Weirdness Censor: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

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.

 

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.

* ''[[Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan]]'' [[lampshade]]s this in the first episode. She introduces herself to the class as an angel (after turning a classmate into a monkey and making another one completely vanish) despite Sakura's insistence that she keep it a secret, but they just nod and accept it fully. In fact, Sakura is the only one who seems the slightest bit weirded out by the situation. "This should really bother you! Say 'Ahh! Angels exist?!' or something!"

** 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]].

* 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.}}

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has this is spades early on when it seems like the even with [[Unusually Uninteresting Sight]]s abound within the [[Elaborate University High|Academy]], no one with the exception of Chisame could care to notice the blatantly odd things surrounding them. It was later revealed that mages keep their [[Masquerade]] protected by spells put in place to heighten people's ability to dis-believe information they intake (they also rely on people's inherent ability to doubt). This naturally makes for interesting situations whenever the very odd is shown.

{{quote|''[[Muggle]] 1: I see, if it''s a robot, it all makes sense [nod nod].''

* 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.

** 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.

 

 

== Film ==

** 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.

* ''[[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.

* 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."

** 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]]s, and [[Talking Animal]] Gaspode the Wonder Dog (since "everyone knows dogs can't talk"). There are some exceptions, including witches and wizards, by training, and small children, because they haven't learnt what "normal" is yet.

{{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 [[Michael Kurland]]'s ''The Unicorn Girl'', the characters visit a Victorian-like world where most of the people literally cannot see a naked person—a fact which some thieves are very happy to take advantage of.

 

* "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.}}

* ''[[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]]s subtly influenced the laws of probability to get closer to one another, making them even easier to track. Either some unseen government power tries to keep all those pesky cases of spontaneous combustion out of the news with a hypnotic roll of toilet paper, or [[Agent Mulder|organizations like "The Order" and "The Legion" are just too damn nerdy for most people to take seriously.]]

* 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.

** 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]].

 

== 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 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.

* 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.

 

* [[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 ==

** {{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]]ed teenagers that always seems to be around when strange things happen. The number of situations where anybody notices Psynergy in use or the effects thereof, in all three games, can be counted on one hand.

 

== 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.

* ''[[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 Weirdness Censor, even while in the midst of a running battle.

* 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".

** It seems as though [[Dark Magical Girl|Miho]] has the power to ''turn off'' other people's Weirdness Censors. In [http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1000 this comic], she tells Kimiko to open her eyes, which leads her to notice that the restaurant is under attack by killer robots.

{{quote|'''Miho:''' Now close them. [[Extra-Strength Masquerade|Close them real tight]].}}

* 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 ''[[Phoebe and Her Unicorn]]'', the class doesn't react much when Phoebe shows a real live unicorn during show and tell. As the unicorn tells Phoebe, this is because of the "Shield of Boringness," a bit of magic that lets unicorns live undisturbed.

 

== Web Original ==

* ''[[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]]s (and occasionally [[Gender Bender|gender-changed]]) by causes unknown. A powerful "Reality Distortion Field", otherwise known as "the Veil", renders these changes [[Invisible to Normals]], who will continue to see the Changed as their original human selves (and genders). It is only able to cover their bodies, however; they will still leave animal footprints, and any fur, horns, claw trimmings, etc. they shed will be visible to others. It begins breaking down as the series goes on and finally starts failing completely in 2009, leading to [[The Unmasqued World]] as the Changed finally make themselves fully known.

 

== Western Animation ==

* 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...

* 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...

** 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.

* 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 ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Invisibility Index]]

[[Category:Urban Fantasy Tropes]]