Weirdness Censor: Difference between revisions

{{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.

* 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 ==

** 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.

 

== Fan Works ==

* 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|TARDIS]] has.

 

== Film ==

* 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.}}

 

== 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.

* 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 ==

* Cartoons and movies that take place in a [[Mouse World]], such as ''[[An American Tail]]'', ''[[The Rescuers (Disney film)|The Rescuers]]'', ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' and others, rely on this trope. Humans never notice they're surrounded by clothed, talking mice with their own human-like civilization.

* 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 ==