of strange beings and concepts but lose the ability once they learn [[Newspeak|language]], which makes it impossible for them to express these concepts and thus impossible for them to register them in their heads.
** The same is used in ''[[Mary Poppins]]'' with the twins.
* A running joke in the ''[[
* Up until the "Gang War" storyline several years ago, the writers of DC [[
* ''[[Aztek]]'', for [[DC Comics]], is about a technologically enhanced superhero working in the town of Vanity. Aztek's support group, believing his existence will help save the earth, employ active weirdness censors to help him out. Shouting out his secrets in the halls of his workplace does nothing.
* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]''
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* In [[Doctor Strange]], Magic is frequently explained away by "they must be shooting a movie." People still get out of Dr Strange's way, but they don't understand why. (see Strange Tales vI#120 (May, 1964))
** Amusingly, sometimes Doc and his associates have to chase down misbehaving magic, since the dragon/ogre/giant rabbit is something "even Greenwich Village would notice."
* In the first arc of the ''[[Zatanna]]'' solo series, detective Dale Colton explains to Zatanna that people have a lot of trouble accepting the truth about magic, even though Zatanna herself is a world-famous [[Stage Magician]] with [[
== Eastern Animation ==
* In ''[[His Wife Is a Hen]]'', the husband is completely unaware his wife is a hen, despite the fact that she makes no effort whatsoever to hide it.
==
* The villain uses a actual device to keep up the [[Masquerade]] at his hideout in ''[[The Man
▲* The villain uses a actual device to keep up the [[Masquerade]] at his hideout in ''[[The Man With No Name (Fanfic)|The Man With No Name]]'', similar to what the [[Doctor Who (TV)|TARDIS]] has.
== Film ==
* Occurs quite often in the [[Spider-Man (film)|''Spider-Man'']]
** The only time they could clearly see Peter Parker doing any of that stuff was the fight he got into. Other than that, you had some guy jumping on roofs once that someone might have seen at a distance or not, and Spider-Man in a worse costume doing wrestling. Maybe it would have been possible to get a hint of his identity by tracking clues through the wrestling establishment, but it wasn't evident from any other character's perspective these isolated incidents were tied together.
** He does get unmasked on the L train in ''
* ''[[Transformers]]'' in any number of incarnations sometimes pushes this pretty far. How can people not see the ''giant alien robots''?
** In one early (possibly the earliest) incarnation, a few episodes after the Decepticons became active on Earth it seems the entire planet is put on a war footing, factories pumping out weapons intended to be used in the war against them, complete with old-fashioned propaganda posters.
** The [[Transformers Generation
** [http://www.moviemistakes.com/film5953/corrections Moviemistakes.com], correcting a submission for the [[Transformers Film Series|live-action film]]: "This isn't a movie mistake; the passengers [of a car turned into a Transformer - its steering wheel, at least -] ARE oblivious to the fact that giant robots are destroying their city."
* Mentioned in the background material for the ''[[The Matrix]]'' films. Apparently (it's not well conveyed on-screen) as well as the The Matrix's ability to revert an area and people's memories to remove an incident from history, the leads are supposed to have a "bubble effect" which prevents passers-by ([[NPC
* The ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' franchise sometimes takes this trope to extreme levels. Despite the Ghostbusters very public defeat of Gozer in the first movie, a judge in the second movie still referred to them as conmen, making one wonder "Did he NOT see the 50 feet tall marshmallow man?" Another example is in the first episode of ''[[
** The spinoff cartoon ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]'' had averted this trope by portraying the world as largely accepting the existence of the supernatural and the legitimacy of the Ghostbusters after the first movie. This made things awkward when the cartoon writers tried to work ''Ghostbusters 2'''s story, in which the public had initially gone back to treating the Ghostbusters like frauds, into the cartoon timeline. The results were so awkward, in fact, that the effort was quietly dropped after one season.
** ''[[
* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[IT]]'', despite the fact that Derry has had far, ''far'' more child deaths, arsons, psychotic breaks, and industrial accidents than is healthy for a small town, no one notices it's out of the ordinary because It does something to the townspeople. It gets to the point where the characters wonder if It has become part of Derry, or if Derry's just always been an extension of It. Given that, in the book at least, {{spoiler|It's destruction is immediately followed by Derry falling apart (literally!)}}, the latter seems more likely.
* In ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'', Shaun goes a whole day (actually, a whole morning) without noticing the countless zombies wandering London.
** This is actually a big huge lampshade hanging and [[Affectionate Parody]] of z-movies that give hints to the viewer (but not the characters) about the oncoming [[Zombie Apocalypse]]. The "hints" here are made comedically obvious to the viewer, yet the character manages to stay unaware of them through a variety of often [[Genre Savvy]] yet always unintentional means.
* Averted in ''[[
* In the first ''[[Blade]]'', no one even glances at the dude driving the souped-up muscle car, with the funny hair and tats, dressed in a black leather duster with a sword handle sticking out of it. He beats up a uniformed cop on a populated street in broad daylight and no one cares.
** This is inverted in ''Blade 3'', which admittedly had some plot holes, where the vampires use a recording of Blade shooting a human masquerading as a vampire with a stake gun in a public street.
* ''[[The Sixth Sense]]'' is a weird
* In prose, at least early on, the police denied that the Shadow existed, claiming he just represented a contemporary rumor. In the 1994 Alec Baldwin film, a woman scoffs at the Shadow as just a rumor to get people to listen to the radio and read newspapers. (Earlier, the Shadow, while as Lamont Cranston at the Cobalt Club, used his powers of suggestion to dissuade Commissioner Wainright Barth from assigning his officers to investigate the rumors of the Shadow.)
* "[[Iron Man|Just a regular training exercise.]]"
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* In ''[[Guyver]]: Dark Hero'', a newspaper headline reads "Verdict Still Out on Armored Vigilante" perhaps indicating that much of the public has not accepted him more than a rumor.
* In one of the ''[[Darkman]]'' sequels, a newspaper headline refers to Darkman as "an urban Bigfoot", suggesting that the public thinks of him as a rumor.
* In ''[[
* Notably and hilariously averted in the diner scene in ''[[When Harry Met Sally...]]''.
* The [[X-Men (
** Justified in that mutants are a minority who mostly try to keep their powers a secret. As such, seeing them use their powers would be unusual even if you knew they existed.
* In ''High Anxiety'' wanted Richard Thorndyke invokes this trope when he tells Brisbane that people tend to ignore strange things so they start to behave obnoxiously (in the most over-the top way possible) to pass the customs unnoticed.
* In the ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' franchise, the weirdness censor is Dr. Jones himself. This serves also as a disclaimer that the movies are not what real archaeology is about.
* One of the primary responsibilities of the [[Men in Black (
* In ''[[The Howling]]'', there is a live werewolf transformation on the evening news. Many of the locals pass it off as special effects.
== Literature ==
* In ''[[The
▲* In ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'', this tendency has been harnessed and distilled into a device called the [[Somebody Elses Problem|Somebody Else's Problem]] field. An example is given of a man who lost a bet about making a mountain disappear when people noticed a suspicious extra [[That's No Moon|moon]] - it would have been much simpler to just paint the mountain pink and put an SEP field on it.
** In the final book in the series, Arthur ends up on a planet that has a race of birds that ignore everything out of the ordinary that happens around them. For example, they fail to notice a giant crashing spaceship. On the flip side, everything normal comes as a huge shock to them. In the author's own words: "...and the sunrise always took them completely by surprise."
* In ''[[Harry Potter]]'' the entrance to Diagon Alley, a street filled with shops for wizards, is hidden behind a pub called The Leaky Cauldron which muggles never notice because they don't pay attention to their surroundings and don't expect it to be there. Though with memory charms, "Muggle repelling wards" and the charms that make Hogwarts [[Invisible to Normals|look like a pile of rubble]], it's not so much that Muggles wilfully ignore magic as that any interaction with magic tends to involve them getting parts of their cortex melted.
** Arthur Weasley also notes that [[Muggles]] who are the victims of such magical prankings as shrinking keys will always insist that they simply lost them.
{{quote|
* This is a big part of [[
** Perhaps in the later stories by other authors; Lovecraft's own stories involved people being traumatized and unable to ''forget'' the weirdness that they encounter, even if it was just a photograph, a shadowy image, or a cloaked figure.
** In Lovecraft's stories, the terrible truth is normally so out of sight people don't need to censor it... except perhaps in the form of not acknowledging how vast the cosmos is and how little they know. The stories tend to be about when it ''does'' come into view.
* In the ''[[Narnia]]'' book ''The Magician's Nephew'', Uncle Andrew is incapable of believing animals can talk. When he encounters animals talking, the narrator takes glee in describing how Andrew's own
* ''The Last Battle'' has another instance set after Narnia's end, where the dwarves eat delicious food in a beautiful meadow but perceive it as stale bread in a muckhole due to their cynical incapability to accept the paradise.
* In ''The Voyage of Dawn Treader'', after entering Narnia Eustace Scrubb seems completely certain he is still in Britain despite the fact that he was ''pulled through a picture in the wall''.
{{quote|
"[Eustace] said that at the first port he would 'lodge a disposition' against them all with the British Council" }}
* The wizards in the ''[[Young Wizards]]'' series depend on this to get away with doing some forms of magic out in the open. The bullies can't hit you because your spell is deflecting their blows? They convince themselves that they didn't ''want'' to hit you, because invisible force fields are impossible. Vanish off a subway platform via teleporting? Whoever saw you thinks you simply moved deeper into the crowd while they weren't looking.
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** It helps that the people who do outright report what they have seen tend to be dismissed at best, or tossed into the loony bin, or in certain cases attacked by the very things they witnessed. A good example of this is the coroner, Butters, who reports that several bodies he examined were clearly not human, and was thus suspended for three months and put into a psych ward for observation as a result.
** The author makes a point of justifying this every now and then, and gives at least one long speech about it. It actually makes sense, so you accept the blatant use of this trope.
** It also helps that the various supernatural powers in play have a pretty big stake in making sure humanity does ''not'' find out about them, given that for all the contempt most of these creatures have for humans, the last thing they want to do is get humanity as a whole riled up. Even bringing the human police into magical affairs is described as "the nuclear option of the magical world", because the smarter magical movers and shakers know that it would likely just snowball from there and wind up with anything up to the humans ''actually nuking them''.
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, the [[Narrator]] explains that most humans have formed a very strong idea of what is "normal", and anything that doesn't fit into that idea is [[Invisible to Normals]]. This includes [[The Grim Reaper|Death]] and other [[Anthropomorphic Personification
** Employed more subtly in the Discworld novel ''[[
** An unusual example is in ''[[
** Inverted in ''[[
** Subverted in ''[[
** The Weirdness Censor appears to have been (mostly) left out of ''[[
** Lord Rust in ''[[
** Moreover, it is described in both ''[[
** There's also ''[[
{{quote|
* This is one of the central themes of Pratchett's lesser known works, the ''[[Johnny Maxwell Trilogy]]'', where the title character explicitly lacks those kind of mental filters, so he's usually the first (and sometimes only) one to notice the weird things around him. Ironically, that same lack of mental agility makes him best equipped to actually ''deal'' with said weirdness, as his friends tend to try to deal according to the way things are "supposed to" go.
* In the ''[[Percy Jackson and The Olympians]]'' books, a magical force called Mist acts as an active
* In the ''[[Clan of the Cave Bear]]'' series, the Clan are unable to see someone who has been sentenced to death. The person sentenced isn't killed; the medicine man says "you are dead" and everyone else assumes that to be true. Even if they do "see" the person they assume it's an evil spirit pretending to be that person. Ayla (the main character) even tells her BF in a later book that if she were to tell some Clan people they've just met that she had been sentenced to death they would instantly be unable to see her.
** The explanation in the books regarding this is quite fuzzy. The Clan don't appear to physically lose the ability to see the person; they just believe the person is a spirit, and that if the spirit is ignored for long enough, they will disappear.
* Lynn Mims uses this in a story in a ''[[Darkover]]''
* In the Hitman novels of the 1970's, featuring Mike Ross, private investigator who operated in the guise of the hockey masked figure the Hitman, the Hitman stood as legendary figure only hinted at by the media. Possibly some cover occurred.
* In Christopher Fowler's novel ''Roofworld''. Why has no one noticed a shadow community living on the rooftops of London, rappelling along telegraph lines? They just don't look up much, and dismiss a glimpse of anyone they see up there if do.
* ''[[The Lost Thing]]'' ends with the main character noting that he might have stopped noticing the lost things, implying that the people of the dull place he lives in are too mundane to notice something out of the ordinary like that. Earlier on, his parents don't notice that there's a giant thing in their living room until he draws their attention to it.
* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''[[Night Watch]]'' and its sequels, the [[Differently
* Verge Foray's novella ''Practice'' has an incident of this. A school for "disturbed children" is actually for psychic children. A private institute, it's subject to surprise accreditation inspections and the children conspire in [[The Masquerade]] with the non-psychic adults. When one of the kids does make a minor slip, another kid checks the inspectors' minds and finds that one of them "saw it, but he didn't believe it, so he didn't ''see'' it."
* Frank Herbert played with this more than once, e.g. in ''The Featherbedders'':
{{quote|
* Vadim Panov:
** ''Secret City'': While a general [[Masquerade]] is in effect, most humans will easily believe claims that data were forged, witnesses drunk or drugged and people claiming to use magic used clever technology or hypnotism. The eponymous Secret City dwellers also actively support skepticism in the population.
** ''Enclaves'': In an otherwise cyberpunk setting, several [[Ancient Tradition|AncientTraditions]] survived and some changed, generally working by [[Religion Is Magic]]. People will yet actively ignore obvious supernatural events, e.g. a person outrunning a projectile, and cite secret research or evidence failure to that end.
* In [[
== Live
* "Sunnydale Syndrome" (this trope's alternate name) is ascribed to the residents of Sunnydale, California in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', a town where people live in [[Somebody
▲* "Sunnydale Syndrome" (this trope's alternate name) is ascribed to the residents of Sunnydale, California in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', a town where people live in [[Somebody Elses Problem|comical denial]] of the vampires, werewolves and other supernatural forces that roam its streets. This does see occasional [[Lampshade Hanging]]: people on the sly mention all the "mysterious" deaths, and musician Aimee Mann says she hates playing vampire towns. A particularly large lampshade is hung at the end of season three, where the graduating class of Sunnydale High gives Buffy an award as "Class Protector", while admitting they don't usually acknowledge there's anything to be protected from. This indicates that they probably know that something's going on with their town, and something odd as well, but they don't suspect supernatural forces to be involved. In season 6, a typical ''Sunnydale Times'' headline reads "Mayhem Ensues: Monsters Definitely Not Involved". Then again, Snyder mentions lying about vampires attacking the high school in season 2, telling journalists it was a gang on PCP -- which the chief of police says is the usual story.
▲{{quote| '''Giles''': People rationalize what they can and forget what they can't.}}
** Towards the end of season 7, the residents finally start to clue up that the town isn't safe, leaving en masse. The weirdness censor is broken ''globally'' in season 8, when Harmony is photographed biting Andy Dick and vampires, demons, Slayers, and magic are brought to light.
* This continues in ''[[Angel]]'', most notably in S1's "victim of the week" stories. Unfortunately, starting from those same eps, we see half of the LA underworld, a major law firm, numerous small businesses, churches, every street gang etc all know about the supernatural; that'd be narrative convenience for you. It gets ''really'' silly when S4 sees bizarre manifestations, a rain of fire, the ''sun being blotted out for days'', vampires swarming the city, and finally the whole city (and soon surrounding county) being brainwashed & ruled by a supernatural entity, and seemingly ''thousands'' of deaths - a number of those deaths being very public massacres. Nobody seems to remember in S5, or ''notice'' outside of LA (the government and army know about demons, where ''are'' they?)
** In Angel: After the Fall, the masquerade gets broken for all of LA when its sent to a Hell dimension. It is put back on Earth via time reversion to the moment it was taken, undoing all deaths and damages, but everyone retains their memories. So some people want to dismiss it all as a delusion, but most know better. {{spoiler|And one particular devil named Eddie Hope isn't letting people who committed atrocities in Hell have the luxury of engaging their inner
* Taken to extremes in the surrealist [[BBC]] Three Sketch Show ''[[The Wrong Door]]'' when no-one seems to find a woman dating an Albertasaur odd at all, merely commenting on his age. Even when he eats one of their friends in front of them no one bats an eyelid.
* On ''[[
** "Boom Town": The Doctor tells Mickey that people don't notice the TARDIS parked in the middle of 2006 Cardiff, despite the anachronistic look of a 1960s police box, because of this. Torchwood has the spot the TARDIS was in retain its effect permanently. "The Sound of Drums" later [[Retcon|Ret Cons]] this (or adjusts the explanation) to say that the TARDIS has plot-specific [[Applied Phlebotinum]] that causes people to quite intentionally not notice, "like when you fancy someone, but they don't even know you're there."
** "The Sontaran Strategem": {{spoiler|This time, regarding a Sontaran teleporter in the office of the headmaster of a "genius school." Justified in that everyone would assume it was just another weird device invented by the genius kid. Unless, like the Doctor, they'd seen one before.}}
** The first page quote comes from when Ace was saying that she would know if there had been an alien invasion in her recent history. The Seventh Doctor informs her that there have been ''several'' alien invasions in her recent history that she hadn't know about.
** Due to more lax continuity in the 60s and 70s, there were several stories with attacks in public - The War Machines, The Invasion, Spearhead From Space, The Ambassadors of Death, Invasion of the Dinosaurs etc - in which everybody notices. The show just never mentioned it at all in later episodes or made a big deal of the Sudden Revelation (as New Who tends to do), and just carried on as if nobody had noticed without drawing attention.
** Mid-90s Who book "Who Killed Kennedy" (ho ho), following a journalist during the Third Doctor days, had it that people ''did'' notice (some of) the weirdness - which was viewed as brutal terrorist attacks and disastrous failures by the government, leading to the (real life) collapse of the Harold Wilson government. This did involve casually [[
** Subverted in "Victory of the Daleks"; {{spoiler|Amy doesn't remember a thing about the Daleks invading in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End"... and the Doctor is extremely disturbed, because ''everyone'' should remember something like that, and if no one does...}} And later {{spoiler|the Doctor realizes that's far from the only incident, kicking himself for not noticing that the giant Cyberman rampaging through London in "The Next Doctor" seems to have been completely forgotten.}} Although {{spoiler|Doc10 did notice this at the time. When Jackson Lake said that the day would go down in history, the Doctor said something like "Yeah, funny that" with a quizical expression on his face clearly lampshading the fact that he knew no one in the early 21st Century remembered any such thing. Anyway, it turned out that these two events, at least, had been swallowed by the Cracks in Time}}.
** A "perception filter" is an [[Applied Phlebotinum]] Weirdness Censor.
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** In the new series, there's often several large events in modern day person season that no government can, and therefore doesn't, try to cover up. It's a running joke that London evacuates at Christmas now because they're expecting trouble. And in the fourth series it was a running joke that Donna missed all these events and didn't believe they actually happened. Of course, her eyes were opened when she travelled with the Doctor... ("Except that thing about the ''Titanic'' flying over London, I mean, that had to be a hoax.")
** The 11th Doctor episode "Vampires in Venice" has a very weird example of this. The titular vampires are actually piscine aliens using a perception filter to disguise themselves as humans. The vampire part is that, when the machine is working, they look like humans with fangs and no reflections. According to the Doctor, this is because the disguise doesn't change their image in a mirror, and so, when a person sees the reflection of a scary fish monster for the first time, they don't know what to make of it, so their gets rid of the image. At the same time, it claims that we can see their fangs because our survival instincts are powerful enough to override the disguise, which is actually sort of reverse weirdness censor.
* The [[Laser
** Ianto also has mad [[Hollywood Hacking|hacking]] skills, allowing him to see what other people are typing on their computers and shut them down remotely. This is only done in the premiere, though, to stop Gwen from writing down all she knows before the pill takes effect.
* Inverted in ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', in that small children, crazy people, the dying, and animals (all of whom lack a weirdness censor) can see the hologram Al, who is invisible and inaudible to everyone else but Sam. Children and crazy people can also see Sam for who he really is; Sam leaped once as the mother of a little girl, who could tell he wasn't her mother, but Sam turned the difficulty by asking her to play a "pretend game".
** There was also a psychic who saw the real Sam (but not Al).
** Plus the time where the "future" part of [[Yet Another Christmas Carol]] is made possible by the Scrooge stand-in having a remarkably similar brain chemisty to Sam (as the hologram was set up to be visible specifically to him).
* The TV series ''[[
* Occurs in virtually every series of ''[[Power Rangers]]'' where no one seems quite able to make the connection between those 3 (or 5 or sometimes 6) extremely fit martial arts obsessed kids who all dress in a single colour and are always running off, and the equally mono-coloured Power Rangers who show up moments later.
** [[Lampshaded]] in the ''Dino Thunder'' series when Tommy gains the Black Ranger powers, he tells his students he has to go shopping as there is a distinct lack of black in his wardrobe. True to form, he spends the rest of the season wearing lots of black. And in ''Jungle Fury'', mentor RJ wears various clothing until he becomes the purple-colored fourth ranger, at which point all he wears besides his chef-related clothing is an outfit with a purple shirt. This happens with every [[Sixth Ranger]] arrival, and you'd think it'd get ''really'' conspicuous when a person who wore a variety of colors ''suddenly'' starts wearing one color - the same color as that new Ranger - when he begins hanging with that group of colorcoded teens.
** ''Lightspeed Rescue'' also had one episode where a receptionist told a little girl "now dear, there's no such thing as monsters". In a series where a giant monster rampages across the city at least once a week. Yeeeeeahhh.
** Dustin in ''Ninja Storm'' was the only Ranger of that season to believe that Rangers were more than something out of a comic book when the situation was first explained to the new team.
** Humanity has gotten savvier since then - just how much they know and what team they were familiar with is usually not elaborated upon, but new teams tend to at least have some idea of what a Ranger ''is.'' When amnesiac Dillon of ''[[
* In ''[[Young Dracula]]'' most of the breathers fail to notice the oddity that seems to surround the Dracula family.
** Subverted when {{spoiler|Vlad finally says the word "vampire" to Mr. Branaugh he realizes immediately what's been in front of his face the entire time.}}
* Played up in ''[[The Young Ones]]'' episode "Boring" for comedic effect, and most people suffer from this most of the time.
* The ''[[Father Ted]]'' episode "Speed 3": Father Dougal McGuire averts this when he moonlights as a temporary short-notice milkman. He sits in bed thinking about the day he's just had when a look of horror comes across his face. Considering his day involved his milk-float having a bomb planted on it by his predecessor, he has every right to look back with horror. However it was his weirdness censor finally failing with regard to his temporary patrons:
{{quote|
** "Kicking Bishop Brennan up the Arse": From his previous experience, Dougal gave Ted an idea on [[It Makes Sense in Context|how to kick their boss up the arse and get away with it]]. The plan relied on the Bishop's weirdness censor kicking in: Kick him up the arse and act like nothing had happened, because such a thing couldn't possibly happen. Like Dougal, the weirdness censor failed within twenty-four hours after the event. Although Ted still managed to convince him that he'd imagined the whole thing - until he saw the 10 foot high photograph of Ted kicking him that Ted had commissioned the last night after his celebratory drinking.
* ''[[The Lost Room]]'' had a subculture of collectors, hobbyists, organizations and criminals looking for some [[Artifact of Doom|conspicuously destructive objects]] that shunned the laws of physics, thermodynamics and entropy while [[Artifact of Attraction|consuming / destroying the lives of most people who came across them.]] Despite having been tracked, coveted and recklessly experimented with for 40 years, the Police (including [[Papa Wolf|our hero]]) seem to have no way of anticipating or dealing with them. Moreover, these quirky little atom-age [[MacGuffin
* The ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' sketch "The Dull Life of a City Stockbroker" features a very boring stockbroker going about his business, not noticing things like the fact that the bus on which he is traveling is full of terrorists shooting everyone, or that the newsagent where he purchases a paper is staffed by a topless woman.
* ''[[The Flash (TV 1990)|The Flash]]'' TV show had episodes where the Flash met Dr. Desmond Powell, an African-American doctor who had, in the Central City of the 1950s, operated as "the mystery man" Nightshade. More in line with the Shadow, the Nightshade, not a metahuman, ended up dismissed by most people as just a rumor, since the police hushed up his activities. (The show admitted that some of this attitude at least initially also applied to the Flash, but since the Flash had actual metahuman powers, he could not "lurk in the shadows" for very long.)
** A running gag in ''The Flash'' was that police officer Bellows was constantly seeing the Flash in action but his more cynical partner Murphy always missed it, so that Murphy thought Bellows was delusional and dismissed the Flash as an urban legend.
* In ''[[Twin Peaks]]'' no one seems to mind weird things such as Nadine's supernatural strength. Then again, it's arguably a case of [[City of Weirdos]].
* "[[Bewitched
* While not magic or [[Sci Fi]], on ''[[Wiseguy]]'' high ranking figures in organized crime never seemed to notice that within a few months of Vinnie Terranova joining an organization, the whole operation comes crashing down.
* In Lars Von Trier's Danish miniseries ''[[Riget]]'' which takes place in a haunted hospital, the head of administration Moesgaard seem completely oblivious to all the strange things that happen. For example, when one of the doctors come back ''from the dead'' (more or less), Moesgaard's first comment is an annoyed "Why am I always misinformed?". Then he just reintroduces the resurrected doctor to the staff as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened, and quickly changes the subject. In another scene, he walks in on Rigmor who is holding a gun, and she accidentally points it at him ''three'' times without him noticing it.
* An episode of ''[[Lie to Me (TV series)|Lie to Me]]'' has the Lightman Group discredit a witness by revealing (to her as well) that she has the [[Real Life]] condition called change blindness, meaning she ignores anything that has changed around her while she wasn't looking. They do this by having her watch a short video and focus on certain aspects of it. They then quietly substitute the people questioning her. When the witness turns back, she just treats them as if they were sitting there the whole time.
* Used liberally in the 80's ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]'' television series. The population at large believe that the 1953 radio broadcast (and the events of the original film) were a hoax, and (as main character Harrison Blackwood says) have suffered a form of mass amnesia about the event. This continues on into the second season, albeit differently: several characters (including a military general and a main character) are killed off, and the army refuses to assist the surviving main characters in any way, even though said deceased characters had ties to a secret government project concerning extraterrestrial invaders.
* The same technique was used by Anthony Bourdain on the Washington, D.C. esisode of ''[[No Reservations]]'', when a spy guest demonstrated how spies in the Cold War hid things in drop-off points. In one particular instance, Bourdain feigned public urination to keep eyes off of him as he hid a "tip" in a discreet spot.
* Stargate has two massive spaceships popping in at the end of the first season that should have been noticed very quickly.
== Radio ==
* Played with in a few of [[Bob and Ray|Bob & Ray]]'s Wally Ballou skits, wherein the newsman, searching eagerly for a story, ends up interviewing the most boring man alive (in the most memorable version, a cranberry grower) while resolutely ignoring the obvious
▲* Played with in a few of [[Bob and Ray|Bob & Ray]]'s Wally Ballou skits, wherein the newsman, searching eagerly for a story, ends up interviewing the most boring man alive (in the most memorable version, a cranberry grower) while resolutely ignoring the obvious disaster -- gunshots, sirens, screams, crackling flames etc -- happening all around them.
== Tabletop Games ==
* One of the character classes of the Palladium RPG ''Beyond the Supernatural'' is the "Nega-Psychic": a person whose disbelief in the supernatural is so strong that it provides him with enhanced saving rolls versus supernatural phenomena and allows cancellation of supernatural effects. (This means that the nega-psychic character spends the entire game loudly wondering why everyone else in the party is getting so excited by "swamp gas," something which appeals to certain types of role-players, but drives others up the wall.)
* The Third Edition of ''[[GURPS]]'' included an advantageous character trait called "[[Muggles|Mundane]]", which at its most expensive and intense level would actively turn anything odd and unusual into the normal and boring while the character was around it.
* Practically a part of everyday human existence in the various ''[[
** Vampires [[Vampire: The Masquerade
** ''[[
*** In ''[[
*** In ''[[
*** In ''[[
** ''[[
*** ''[[
*** A similar effect occurs in the ''Second Sight'' splatbook, where almost all humans are latent psychics, but since they don't believe in psychics, end up using their abilities to suppress the unbelievable psychic acts of others. Conversely, it's possible for characters to gain an advantage in the form of a believing hanger-on who actually makes their psychic abilities perform better.
*** In ''[[
* Averted in the ''[[
* The Swedish horror game ''[[
* In two of the four main variants of the [[Tabletop Games]] ''[[
* The ''[[Dungeons
** Except in ''[[Ravenloft]]'', where noticing what's ''spooky'' and magical can get you killed. Natives of domains such as Richemulot or Zherisia, where the populace is infiltrated by monsters, find it a ''lot'' safer not to admit they've seen anything suspicious, even to themselves.
** There are also the ancient [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|demon lords]] ''Pale Night'' and ''Dagon''. When a mortal being encounters them, the
* In [[The Dark Eye]] German Pen&Paper, its fairly normal for elves and dwarfs roam the cities. The bigger cities have their mage academies. Goblins and orcs are fairly well known in the wilderness. Yet [[Muggles]] are particularity shocked whenever something magical happens around them, and are fast to shrug it off as something mundane instead of magic. This is played [[Up to Eleven]] with the kobolds, which in this setting are supernatural beings of near infinite power... and only use it for mischief or if enlisted by an deity for a particular job to guard an area. Like in [[Real Life]] if some mishap is going on, they are going to handwave it towards the kobolds as fairy tale, [[All Myths Are True|but maybe more true as they want it to be]].
* ''[[
* ''[[Rogue Trader]]'' mentions this as a [[Required Secondary Power]] for Navigators- their Warp eye allows them to gaze into the Warp, but also edits the input into an appropriate metaphor- the examples in the book are finding a path through a storm-racked wood or navigating a roiling sea. It's actually a good thing, as [[Go Mad
** In addition, the Unremarkable trait from [[Dark Heresy]] can work like this. The Moritat assassin who is anti-social and obsessed with murder? All I see is a businessman with a bit of red on him...
* In ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'', one possible form of insanity is Panzaism, the pathological inability to perceive extraordinary things as such. A Deep One, for example, will be seen as a normal man, or perhaps a man in a wetsuit, or at the very most, man wearing a deeply unconvincing monster suit.
▲== Theater ==
* [[Discussed]] in ''[[Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead]]'':
{{quote|
== Video Games ==
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** Even in one of the novels, a necromancer comments that their seers ''suspect'' that Baal is responsible for the destruction of Mount Arreat in the Lord of Destruction expansion pack. Not only do the necromancers usually seem more aware of what's going on than the rest of the world, but Baal was anything but subtle during his assault. Baal wasn't exactly skipping merrily to the summit, though. He killed cities and possibly ''kingdoms'' that were in his way. Who's left to say what really went on besides some reclusive, not terribly credible barbarians?
*** In the absence of forensics science, evidence of the Prime Evils rests entirely on eye witnesses. The demons weren't exactly leaving a lot of those... and most of them would likely be [[Cassandra Truth|thought insane]] by anyone who hadn't been involved in the previous conflicts. Marius is a clear example of this, narating his misadventures with the wanderer from inside an [[Bedlam House|asylum cell]].
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda:
* Hilariously done in ''[[Fate/stay
* At the end of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'', {{spoiler|a gigantic superweapon crashes into New York City. From the wreckage emerge a white haired pretty boy wielding a sword and the former president wielding two swords and wearing a suit of tentacled power armor. They proceed to fight a battle on the roof of Federal Hall, culminating in the villain being stabbed and falling from the roof.}} You'd think the cops or someone would take interest, but it just shows everyone going about their daily business like it was Japan and they were used to that.
** [[
* Only partly averted in ''[[Prototype (
* Huh. That ten-year-old is [[Pokémon|running around with a giant, super-rare, legendary creature following their every whim]]. Nah, that's probably just a transformed Ditto.
* [[Banjo-Kazooie]] runs on this (and [[No Fourth Wall|fourth wall breakage]]).
* [[The Elder Scrolls|Tamriel]] has one, partly thanks to [[Artificial Atmospheric Actions]]. NPCs will calmly continue to discuss just how horrid mudcrabs are regardless of what's going on around them.
* [[Touhou Project|Touhou Project's]] Koishi Komeiji [[Superpower Lottery|has the ability to manipulate the subconscious]], the most common application of which seems to be to trigger peoples' Weirdness Censors, [[Perception Filter|thereby making herself invisible to them]].
* For some reason in ''[[Kingdom Hearts: 358
** {{spoiler|[[Fridge Brilliance|But they probably would have forgotten about seeing Xion, actually]].}}
* In ''[[Golden Sun]]'' and both sequels, Psynergy itself is [[Invisible to Normals]]... but people still should be able to see the objects that move without being touched, fires starting and stopping, sprouts growing into giant vines in a matter of seconds, puddles freezing into giant ice pillars, and that group of [[Anime Hair
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[
▲* ''[[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|El Goonish Shive]]'', where Elliot's narration mentions annoyance that his parents aren't freaked out by the fact that their daughter has turned herself into a cat. Actually, the only time they freak out is when Elliot lied to them. Considering Moperville's track record...
** Moreover, the aliens in the comic, when [[Alien Among Us|walking among humans]], use a system of disguise that involves wearing shirts bearing the label 'human'. Despite their natural forms looking like [[Little Green Men]], this method somehow successfully convinces anyone who has not been explicitly informed of their existence.
** It's not a huge leap for Elliot's parents. After all, Ellen {{spoiler|is not their biological daughter but a magical gender swapped clone of their son created by a cursed diamond.}}
* ''[[Narbonic]]'' partially subverts this by showing that, while Dave Davenport's brother Bill is unable to see such things as talking gerbils or dancing androids, Dave proves equally blind to Bill's flaws as compared to himself, determined to see Bill as having a better life than he does. Also, when the clone-Dave is under the effect of the [[Mad Scientist|Mad Science]] cure, he too is affected by the
* In ''[[Megatokyo]]'', nobody even seems to notice when someone or something starts breaking stuff in Tokyo, no matter if it's Ping the overpowered [[Robot Girl]], a giant drunken turtle, or a Rent-a-Zilla. This is [[Justified Trope|justified]] to some degree, because not only does Tokyo get destroyed so often that nobody really cares, but also because the destruction rampages are scheduled and supervised by the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division. There is also some suggestion that many of the more outrageous aspects of Tokyo life are in fact literally [[Invisible to Normals]], but the actual extent of this effect remains unclear. Also, the people don't look up particular iteration is alluded to in ''[[Megatokyo]]'' as well, where Tohya tells Yuki that the civilians are "just as afraid to look up as you are to look down".
** In the fifth collection of Megatokyo, Gallagher FINALLY detailed [[Word of God|his explanation for this phenomenon]]: "[https://web.archive.org/web/20121101171707/http://wikitokyo.mt-talk.net/wiki/What_is_Megatokyo_all_about%3F ...the main theme of Megatokyo is how everyone has different perceptions of the world around them...]" Everyone sees the world slightly differently. Piro and Largo are on the extreme ends of the
** It seems as though [[Dark Magical Girl|Miho]] has the power to ''turn off'' other people's
{{quote|
* Most of the populace of Generictown in ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' appears to have this trait to one degree or another (especially Mr. Bystander). Even Bob himself often refuses to acknowledge just ''how'' bizarre the situations are that he finds himself in. The only castmember completely free of this trope is Jean, leading her to exclaim at one point, [http://bobadventures.comicgenesis.com/d/20071006.html "Ye gods! I'm the only sane person in town!"]
* Played up to the point of parody in [http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=070304 this] ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' strip.
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* Played with in ''[[Walkyverse|Shortpacked]]''. For some reason, everybody who works at the titular store (or, at least, the ones who weren't involved in SEMME-related adventures), don't remember any alien-related stuff that happened over the past few years. Everybody else, on the other hand, usually does.
** It seems more like they just ''really'' don't care. For instance, at one point Amber goes to New York, and mentions "huh, you would never be able to tell this place was destroyed a few years ago."
* Present in ''[[Thunderstruck]]'', where supernatural entities of all descriptions operate right under the nose of the general
* In ''[[Everyday Heroes]]'', it seems at first that Uma and her father are just using the standard [[Paper
* In the ''[[Shadowgirls]]'' universe; enough templars in an area disbelieving hard enough can shut down magic users entirely. Which leads to {{spoiler|Starkweather circumventing said limitation by somehow tapping into an older magic.}}
* In ''[[Emergency Exit]]'' it is revealed that the Apartment has one of these only after it temporarily takes it down, allowing police attention to come to the large hole in the wall, because "It thinks it's funny" to do so.
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* This is how people miss magical events in [[Errant Story]]. When they see something impossible (like the talking cat with wings) they think that there's no way they just saw that and then promptly forget it even existed.
* This is the explanation for how the angels and demons of [[Elijah and Azuu]] are able to integrate into society... humans still physically see their horns and haloes, but simply don't process them. Though if someone is too weird looking they're simply [[Invisible to Normals]].
* In ''[[
== Web Original ==
* The [[PPC]] use actual SEP fields taken from the ''[[The
* ''[[New York Magician]]'': Lampshaded repeatedly; most New Yorkers people won't notice [[Invisible to Normals|unless something really incredible is happening]]. In fact, Michel muses that it's easier for him to get away with using magic in public than it is to get away with waving a gun around; people rationalize magic, but they call the cops for guns.
* In the ''[[Paradise]]'' setting, humans are randomly, permanently transformed into [[Funny Animal
== Western Animation ==
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'', full stop. The entire theme of ''Homer's Enemy'' was to plop a regular person (in the form of Frank Grimes) into the Springfield universe and have them react to just how ''bizarre'' that world really was. Frank was thunderstruck how a moron like Homer could have two cars, win a Grammy, tour with rock stars, be friends with Gerald Ford and been to space on the space shuttle.
{{quote|
* ''[[American Dragon: Jake Long]]'': [[Is This a Joke?|"I'm glad everyone bought the You've-been-Punked story we feed them."]]
* Became a running joke in ''Transformers: Robots in Disguise'', in which one woman is constantly harassed by
* In contrast, ''[[Transformers Armada]]'' has maybe five people actually see the constant robot battles. This is partially justified as apparently all but a few of the Mini-Con panels appear in unpopulated areas, but still.
* In ''[[Danny Phantom]]'', Danny feels perfectly secure transforming into a ghost if he ducks inside a locker or even stands behind another person to do so. Apparently nobody makes the connection that a kid moving to a just-concealed area, disappearing, and being replaced by a ghost might mean something. Also, people can be attacked by giant ghost wasps and such like at school and will run screaming as expected... but the next day, everyone's fine; law enforcement is never called and nobody seems to remember being terrorized by supernatural entities.
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* ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'' has all types of aliens running around and yet hardly anyone ever give it any mind. When Lilo give a few aliens away to help with a specific job, the owners are more then happy to take them in.
* ''[[Invader Zim]]'' uses this trope; though it is completely obvious that Zim is an alien (he has green skin and no ears or nose), Dib is the only one who ever notices (aside from his sister Gaz, who simply doesn't care). Likewise any time something bizarre happens most people either ignore it, or notice it but never question how or why it happened in the first place. (Or if they do, Dib usually [[Butt Monkey|somehow gets unfairly blamed]]).
* In the 2008 ''[[Horton Hears a Who!]]'', the only one to make the connection is the Mayor. Other than that, Whoville makes [[Buffy|Sunnydale look like a highly alert town.]]
** Though, the members of the city council help to actively enforce the Weirdness Censor, which helps a little to justify this. Not by much, but still...
* ''[[Family Guy]]'' parodies this hilariously. The Griffins ignore the giant squid that destroys their home, [[Elephant in
* Officer Barbrady does this a lot in the early episodes of ''[[South Park]]'', whether it's political corruption or alien plots.
* Played straight and subverted in the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETCusT5kNM Cat Came Back cartoon] when the old man takes the cat for a ride into the mountains on a train trolley. Along the way, he runs over or passes several women tied to the train tracks, unfazed. But when he spots a ''cow'' tied to the tracks...
{{quote|
* Citizens in ''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'' who notice the larger stuff the boys do never seem to find it worthy enough for the newspaper. Candace was pretty unlucky no one ever wanted to talk to her parents about what the boys had done, especially in [[The Movie]], where ''the entire town witnesses a robot takeover and never discusses it again''.
** And it's not just in the boys' hometown. In one episode, [[Humongous Mecha|giant robots of a dragon and Queen Elizabeth I]] were duking it out in downtown London. While this does make it to the news, the only thing that caught people's attention was the second story of a new version of ''Jane Eyre'' being made.
* In the ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]" episode "Operation T.U.R.N.I.P.", the farmer is completely oblivious to the fact that his giant turnip is sending smaller ones through its roots all over the place and attacking the Sector V kids. The only thing that causes him to freak out is when it falls over and rolls into the sea.
* Cartoons and movies that take place in a [[Mouse World]], such as ''[[An American Tail]]'', ''[[The Rescuers (Disney film)|The Rescuers]]'', ''[[
* Anyone who's not Stanley or part of his circle of frinds and such on ''[[Stanley]]'' seems to use this when confronted by things such as talking/singing pets, or wild animals popping up in places they shouldn't be, such as the roof of Stanley's house.
== Real Life ==
* When there's any kind of convention or gathering (such as cosplay) that involves people in costumes wandering around, non-participants generally fall into one of three
** In University towns and cities, on any given night, you can determine who's a local, who's a student, and who's not from the area by their reaction to a group of students in fancy dress. The locals have [[Seen It All]], the students wonder what the occasion is, and the out-of-towners openly gawk
* The game of [
* The internet
* In Cognitive Psychology, the concept of a weirdness censor exists as a natural effect of [
* [[New York City]] is notorious for this, and for good reason. [[Thor (
* Everyone has a form of weirdness censor called change blindness. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voAntzB7EwE This video] is designed to highlight the viewer's weirdness censor in action.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Invisibility Index]]
[[Category:Urban Fantasy Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
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