History Main / NotSoImaginaryFriend

* {{Battlestar Galactica}}: Baltar can see (and feel) Six, which can sometimes lead to some rather frightening scenes. And [[CoitusUninterruptus sometimes hilarious ones]]. And for bonus points, The "real" Six has a Baltar running around that only she can see.

* Also used in the {{Bone}} series by the Red Dragon.

* This is the central plot point of Cornell Woolrich's ''Phantom Lady''.

** [[MistakenForAnImposter And then she assumes its a person in a costume]].

* {{Battlestar Galactica}}: Baltar can see (and feel) Six, which can sometimes lead to some rather frightening scenes. And [[CoitusUninterruptus sometimes hilarious ones]]. And for bonus points, The `real' Six has a Baltar running around that only she can see.

''"Hello everyone! I'm Amy's imaginary friend. But I came anyway."''

''It is a six-foot-tall rabbit. Really!''

** This gets repeated in the final episode, thanks to some [[TimeyWimeyBall odd circumstances]].
-->'''The Doctor:''' [[spoiler:Hello everyone! I'm Amy's ImaginaryFriend! But I came anyway.]]

* One comic from ''TheFarSide'' had a man being held up by his collar by an invisible force, while his son said "Bob's getting really tired of you saying he doesn't exist".

This plot is also referred to as "The Singing Frog", after "[[OneFroggyEveningCartoon One Froggy Evening]]", the famous LooneyTunes cartoon in which a man cannot convince anyone that a frog he has found can sing and dance, and ends up broke and homeless because of it.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* Subverted in ''FullmetalAlchemist''. When Mustang tries to tell the top generals in Central that the Fuhrer is a homunculus, they believe him [[spoiler:because they were in on it the whole time.]]

* Inverted in ''KingOfThorns''. [[spoiler: One of the effects of the medusa decease is materialization of imaginary friends. Cue the world getting overrun by monsters born of people's imagination.]]

[[folder:Film]]
* The film ''{{Harvey}}'', based on a play.
* Frank from ''DonnieDarko'', anyone? He's ''literally'' a six-foot rabbit that no one besides the titular character can see. For good reason, since he's [[spoiler: a schizophrenic vision of the titular character. Or a time-traveling murder victim of that same character. Or a metaphor for the [[DeusExMachina Deus ex Machina]] that hit the [[ResetButton Reset Button]]. Or... all of the above.]]
* In ''Heart and Souls'', Thomas is a young boy who has several imaginary friends who turn out to be the ghosts of people who were killed in a bus accident. As a grown man, Thomas thinks he's going crazy until he talks to an institutionalized woman who confirms she can see them, too (plus an additional person that Thomas doesn't see).
* In ''Cooperstown'', a retired baseball player is visited by the ghost of his deceased friend. His grandson and his grandson's girlfriend think he's crazy until they confirm (by asking questions about the ghost's batting average) that the ghost really is there.
* DropDeadFred centered on this trope.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* Prior to the Onslaught saga, young [[FantasticFour Franklin Richards]] was visited by a so-called "imaginary friend" by the name of Charlie. When "Charlie" telekinetically causes Franklin to drop a glass of (orange) milk, he was chided by his mother for it. When Franklin tried to blame it on Charlie, Invisible Woman replies "Your ''invisible'' friend?". Of course, "Charlie" wound up being a projection of Onslaught trying to manipulate the most potentially powerful human on Earth.
** [[ArbitrarySkepticism This is especially stupid on Sue's part since ''she's invisible half the time.'']]

* ''"Catalina's best friend Suzee isn't there"'' from {{Nickelodeon}}'s ''SpaceCases''. Saturnian Catalina has an invisible best friend in another dimension that only she can talk to named Suzee; naturally no one believes her. This is subverted when an explosion causes the two to trade dimensions and ''Suzee'' joins the crew while Catalina is only seen once more through a trans-dimensional viewscreen.
* ''TheTwilightZone'', "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet:" William Shatner's character can't convince anyone, "There's something on the wing!"

* In ''TheFactsOfLife'', everyone thought Natalie was making up her biker boyfriend, "Snake". The show went so far as to end an episode with the sound of a motorcycle revving up, and Natalie exclaiming "SNAKE!" (With a quick fourth-wall break to inform the audience they'd have to wait a bit to actually see him.) We do finally see him a few episodes later, mostly to set up the VerySpecialEpisode where Natalie is the first of the girls to lose her virginity.
* In an episode of ''{{Monk}}'', no one believes that Randy's girlfriend Crystal is real (he appears to have taken her name from a box marked "crystal glassware": her picture is a wallet insert because she's a photography model), and he spends the entire episode trying to convince everyone she's real, even getting her on the phone at one point. She's revealed to be real at the end of the episode, driving away in a taxi so no one can see her.
* In ''[[MontyPythonsFlyingCircus Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'', the notorious [[LondonGangster East End gangster]] Dinsdale Piranha [[hottip:* :a ShoutOut to the RealLife Kray twins, one of which was mentally unstable.]] thinks he is being watched by an enormous hedgehog named Spiny Norman. He's right.
* The Janitor in ''{{Scrubs}}'' was initially designed as such a character, with the show's creator even intending to reveal him as a figment of JD's imagination if the show didn't last out its first season. In the second season it ended when Neil Flynn asked to be able to work with the other actors. On a DVD commentary he describes his character in the first season as "a Snuffleupagus".

* After [[DoctorWho the Doctor]] meets and befriends the young Amelia Pond, everyone else thinks that her stories of him are just them telling them about her imaginary friend. [[spoiler: Her boyfriend is astonished when the Doctor eventually appears, having accidentally skipped forward twelve years due to his damaged TARDIS, unable to believe that "the Raggedy Doctor" is real.]]
* {{Farscape}} has Scorpius's neural clone stuck inside John's head. John, being a GenreSavvy guy, named him [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQTbSCieNAY Harvey]].
* Al Calavicci in [[QuantumLeap Quantum Leap]]. He's a hologram advisor that generally only Sam Beckett can see and hear (although Al is also visible to animals, small children, the mentally handicapped and the dying). Ninety percent of the time, though, anyone seeing and hearing Sam talking to Al assumes that he's talking to himself, because as far as they can tell, no one is there.

* ''Bigfoot!'' by the Weakerthans is about a man who is exposed to ridicule after seeing Bigfoot.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* Hobbes, of ''CalvinAndHobbes'', is often interpreted as one of these. However, Bill Watterson always made a point of insisting that neither Calvin (who sees him as a living, breathing creature) nor the other human characters (who see him as a stuffed toy) [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane necessarily has the "true" perspective]].
* Mr. O'Malley, the diminuative, cigar-chomping [[FairyCompanion fairy godfather]] in Crockett Johnson's ''{{Barnaby}}'', was only visible to the five-year-old title character. The strip ended with Barnaby reaching his sixth birthday, forcing Mr. O'Malley to disappear from his life.
** Actually, Mr. O'Malley was visible to one other human character, Barnaby's friend Jane. She didn't see what the big deal about him was, however.
* In ''{{Curtis}}'', there's Gunk's pet "Flyspeck Island chameleon", who's constantly breaking things and creating other types of havoc and getting Curtis in trouble with his parents, who assume he's making the creature up. It doesn't help that the chameleon has the power of invisibility.
* One ''FarSide'' cartoon involves a man being forcibly lifted by his shirt collar off the ground; the person lifting him is invisible both to him and to the reader. An angry-looking little kid explains, "Big Bob is tired of you saying he doesn't exist."
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** WordOfGod: In an interview on Canadian TV that was hosted by Bob [=McGrath=], Snuffy's performer, Martin P. Robinson, revealed that Snuffy was finally introduced to the main human cast because the writers felt that by having the adults refuse to believe Big Bird despite the fact that he was telling the truth, they were teaching kids that there were things that adults would not believe, even if the child was telling the truth.
** Also from WordOfGod: In another interview, Robinson said that the show (Sesame Street) was in fact mimicing what some parents were showing to their kids (kids aged 5-6 were sent to a school where ''[[{{Understatement}} horrible]]'' things were happening, only to be told by their parents that it's all in their heads. [[http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/podcasts/leez/11739-lzep8 See here]])

* ''FraggleRock'' frequently had Doc's dog Sprocket trying (and failing) to bring the Fraggles' existence to his master's attention.

* In ''WingCommander II'', every now and then you're assigned a solo mission. Invariably, you run up against the Kilrathi's stealth fighters on these missions, and when you return to base you discover that your flight recorder has malfunctioned. Add in the fact that your character claimed to see stealth fighters ten years prior when your carrier from the first game was destroyed ? a claim that was never verified and is still in fact ridiculed ? and it's not terribly hard to see why nobody believes you.
** Spoofed in the game-within-a-game ''Wing-O'' in ''System Shock II''. In one solo mission, you meet a new class of enemy fighter, but no-one believes you because you left the lens cap on your flight recorder.
*** That also(?) happened with the Tri-Lackey fighters in the game-in-a-game in 'System Shock'.

* In ''OrderOfTheStick'', SquishyWizard Vaarsuvius has finally decided to acknowledge the existence of his raven familiar, Blackwing. The rest of the party has chosen not to believe him, despite Haley being the one to remind V about the raven in the first place ''and'' [[NominalImportance giving him his name]]. Either they are suffering from a severe case of SelectiveObliviousness, or they are taking an elaborate form of revenge on him for his earlier failings, in an inversion of CryingWolf.

* On ''{{Animaniacs}}'', the "Chicken Boo" skits center on someone trying to get others to believe that Boo is a chicken, a fact which isn't made clear until some circumstance causes Chicken Boo to lose his [[WigDressAccent flimsy but surprisingly effective disguise]].
* ''HiHiPuffyAmiYumi'' did this in the NoDialogueEpisode "Ikkakuju", where Ami tries to convince Yumi and Kaz that she really ''did'' see a unicorn, but they aren't inclined to believe Ami because she earlier tried to make up a wild story to cover her breaking Yumi's new guitar by accident.

** Of course Bobby ''is'' a manifestation of said kid's telekinetic powers: The girl in question acknowledges this, but insists this doesn't make him any less real. It's hard to argue with her, really.
* ''InvaderZim'': The titular alien is green, with no ears nor a nose, has a cybernetic backpack and says thing like: filthy humans. Yet, only Dib notices that he's an alien after seeing him for the first time. Other people are too dense to realise that a whale floating in midair, ejecting an escape pod, from which Zim and his robot GIR come out... is '''not''' normal!

** Another more well-known short, ''OneFroggyEvening'', featured a man finding the top-hatted Michigan J. Frog, who would only sing and dance in front of him. Every time he tried to show someone else, he acted like an ordinary frog or just as they arrived he was done singing.
*** ''TinyToonAdventures'' had its own take on One Froggy Evening. Since singing and dancing animals are the norm there, however, they took it one level further: the frog was (supposed to be) ''dead''. Hamton was about to dissect the frog when it started singing and dancing. Naturally, it only sang and danced when Hamton was the only person looking at it.
** Sylvester was [[RecycledScript repeatedly]] beaten up by a kangaroo (or "giant mouse", as he mistakenly regarded it) which only he would see. When he tried to show it to someone else (usually his son), they would see an actual mouse instead.
*** Though this was subverted at least twice (with the same dialog to boot)
---->'''Sylvester''': Listen, I don't blame you if you don't believe me...
---->'''Sylvester Jr.''': But I ''do'' believe you, father! There he is [[RightBehindMe right behind you]]!
*** Used again in another episode where two dogs, a bulldog named Spike and a smaller dog named Chester, decide to beat up a cat to enjoy themselves. They encounter Sylvester and chase him into a junkyard, where a vicious black panther that escaped from a zoo just happens to be hiding out. Every time Spike goes into the junkyard to thrash Sylvester, he is clawed into pieces by the panther, which he, in a dark maze of crates, thinks is Sylvester. Chester has no problem pummeling Sylvester before Spike's eyes, which convinces Spike that Chester must be tougher than him.
*** Used yet again another episode involving the same characters in "Dr. Jerkyll's Hide", where once again the dogs chase after Sylvester. Away from Chester's presence, Spike ends up getting beaten up again by Sylvester, thanks to a potion that transforms him into a giant monster. Chester, of course, never sees this transformed Sylvester, thinking his buddy is being beaten by the tiny tomcat. The final loss of face for Alfie (the name of the bull dog in this episode) is his being thrashed by a fly that has also been affected by the potion, as it occurs in front of Chester's eyes.

* Timmy Turner has '''''[[FairlyOddParents FAIRY GODPARENTS!!!]]'''''
* In Mr. Hanky's first appearance on {{South Park}}, he was a talking, singing, and dancing piece of poo from Kyle's perspective. But Kyle's friends, parents, and teachers only saw an ordinary piece of poo (along with poo smears everywhere). Kyle's friends have him committed to a mental hospital because they think he's hallucinating. Later, Chef asks them where Kyle is, and the boys tell him Kyle started seeing a magical talking piece of poo, to which Chef responds "You mean Mr. Hanky?"
* Happens in an episode of ''PowerpuffGirls'', where a new kid has an imaginary friend, but others don't notice so when his imaginary friend starts to play bad pranks, he got blamed until that thing fully plays pranks even without him near, forcing the girls to create their own imaginary friend when they found out that they can't beat him physically.
* Beth from TotalDramaIsland had an imaginary boyfriend that no one believed existed, he shows up at the finale of Total Drama Action in both the original and alternate ending.
* Spoofed in ''HarveyBirdmanAttorneyAtLaw'', where Harvey's client of the week, Ernie Devlin (a HannaBarbera cartoon character inspired by daredevil Evel Knievel) tries to convince Harvey that a tapir is trying to assassinate him and presents him a photo of an actual real-life tapir. Said gun-toting tapir appears later at the end of the episode to point out a critical flaw in Harvey's legal defense.

* Spongebob had the episode of "Bubble Buddy", where his friend, an apparently inanimate bubble, is dragged around for the whole episode. At the very end, he suddenly becomes alive, grabs a Bubble Taxi, and wishes Spongebob a [[ShaggyDogStory Happy Leif Erikson Day]].
* ''ThePenguinsOfMadagascar'', "Skorca!": Private is on night watch when he sees a giant orca flying through the city streets. The other penguins dismiss it as a hallucination brought on by too much candy, until they actually see it. (It's acutally a balloon float.)

* No one believed then-President Jimmy Carter when he claimed that he was attacked by a giant swimming rabbit while on a fishing trip until a White House photographer came forward with a picture of the event. It was a regular sized ''swamp rabbit'', quite a bit bigger and uglier than the cute little pet-shop bunnies people think of when they hear "rabbit." Even Carter had to agree it was damn funny, he first presented it as an amusing anecdote from his trip.
** This troper will always envy his father, because Dad first heard about this incident the morning after seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
* According to ''The Jargon File'', a "dancing frog" is any bug that occurs unpredictably and cannot be readily induced. Such bugs are extremely difficult to deal with. Again a reference to the cartoon (but pre-dating the trope-wiki).

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* Prior to the Onslaught saga, young [[FantasticFour Franklin Richards]] was visited by a so-called "imaginary friend" by the name of Charlie. When "Charlie" telekinetically causes Franklin to drop a glass of (orange) milk, he was chided by his mother for it. When Franklin tried to blame it on Charlie, Invisible Woman replies "Your ''invisible'' friend?". Of course, "Charlie" wound up being a projection of Onslaught trying to manipulate the most potentially powerful human on Earth, SoYeah.

** Around the mid 1970s, children began to see Snuffy. Later on, muppet characters saw him, OrSoIHeard.

* SmallGods had St. Ungulant, a hermit who lived out in the desert with the titular small gods. His lifestyle involved daily hallucinations, but fortunately his invisible friend Angus was there to keep him from going crazy. Angus later proved himself to be real by braining a hungry lion.