History Main / SkepticismFailure

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** One episode, Watanuki nearly got killed because he cut his toe nails at night.

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-->'''Han''': Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen ''anything'' to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

** In ''Film/StarWarsTheForceAwakens'', Han makes a point of saying everything Finn and Rey have heard of the Force is "all true".

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'':

!!Subversions and Aversions

[[folder: Anime and Manga ]]
* Considering ''Manga/{{XxxHolic}}'' is a highly supernatural anime, this was a bit of a shocker. Yuuko thoroughly debunks a fake fortune teller, noting and disassembling her verbal sleights of hand and keen psychological tricks. However, they later go on to meet a real fortune teller, who is pretty much spot on legitimate.
** There was an episode where Watanuki presumed that there was a supernatural cause for the problems of a young woman that he helped. He notice that light flashed from her shoulder and he presumed that it was the cause of the problems. When she met Ms. Yuuko, Yuuko explained to him that it's actually purely physiological and the light just reflected from a buckle on her shoulder bag.
* ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' loves playing with this trope, with Battler, the main character, representing logic and order and Maria and Beatrice - depending on whether we're on or off the board - representing belief in magic and the inexplicable. Most of the other characters run around in the middle, and shift their orientations throughout the story.
* In ''Manga/TwentiethCenturyBoys'', the villains make all of humanity think it's faking increasingly outlandish threats: mass germ warfare, giant robot attacks, and finally aliens. The heroes are continually disgusted with how eagerly most people eat it up.
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[[folder: Comic Books ]]
* In the original comic, ''Comicbook/FromHell'', by Creator/AlanMoore, one of the main characters reveals that he had been faking his psychic powers... yet every fake vision/prediction turned out to be true.
* Dr. Thirteen, the Ghost Breaker, is an interesting case. When he debuted in the 1950s, it was as a paranormal skeptic who proved alleged cases of the supernatural to be hoaxes - and in his stories, they were. When he became part of the Creator/DCComics SharedUniverse in which magic and ghost were very much real, though, he ended up looking like a FlatEarthAtheist. Later on Creator/NeilGaiman would explain that his skepticism actually prevented him from encountering real magic in ''ComicBook/BooksOfMagic''. Later still he acquired a sort of subconscious AntiMagic.
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[[folder: Film -- Live-Action ]]
* Averted in ''Film/BestInShow''. While the book does have a psychic, it does not involve any predictions that need skeptical treatment.
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[[folder: Literature ]]
* While most of his friends believe in ghosts and a mind reading act, Tom is the one who reveals both to be frauds in the ''Great Brain'' books.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
** You wouldn't expect an exception in a series that's all about wizards, but nonetheless Hermione Granger is utterly unconvinced by any of Trelawney's predictions or the Lovegoods' beliefs in creatures that, even by ''Harry Potter'' standards, are bizarre. The only correct Trelawney predictions are the ones Hermione doesn't hear in the first place, and the Lovegoods are right about exactly one thing the heroes didn't already know about ([[spoiler:the Deathly Hallows]]).
** Harry reasons out his entire family tree, concluding that he's descended from a legendary trio of wizards. Hermione and Ron both think he's losing it. Granted, he was over-eager in his explanation, which was sort of hard to follow. But it was a sound argument nonetheless.
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[[folder: Live-Action TV ]]
* An interesting subversion comes up in ''Series/TheFortyFourHundred'' where the show starts off with an event (4400 missing persons who disappeared over a span of 60 years suddenly reappearing, not a day older than when they left, in a ball of light near Seattle) so spectacular and public that not even the most skeptical can deny what has happened, yet everyone remains fairly skeptical about what caused it and what it means until the plot shows up to answer some questions.
* ''Series/{{CSI}}'':
** Subverted in an episode where one investigator's firm belief in spontaneous human combustion -- as both a phenomenon and the solution to a case -- is debunked by a scientific experiment they conduct.
** There was also an episode where a psychic got killed because she managed to divine the place a murder victim's body had been hidden, and the villain heard of this. In the end of the episode it was revealed that she had no supernatural knowledge, and her assessment of the victim's soul's current location (she is in "Summer''land''") got misheard as "Summer''lin''" (a Vegas suburb), which was the area the body was hidden.
* ''Series/{{House}}'': It's something that recurs with some regularity; House finds a perfectly rational explanation, but it's a big enough coincidence that the believers aren't convinced that it's not the supernatural at work.
** In one episode the patient claims to have been abducted by aliens. It turns out to be a hallucination, just as House repeatedly insisted.
** There was a patient who, ironically, was a Christian faith healer. House's adamant belief that the guy was a fraud (while the rest of the protagonists went from skepticism to doubt) turned out to be the key to identifying his disease.
** Another episode had a woman who claims to be able to see the dead. It turned out she had ergotism.
** There is an exception here; one patient comes in with a hallucination of Jesus (very vivid) and a host of other symptoms. The solution is found by ignoring the hallucination as a symptom, leaving the patient (a priest who had lost his faith) to believe it was divine intervention.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Monk}}'' had a psychic who mysteriously woke up in her car in front of a dead body. She attributed it to her PsychicPowers, which previously hadn't really accomplished everything, but Monk found a decidedly non-supernatural explanation by the end.
* ''Series/{{Psych}}''
** The show is an inversion of this. The main character is a brilliant detective, but his superiors find it easier to believe that he can solve cases with psychic powers.
** Also subverted in the episode "Psy vs. Psy", which features Shawn going up against the FBI's psychic, who's also a fake.
** Played straight in a later episode when Shawn, Gus, and another guy go to a psychic while following a dead man's last few hours. After the psychic somehow manages to guess the bizarre idea in [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Shawn's]] head they tell her that the man she talked to the previous day was dead, causing her to freak out and [[OohMeAccentsSlipping drop the Romanian accent]]. However, before the guys leave she looks at Shawn and Gus's friend and draws the Death Tarot card. Said friend is dead by the next commercial break.
* On ''Series/JohnDoe'', a woman believes she's having psychic visions of a serial killer, and reveals key details on his methods and location. It turns out that she'd nearly been murdered by the killer herself, and had escaped, but suffered so much blood loss in the process that her brain retained nothing but fleeting memories of her close call.
* ''Series/TheMentalist'' is an interesting inversion of this: the main character, Patrick Jane, is a former TV psychic (and [[PhonyPsychic admitted fraud]]) who gave up that line of work after his insulting "psychic reading" of a serial killer wound up [[DeathByOriginStory getting his family killed]]. The skills he picked up while faking psychic powers (a [[HyperAwareness keen sense of observation]] and a good understanding of human nature) turn out to be quite useful for police work, though... He's strongly opposed to psychic claims because of this.
* ''Series/{{NCIS}}'''s [[PerkyGoth Abby Sciuto]] occasionally floats a supernatural explanation for a death, because it would be cool, but eventually finds a mundane explanation. In one case, she made [=McGee=] collect corn stalks from a {{Crop Circle|s}}, and analyzed them for even the slightest anomaly, before she conceded they were fakes to throw investigators off.
* Averting this trope is a key theme of ''Series/JonathanCreek.'' No matter how 'impossible' the event in question, Jonathan never entertains the possibility of a supernatural cause, and he is always right. Many of the perpetrators of the deliberate crimes/cons (as opposed to the accidental events) actually ''rely'' on Skepticism Failure to cover their tracks, but as Jonathan often points out, falling back on 'magic' is what most people do because they don't like to believe they can be so easily fooled by a trick (as he's a designer of magic tricks, he would know better than most.) Additionally, unlike many procedurals/detective programs that tease at the supernatural, the show ''never'' suggested that it might be real at any point in its five season run.
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[[folder: Video Games ]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Scratches}}'' plays it with both sides: First, by reading the diaries and letters it is clear that the former owners of the mansion (where the game is set) were rational and intelligent people, subsequent findings show how they slowly began accepting supernatural explanations for everything that happened to them. The player character also starts experiencing strange unexplained phenomena culminating on fully embracing a supernatural solution, then a major twist occurs and a natural (and shocking) explanation presents. The Director's Cut goes even further by showing more evidence, but the final coda hints that there is still a missing piece while panning to the source of "the curse".
** A secret non-canon bonus ending suggests that the events of the game are all in the player character's head, and that he, like James Blackwood before him, has gone crazy.
* ZigZaggingTrope in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'': Your party comes across a village in the middle of nowhere where it is said a floating island will take you to an enchanted place called the Isle o'Smiles. You meet a warrior by the name of [[MeaningfulName Skep Tickle, who's dubious of the whole story]]... until the island sails in, and he joins in the boozing and feasting provided by the cheerful waiters and bunny girls. Then when you wake up, the staff have returned to their true demonic forms so they can enslave the fools who believed in the Isle o' Smiles.
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[[folder: Western Animation ]]
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Metalocalypse}}'', of course, as [[Quotes/SkepticismFailure quoted]]. In a later episode, Dethklok one-upped even ''that'' by negotiating the standard DealWithTheDevil contract down to a $5 Hot Topic gift card in exchange for options on the soul of ''the Blues Devil himself''.
* One notable exception to this rule is ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo''. [[ScoobyDooHoax The skeptical perspective is consistently proven correct]], to the point where one wonders why the gang continues to even entertain the notion of ghosts and monsters. However, this is inverted ([[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/06/27/the-corruption-of-scooby-doo/ disappointing some skeptics]]) in the ''Franchise/ScoobyDoo'' movies, both theatrical and {{O|riginalVideoAnimation}}AV, where the monsters are real. Typically in these movies there is also a fake version of the monster that is unmasked before the real one shows up. They [[LampshadeHanging Hang A Lampshade On It]] in the first live-action movie, in one scene where Scooby tries to tell Shaggy that his new girlfriend isn't what she appears to be. He says, "Mary Jane is a man in a mask!"
** Also {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in the more recent cartoon movies, such as the scene in ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooOnZombieIsland'' where Fred [[MistakenForAnImposter yanks a genuine zombie's head off in an attempt to remove its "mask"]]. When the head moves in his hand and he stammers that it must be animatronic, the girls declare: "You're not a skeptic, Freddy, you're in denial!"
* In the ''Literature/RainbowMagic'' movie, Rachel decides it's time to stop believing in fairies despite having met them when mean girls tease them. The fairies then need their help.
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* Kyon in ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' experienced this trope when he realizes that aliens, espers, and [[TimeTravel time-travellers]] exist. He now regularly spends much of his time in damage control to make sure ''more'' of this weirdness doesn't manifest -- i.e. [[DefiedTrope he tries to prevent Skepticism Failure]] in the local unconscious RealityWarper, Haruhi in case she ends up destroying the world accidentally.

* ''VideoGame/DragonAgeII'': If brought along for the ''Legacy'' DLC, Anders will reveal that he doesn't believe the Chantry's stories about the Magisters Sidereal, a group of seven Tevinter Magisters who invaded the Golden City and were turned into the first Darkspawn as punishment, instead insisting that they're "magic boogeymen" meant to justify mage oppression. A Magister Sidereal is the final boss of the DLC.

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* ''Manga/{{Dandadan}}'' begins with Okarun, a boy who believes in [=UFOs=], and Momo, a girl who believes in spirits, trying to disprove each other by visiting a relevant site. The result: Momo is StrappedToAnOperatingTable by aliens who to [[OrganTheft harvest her reproductive organs]], while Okarun is possessed by a ghost that ends up [[GroinAttack stealing his penis]]. They only make it out because the respective encounters unlock Momo's [[MindOverMatter telekinesis]] and grant Okarun PowersViaPossession.

* DC plays with this trope with Batman. A lot. Here's one priceless conversation from ''JLA 55#'':

[[caption-width-right:300: And he's even wrong about [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_hang that]].]]

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* The doctor known as [[AwesomeMcCoolname Mr. Chillingworth]] in the penny dreadful ''Literature/VarneyTheVampire'' plays this role, both with regard to the vampire and the literal interpretation of the Bible.

** In the episode "Blood Moon", Sam leaps into a man who appears to be a vampire. Sam spends the entire episode telling Al this is ridiculous...until he glances into a mirrored surface at the very end of the episode. You can guess what he doesn't see.

* [[Creator/DCComics Dr. Thirteen]], the Ghost Breaker, is an interesting case. When he debuted in the 1950s, it was as a paranormal skeptic who proved alleged cases of the supernatural to be hoaxes - and in his stories, they were. When he became part of a SharedUniverse in which magic and ghost were very much real, though, he ended up looking like a FlatEarthAtheist. Later on NeilGaiman would explain that his skepticism actually prevented him from encountering real magic in ''Books of Magic.'' Later still he acquired a sort of subconscious [[AntiMagic]].

* ''Series/ZeroHour'': Hank is not only a skeptic, he publishes ''Modern Skeptic'' magazine, and of course his doubt toward conspiracy theories quickly gets disproven when he encounters a real one in the show. This appears to be the only reason he begins as a professional skeptic, with a dramatic contrast.

* Averting this trope is a key theme of ''Series/JonathanCreek.'' No matter how 'impossible' the event in question, Jonathan never entertains the possibility of a supernatural cause, and he is always right. Many of the perpetrators of the deliberate crimes/cons (as opposed to the accidental events) actually ''rely'' on SkepticismFailure to cover their tracks, but as Jonathan often points out, falling back on 'magic' is what most people do because they don't like to believe they can be so easily fooled by a trick (as he's a designer of magic tricks, he would know better than most.) Additionally, unlike many procedurals/detective programs that tease at the supernatural, the show ''never'' suggested that it might be real at any point in its five season run.

* Seto Kaiba from ''Anime/YuGiOh'' is a shining example of a disbeliever to the point of seeing the past, his ancestor, and still brushing it off as fake.

* [[Creator/DCComics Dr. Thirteen]], the Ghost Breaker, is an interesting case. When he debuted in the 1950s, it was as a paranormal skeptic who proved alleged cases of the supernatural to be hoaxes - and in his stories, they were. When he became part of a SharedUniverse in which magic and ghost were very much real, though, he ended up looking like a FlatEarthAtheist. Later on NeilGaiman would explain that his skepticism actually prevented magic from functioning around him.

* Played with in ''WesternAnimation/{{The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron|BoyGenius}}'' episode, "The Phantom Of Retroland": Jimmy scoffs at the phantom that supposedly haunts an abandoned amusement park. However, Cindy points out that ''everyone'' knows it's fake, but only he would be such a party-pooper about it. At the end, after a string of impostors of the titular ghost, the ''{{real|AfterAll}}'' Phantom shows up.

* ''Film/StarWars'':