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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|frame|<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]]''}}
▲{{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]]''}}
In some universes, ignoring the antics of the main characters goes beyond [[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.
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One of many things that enables the [[Masquerade]], especially its [[Extra-Strength Masquerade|extra strength variant]], and allows [[Muggles|Muggle]] characters to act like real people despite the extraordinary things that go on in their universe every day. When it's an actual [[Stock Super Powers|power,]] becomes subject to [[You Can See Me?]] And they, in fact, can be seen [[By the Eyes of the Blind]].
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}}
== Anime and 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
* ''[[Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan]]'' [[
* 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 ni]]''.
** {{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 ni]]'' Battler uses it to deny that the Beato/Virgilia battle happened {{spoiler|even better example in ep 5, after being defeated by Battler on the gameboard Erika suddenly stands up in her chair during the meal and starts talking in blue truth and exclaims to her master [[Complete Monster|Bernkastel]] that she has won and has to be acknowledged. Then she suddenly sits down in her chair eating. The family collectively thinks they were hallucinating}}
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has this is spades early on when it seems like the even with [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight
{{quote|''[[Muggle]] 1: I see, if it''s a robot, it all makes sense [nod nod].''
''[[Muggle]] 2: A-a-ah, I see, sure [nod].''
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* 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 is in the Bag]]'', where everyone except the London transfer students know about Kate turning into a bag.
* 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 ''[[Invincible]]'' comic book is that [[No Peripheral Vision|people without powers never look up]], so heroes can change in back alleys and fly away and no one will see. (It's also a play on "Look! Up in the sky!", a phrase associated with [[Superman]].)
* 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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** 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 [[Magicians Are Wizards|actual magical powers]] who is a member of the [[Justice League of America]]. No matter how often there is verifiable documentation of legitimate supernatural affairs people prefer to look the other way and hum really loudly, which explains why magic is still a "secret" in the [[DC Universe]]. This is particularly frustrating, even to Zatanna herself, because here there is no [[Masquerade]], the supernatural world ''wants'' to be recognized, but the people are not listening.
== 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 qith No Name (fanfic)|The Man With No Name]]'', similar to what the [[Doctor Who|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 1|original cartoon]] had a sort of masquerade for the first few episodes, but after a bit the Transformers didn't bother with hiding from humans as a whole (though many people still seemed unaware of their existence, considering all the episodes where a human mistakes a Transformer for a normal vehicle and react with shock/fear/awe when the Transformer reveals himself). By the movie and season three, there was no masquerade anymore.
** [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 ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'', where the mayor accuses Egon of the Ghostbusters scamming the city, even though at that point the city had been completely overrun with monsters several times.
** 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.
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* 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 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 ''[[Beetlejuice]]'' the dead are [[Invisible to Normals]] because the living ignore the "strange and unusual." However Lydia can see the Maitlands because, as she says "I myself am strange and unusual."
* Notably and hilariously averted in the diner scene in ''[[When Harry Met Sally...]]''.
* The [[X-Men (film)|X-Men]] movies play fast and loose with this trope. The world knows mutants exist to the point where governments are trying to pass laws against them, there are entire studies done on them, the issue is being discussed in the media, and people are actively protesting for/against them. Despite this, people are usually shocked when they see mutants displaying their powers with only a few exceptions. This even includes [[Wolverine]] who finds the concept of the X-Men bizarre despite the fact that he is a mutant himself.
** 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.
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* One of the primary responsibilities of the [[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]] (the other being handling lawful extraterrestrial alien visitor traffic) is policing for illicit alien activities on Earth. Part of that duty is ensuring that the humans on Earth outside the agency are completely oblivious to the aliens among them, be they legal or otherwise.
* 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', this tendency has been harnessed and distilled into a device called the [[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."
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** 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''.
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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|"The historians paid him no attention. Horses did not walk into libraries."}}
* 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.
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** ''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 [[Michael Kurland]]'s ''The Unicorn Girl'', the characters visit a Victorian-like world where most of the people literally cannot see a naked
== 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 Else's 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
▲* "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 Else's 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 ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the
** "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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{{quote|'''Fr. Dougal:''' {{spoiler|THOSE WOMEN WERE IN THE NIP‼}}}}
** "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
** 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]].
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== 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.
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* The Swedish horror game ''[[Kult]]'' makes this the central premise of the world's mythology: Humanity has been imprisoned in an illusory world by the [[God Is Evil|Demiurge]] and blinded to the real world around them. When supernatural events transpire around them, the illusion-spell in people's minds makes them rationalize it away as normal accidents.
* In two of the four main variants of the [[Tabletop Games]] ''[[D20 Modern]]'', monsters roam the modern world. However, most humans can't believe that they exist, so they just see humans where player characters see monsters. (These settings are called Urban Arcana and Shadow Chasers, if you're wondering.) The average joe walks around in a state of autopilot, it's explained, so while they do see monsters as monsters while they're around, their mind subconciously edits it out later, remembering a troll as a massive brute of a man, the dragon's fireball as a gas leak, the gnoll in the corner a shady guy wearing a trenchcoat. They also don't notice things that the more alert player characters and "aware" NPCs do, such as aforementioned shady man having slightly protruding ears...
* 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]].
* ''[[Nobilis]]'' averts this. [[Muggles]] may go mad from encountering what they could not possibly understand and [[Player Characters|Nobles]] must take pains to ensure that this will not happen. However, their bosses, the Imperators, are powerful enough that reality itself will censor their actions. If an Imperator blots out the sun, not only will everyone believe it's a solar eclipse, but scientists will have retroactively predicted it several weeks ago.
* ''[[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|"A man breaking his journey between one place and another at a third place of no name, character, population or significance, sees a unicorn cross his path and disappear. That in itself is startling, but there are precedents for mystical encounters of various kinds, or to be less extreme, a choice of persuasions to put it down to fancy; until--"My God," says a second man, "I must be dreaming, I thought I saw a unicorn." At which point, a dimension is added that makes the experience as alarming as it will ever be. A third witness, you understand, adds no further dimension but only spreads it thinner, and a fourth thinner still, and the more witnesses there are the thinner it gets and the more reasonable it becomes until it is as thin as reality, the name we give to the common experience... "Look, look!" recites the crowd. "A horse with an arrow in its forehead! It must have been mistaken for a deer." }}
== Video Games ==
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* 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.
** [[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty/Recap|Not that the rest of the ending was any more rational]].
* Only partly averted in ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]''. Pedestrians will freak out and the military will open fire if the PC Alex Mercer reveals some of his [[Lovecraftian Superpower
* 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: 358/2 Days
** {{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]]'', 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|'''Miho:''' Now close them. [[Extra-Strength Masquerade|Close them real tight]].}}
* 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!"]
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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-Thin Disguise]] of wearing glasses to pass as human. Later, they mention using an [[H 2 G 2/ptitlex 7 dt 39 fg|"Adams Field"]], implying that the glasses have some sort of
* 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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' continuum to protect themselves from being seen by the characters in the fanfics they're sporking. Unfortunately, [[Mary Sue]] characters ''can'' see them, so they have to actively hide from the targets of their wrath. It's also possible for them to break the SEP field by attracting too much attention to themselves.
* ''[[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|'''Frank Grimes:''' I'm saying you're what's wrong with America, Simpson. You coast through life, you do as little as possible, and you leech off of decent, hardworking people like me. Heh, if you lived in any other country in the world, you'd have starved to death long ago.}}
* ''[[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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* 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|Old Man: [[Curse Cut Short|"What the ffff-"]]}}
* 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 [[wikipedia:Geocaching|Geocaching]] relies pretty heavily on this. Geocache containers can be hidden in highly unusual places, quite often by virtue of small size, camouflage coloring, or by being disguised as something so commonplace it is easily dismissed and overlooked. Searching for geocaches often calls for stealth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching#Controversy_and_issues ) some cachers have reported that the easiest way to conceal their search is by acting mildly nuts or wandering at complete random, and thus they can find their objective without anyone taking much notice.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Invisibility Index]]
[[Category:Urban Fantasy Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Weirdness Censor]]
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