History Main / WeirdnessCensor

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Project's'' Koishi Komeiji [[SuperpowerLottery has the ability to manipulate the subconscious]], the most common application of which seems to be to trigger peoples' Weirdness Censors, [[PerceptionFilter thereby making herself invisible to them]].* The [=iOS=] game ''Plague Inc.'' (similar in many respects to ''VideoGame/{{Pandemic}}'') has several types of plagues that can be unleashed. The "parasite" type has additional abilities that can be [[EvolutionaryLevels evolved]] that hide it from notice by people. In game terms, this decreases the "severity" stat to ''below zero''. What this means is that the symptoms can include nausea, coughing + vomiting (which enables projectile vomiting) and still not think anything is wrong. You can have the entire ''world'' have these symptoms with no one the wiser. It's not until you "evolve" deadly symptoms and people start dying by the millions that anybody starts to consider that something strange is going on. The same can be done with the special Neurax Worm plague type, but that is implied to be a semi-sentient PuppeteerParasite.

* In ''Manga/FutatsuNoSpica'', nobody wonders about the weird stuff that sometimes happens involving Lion-san, for example when Asumi gets twirled around at the playground by some unseen force.

* ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya''

*** Haruhi provides an interesting take on this trope in that she not a [[{{Muggle}} normal person]] like Kyon is (who is who is very much in the know), nor just any [[IndexOfFictionalCreatures common supernatural entity]] either, but is TheOmnipotent who [[RealityWarper shapes the universe to her whim]], and who may have possibly ''created'' the [[ArcWords aliens, time travelers, and espers]] of the ''Haruhi Suzumiya'' universe. However, it is likely that her expectations and skepticism towards the supernatural may ironically prevent her from interacting with them despite her desire to do so (she desires secret [[PsychicPowers esper]] organizations, so of course the esper organizations [[FridgeBrilliance will be secret]]). Her own RealityWarper powers may likely be, [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity and thankfully too]], effectively acting as her own weirdness censor.

* The plot of the comic ''Comicbook/BlackHole'' 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.

* One appearance of The Abomination had him walking through a crowded street in the rain without being noticed. The Abomination is an eight-foot-tall musclebound reptilian monster. [[NoPeripheralVision Everyone else was staring at their feet]] for fear of making eye-contact with a stranger. Even worse, there was a six-month period of time with him as a teacher of dramatic writing or something, and no one of his students or anyone else for that matter has anything to say of the 8-foot gravely voiced covered from head to feet guy except that "he looks sad" or something. Seriously, if the Hulk used a semi-decent suit he wouldn't attract any attention at all.

* Fabletown in ''{{ComicBook/Fables}}'' has a magical protection to keep {{mu|ggles}}ndies from noticing their magical society in the middle of New York City. At one point they have to rely on rain to act instead, and in another point their filter (and the magic holding the buildings together) fails, forcing them to leave as New York discovers one of its neighborhoods is now suddenly in ruins for no discernible reason.
* In ''ComicBook/DoctorStrange'', magic is frequently explained away by "they must be shooting a movie." People still get out of Dr Strange's way, but they don't understand why (see Strange Tales vol. 1 #120 [May, 1964]). 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."

* A running gag of the Italian [[ComicBook/DisneyMouseAndDuckComics Disney Comics]] of old was that WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}} was a massive skeptic, steadfastly refusing to believe in magic and supernatural, no matter how many times Witch Hazel tried to impress him. Of course, this didn't stop him from taking part in various sci-fi and fantasy adventures by various artists.

* Very few people ever seem to notice or remark on ComicBook/{{Vampirella}}'s {{Stripperific}} outfit and when they do it's quickly handwaved.

** ''Film/GhostbustersII'' picks up five years after the end of the original, and excuses the public perception caused by a litany of ghosts[=/=]50-foot tall marshmallow man rampaging across New York City for one day by having the populace write the titular heroes off as having created a series of projections. By the time the sequel's plot begins, the characters have been sued by the city, lost most of the income they generated through the business, and have been forced to seek other employment, with only Stantz and Zeddemore still doing birthday parties in-costume (and [[Creator/JasonReitman one kid]] dismissing them as heroes). It takes another public incident (the reveal of the Scoleri Brothers after the Ghostbusters have had their gear impounded and a trial launched to find them guilty of illegally accessing city property) for the public to start trusting them again.

* This happens often in film adaptations, which tend to focus on either the origin or early years, instead of going for a more en media res approach. In 1996's ''Film/{{The Phantom|1996}}'', someone scoffs at reports of the Phantom as "just a rumor" and in ''Film/{{Daredevil}}'' in 2003 the police deny Daredevil as nothing more than a rumor until, in an early scene, reporter Ben Urich lights a drawing of flammable chemicals that Daredevil left behind as a Zorro mark to spell out DD.

* Played with in ''Film/{{RIPD}}''. Nick/old Chinese guy gets crushed by a car and a group of bystanders rush to help him. The Dead-o's actions do not go unnoticed by the media.

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy'':
** In ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'', this tendency has been [[ExploitedTrope exploited]] by a device called the Somebody Else's Problem field, which mimics invisibility, but is much cheaper. An example is given of a man who lost a bet about making a mountain entirely invisible when people noticed a suspicious extra moon in the sky - it would have been much simpler to just paint the mountain pink and put an SEP field on it, and the judge assigned to the case would have just walked near, around, and even ''over'' the mountain and not even notice it. It's implied that Arthur Dent is immune to SEP fields, as he immediately sees the spaceship being concealed without even trying -- and he immediately understands that it's almost certainly going to be ''[[WeirdnessMagnet his]]'' [[UnfazedEveryman problem.]]
** In ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'', 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."
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'':
** The entrance to Diagon Alley, a street filled with shops for wizards, is hidden behind a pub called The Leaky Cauldron which muggles never notice because they don't pay attention to their surroundings and don't expect it to be there. Though with memory charms, "Muggle repelling wards" and the charms that make Hogwarts [[InvisibleToNormals look like a pile of rubble]], it's not so much that Muggles willfully ignore magic as that any interaction with magic tends to involve them getting parts of their cortex melted.
** Arthur Weasley also notes that {{Muggles}} who are the victims of such magical pranks as shrinking keys will always insist that they simply lost them.
--->'''Arthur:''' Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face...
** The whole world of Harry Potter relies on Muggles' inherent ignorance towards anything magical. There's an in-universe book devoted to why muggles tend to subconsciously suppress all the memories of supernatural experiences.
** In ''Order of the Phoenix'' the majority of wizarding Britain was putting one on themselves with the Minster's smear campaign against Harry, and willful denial of Voldemort's return.
* This is a big part of Creator/HPLovecraft's Franchise/CthulhuMythos; the premise being that if the vast majority of human beings actually inquired into the weirdness and vastness around them, they'd go insane from the knowledge of "gods" and monsters. From ''Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu'':
-->The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

* The wizards in the ''Literature/YoungWizards'' series depend on this to get away with doing some forms of magic out in the open. The bullies can't hit you because your spell is deflecting their blows? They convince themselves that they didn't ''want'' to hit you, because invisible force fields are impossible. Vanish off a subway platform via teleporting? Whoever saw you thinks you simply moved deeper into the crowd while they weren't looking.
* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'':
** The {{Masquerade}} is held up by the [[{{Muggles}} vanilla humans]] as much by the supernatural community, largely because people just don't want to believe that the world is saturated with murderous monsters and inexplicable magic. The safe, mundane world that most vanillas live in is a much safer and happier place if they didn't have to worry about vampires, demons, or warlocks, which explain why you never hear stories about trolls and magic. Everyone just writes it off as something mundane that, at the time, they thought was impossible. If they're attacked by a troll, for example and they're asked about it in a few months or so, they'll just claim that it was a large drug addict or something (the first few months will just have them staying quiet, afraid of people thinking they're crazy or for thinking that they 'themselves' have gone off the deep end). It also helps that human magic users tend to [[WalkingTechbane screw up any kind of recording equipment]], making efforts to actually record evidence of the supernatural turn out to be grainy, filled with static, and generally seeming like badly distorted or faked content.
** 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 medical examiner, 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 riled up. While in the past a mob with torches and pitchforks could be considered a tangible threat to most supernatural creatures, humanity has since upgraded to assault rifles and attack helicopters. And now number in the billions.
** It really helps that most humans really don't want to believe that the ThingsThatGoBumpInTheNight are real. SelectiveObliviousness at its finest. To the point that they will accept any [[SharedMassHallucination alternate "rational" explanation no matter how farfetched]].
** One individual, Anna Valmont, a normal human and master thief, was very suddenly pulled into the supernatural side when demons killed her partners and she finds that they were being used as a playing piece between the forces of Heaven and Hell. When she gets out, she continues with her craft, taking on clients and targets in the supernatural community, though she mentioned how easy it was to find information on the players of the supernatural world, and this trope gets mentioned again as the reason why the supernatural nations don't need to try too hard to keep concealed.

* This is one of the central themes of Pratchett's lesser known works, the ''Literature/JohnnyMaxwellTrilogy'', 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 ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'' books, a magical force called Mist acts as an active version to cover up whenever a mortal sees gods or monsters. A few mortals are known to be immune to its effects.
* In the ''Literature/ClanOfTheCaveBear'' 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 ''Literature/{{Darkover}}'' anthology--Caleb Hargrave’s Weirdness Censor is so strong that it cancels out psi powers. [[spoiler:He’s a walking telepathic damper... but it only works when he’s nearby.]]
* 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.
* ''Literature/TheLostThing'' ends with the main character noting that he might have stopped noticing the lost things, implying that the people of the dull place he lives in are too mundane to notice something out of the ordinary like that. Earlier on, his parents don't notice that there's a giant thing in their living room until he draws their attention to it.
* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatchSeries'' and its sequels, the [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual Others]] use pretty basic spells to keep [[{{Muggles}} humans]] from noticing anything out-of-the-ordinary. This is done in order to prevent world-wide witch hunts. For example, the headquarters of the Moscow Night Watch are located on several floors of an office building, but these floors are invisible to humans (i.e. they think the building is smaller). It is common for crowds to simply pass by an Other hiding himself from humans without knowing why they are leaving a small area open. Also, no Other has to worry about burglars, as other spells make humans instinctively want to avoid certain places. This is mentioned by Anton when he has to pretend to be a human for several days and is not allowed to use any magic. He suddenly realizes his car could be stolen without any active wards.
* Verge Foray's novella "Practice" has an incident of this. A school for "disturbed children" is actually for psychic children. A private institute, it's subject to surprise accreditation inspections and the children conspire in the Masquerade with the non-psychic adults. When one of the kids does make a minor slip, another kid checks the inspectors' minds and finds that one of them "saw it, but he didn't believe it, so he didn't ''see'' it."

* Vadim Panov:
** ''Literature/SecretCity'': 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 {{AncientTradition}}s survived and some changed, generally working by ReligionIsMagic. 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 Creator/MichaelKurland's ''Literature/TheUnicornGirl'', 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.
* In ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments'', {{mu|ggles}}ndanes cannot see the Shadow World or most individuals belonging to it as they really are. The Shadowhunters, being mostly human, would normally be visible to them, but a simple bit of magic renders them unnoticeable as well. Locations, including an entire ''country'' are hidden from human perception this way.
* Creator/{{Plato}} reasoned that the people living in his allegorical PlatonicCave cannot comprehend the world outside the cave, and merely dismiss experiencing the surface world as a delusion.
* In Steven Gould's novel "Jumper" and the sequel "Reflex", the protagonist discovers he has the ability to teleport at will. At first he's afraid of revealing his secret if he ever "lands" somewhere within sight of anyone, but when this occurs a few times by accident, he discovers it's not a problem. Even when he instantly appears right in front of someone, the startled person just brushes it off with "oh excuse me, I didn't see you there" and dismisses it as a failure of their own attention rather than spending even a moment considering the ridiculous notion that he had just popped in.
* In ''[[Literature/TheVampireChronicles The Vampire Lestat]]'', Lestat mentions that this tendency is "a lesson about mortal piece of mind I never forgot."
-->Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing tin pans all over, pouring water on pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortals will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on.
* ''Literature/TheCityAndTheCity'' are a pair of politically and culturally distinct city-states that physically overlap. Residents of both cities are trained from childhood to ignore people, vehicles, buildings, and even disasters in the other city at all times. Visitors from other countries receive training to avoid "breaching" the division.
* ''Literature/{{Edgedancer}}'' (a novella of ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive''): The people of Yeddaw outright ignore a miracle happening in the middle of their town (specifically a tree growing ten feet in seconds), despite being exceptionally good at spotting street urchins and lawbreakers. Lift snarks that they must be doing so on purpose.
* ''Literature/HereticalEdge'' has the Bystander Effect, which functions similarity to The Mist from the ''Percy Jackson'' example up above by erasing or censoring memories of anything magical or otherwise supernatural from the minds of mundane humans. It can be overcome by becoming a Heretic or by being born [[HalfHumanHybrid half]] or [[UnevenHybrid part human]]. [[spoiler:It's essentially a giant memory spell cast by a race called the Seosten to stunt humanity's growth and isolate it from other races. Individual Seosten can selectively free humans from its effects.]]
* The {{Masquerade}} in ''LightNovel/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'' is maintained thanks to this. In the setting, summoners and supernatural beings have a specific form of InvisibleToNormals: whenever they leave a normal person's field of vision, that person will lose all of their memories of the supernatural. The explanation given is that an uninitiated person's mind is unable to properly comprehend the supernatural.
* In the ''Literature/{{ONSET}}'' series, it's theorized that one of the effects of the Seal of Solomon which has kept most of the really powerful supernatural entities away from Earth for a few millennia is that it increases the probability that people will avoid consciously noticing the rare supernatural events that take place (unless they're made aware of the Masquerade). However, as the Seal weakens not only does it increase the odds of something powerful getting through, people are more likely to notice odd things.

* In ''Literature/TheHauntingOfDrearcliffGrangeSchool'', students from a school for superheroes and a school for supervillains get into a fight in the middle of a London street, and a crowd gathers. The combatants don't worry about it, because they know that within a few hours at most the Ordinaries will have convinced themselves that they imagined the whole thing, or turned the memory into something more mundane. Before the fight's even over, there are people in the crowd telling each other that they saw better last time they went to see a conjurer at the theatre.

* In [[Literature/TheFourGospels John 12]] of Literature/TheBible, while Jesus is speaking, a [[{{God}} voice speaks from heaven]], and many people in the crowd think it's just thunder.

* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda''
** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the Hyrule Castle townsfolk do not notice, or at least have nothing to say about, their castle being taken over by an evil warlord and his moblin army, which is then encased in a crystalline force field, and especially not right after [[spoiler:said force field is broken by a giant glowing spider demon]]. They do however react when the player's wolf form runs around town. The ignoring (or being completely blind to) the barrier is lampshaded by one character.
** Zigzagged in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'' where at first it appears to be an aversion with people ignoring the moon, until you walk in on the meeting with the Mayor and Captain Viscen declares that the city is usually overrun with people this time of year, making it clear you're only seeing the very small portion of people who actually are ignoring it. As time goes on however, more and more people flee until the only few who are left are those who have utterly [[TheFatalist resigned themselves to the annihilation]]. Mutoh is the only person left who actually still refuses to believe the moon will fall.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'': Huh. That ten-year-old is running around with a giant, super-rare, legendary creature following their every whim. Nah, that's probably just a transformed Ditto.
* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, Tamriel has one, partly thanks to ArtificialAtmosphericActions. [=NPCs=] will suffer odd pathing issues and will get stuck trying to walk through each other. Guards will ignore people attacking you, but if you attack someone, they'll immediately try to arrest you for committing a crime. You can murder someone in cold blood in the street, pay your fine, and then otherwise walk away scot-free. You can fire an arrow into a person's head from stealth, and that person will dismiss it as ''the wind''. Odd circumstances crop up where two guards will suddenly try to kill each other because one accidentally struck a friendly NPC while fighting a legitimate enemy and the other considered it a crime. You may help a village defend against an attack but then immediately find yourself under arrest because you accidentally killed a chicken in the fighting. You'll wake up to find yourself being attacked by an assassin or a zombie but your bunkmate won't lift a finger to help you. Many fans actually ''enjoy'' this aspect of the series because the weirdness is just that entertaining sometimes.
* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Project's'' Koishi Komeiji [[SuperpowerLottery has the ability to manipulate the subconscious]], the most common application of which seems to be to trigger peoples' Weirdness Censors, [[PerceptionFilter thereby making herself invisible to them]].
* For some reason in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts358DaysOver2'', nobody seems to notice how many monsters are in Twilight Town. For that matter; it almost seems to be a ''ghost town'' whenever you have to be in there. Bonus points go to when you consider that [[spoiler:Xion's final form is ''floating in the air'' in front of the train station. And she's practically an AttackOfThe50FootWhatever]]. How on ''earth'' did people ''not'' notice that or even come to investigate?!
** [[spoiler:[[FridgeBrilliance But they probably would have forgotten about seeing Xion, actually]].]]
* In ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' and both sequels, Psynergy itself is InvisibleToNormals... 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.
** Subverted in ''Dark Dawn'' when Briggs recognizes Matthew & Co. because he saw them handwaving crates around on the other side of the dock... but it's implied that he ''knew what to look for'' since he's [[ContinuityNod dealt with Adepts before]] (and [[MuggleBornOfMages lives with a few]]), making him more of an exception that proves the rule.
* The [=iOS=] game ''Plague Inc.'' (similar in many respects to ''VideoGame/{{Pandemic}}'') has several types of plagues that can be unleashed. The "parasite" type has additional abilities that can be [[EvolutionaryLevels evolved]] that hide it from notice by people. In game terms, this decreases the "severity" stat to ''below zero''. What this means is that the symptoms can include nausea, coughing + vomiting (which enables projectile vomiting) and still not think anything is wrong. You can have the entire ''world'' have these symptoms with no one the wiser. It's not until you "evolve" deadly symptoms and people start dying by the millions that anybody starts to consider that something strange is going on. The same can be done with the special Neurax Worm plague type, but that is implied to be a semi-sentient PuppeteerParasite.
* The Mat Dickie game ''VideoGame/TheYouTestament'' has this with its citizens. It's not uncommon to watch citizens greet others, turn around and attack them, steal items, run around with ''missing limbs'', hug a person, then turn around and attack them... you try to do any of this stuff, [[CantGetAwayWithNuthin you're gonna get caught.]]
* Discussed in ''VisualNovel/KatawaShoujo''. After a couple of weeks of studying at a school for the physically disabled, the main character notices that he's been developing a Weirdness Censor of sorts for his classmates' various disabilities.

* Most of the stages in ''VideoGame/JoJosBizarreAdventureAllStarBattle'' have onlookers, most of whom watch the fight, with some commenting on hazards. However, the background characters for the Cairo stage simply do not care about the insanity occurring right next to them. Granted, Stands are InvisibleToNormals, but they should still see such things as a man teleporting around and dropping ''steamrollers'', a woman unraveling herself into string, a man's bullets being redirected in a zigzag pattern, or ''a long-dead president of the United States (though to be fair, not one from this present timeline) disappearing into an American Flag'', or any one of the crazy things from the first two parts, but no one bats an eye. They don't even react when a car speeds ''right past'' their table.
* In ''Videogame/{{Octodad}}'', the great majority of people don't seem to think strange a "man" walks in bizarre patterns, talks in blurbs, has tentacles instead of arms and legs or causes great amounts of property damage doing even the most mundane of tasks. The only person who knows his secret is a psychotic chef and [[spoiler:his daughter, who assumed that everyone already knew]].

* PlayedForDrama in ''VisualNovel/DokiDokiLiteratureClub''. [[spoiler:After Sayori commits suicide and the game resets, characters begin acting more and more intense (culminating in Yuri becoming an obsessive {{Yandere}} towards the player) and the game starts glitching due to the [[MediumAwareness Medium Aware]] Monika's influence over the game. The player character (who, being the AudienceSurrogate, has the least character out of anyone in the cast) doesn't comment on ''any'' of this, even when Natsuki notices the changes in Yuri and tries to go to the player for help, only for her face to suddenly disappear as she tells the player to forget about her and Yuri once Monika gets to her. Eventually it gets so bad that even when Yuri catches the player character alone, confesses her love in an ''extremely'' creepy way, and then stabs herself to death in front of the player no matter whether the player accepts her confession or not, the PC has ''zero'' reaction to any of it and ends up just staring blankly at her dead body for an entire in-game weekend as he functionally ceases to be a character.]]
* In ''VideoGame/TheDarksideDetective'', most of the population of Twin Lakes seems to just ignore the supernatural events going on around them. At one point a computer operator comments that she can't figure out why the computer's on the fritz when there's a gremlin standing right next to her loudly nomming on the wiring. In the finale chapter, an incipient ZombieApocalypse is treated as non-supernatural rioting by everybody except the OccultDetective protagonist and a priest he joins forces with.
* PlayedForDrama in ''VideoGame/Persona5'', when politician Masayoshi Shido ''confessing to multiple crimes and murders during his election victory speech'' is quickly buried and written off as him "falling ill due to overexertion" by TheConspiracy backing him [[spoiler: with help from the GodOfEvil Yaldabaoth]], and the populace of Japan just ''goes with it''.

* In ''Webcomic/EverydayHeroes'', it seems at first that Uma and her father are just using the standard PaperThinDisguise of wearing glasses to pass as human. Later, they mention using an [[Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy "Adams Field"]], implying that the glasses have some sort of Weirdness Censor built into them.
** On its highest setting, the glasses can interfere with [[http://eheroes.smackjeeves.com/comics/2046009/they-love-lucy-too/ all electronic recording devices nearby.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. The entire theme of "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E23HomersEnemy 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.
-->'''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.

* ''WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitchTheSeries'' has all types of aliens running around and yet hardly anyone ever give it any mind. When Lilo gives a few aliens away to help with a specific job, the owners are more then happy to take them in.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
** Parodied hilariously when the Griffins ignore the giant squid that destroys their home, [[ElephantInTheLivingRoom choosing to blame it on earthquakes or a truck driving by]].
** Also, in the episode where they get a poltergeist, Lois pushes in some chairs around the dinner table and then turns around. When she turns back, they're all stacked in a pyramid on the table, and she says "Oh, I must have just stacked them wrong and not realized it. Yeah, that's it...."
** Peter's fights with the giant chicken are treated this way. In one extreme example, Peter and Lois were interrupted mid-conversation by the chicken attacking Peter. The fight sequence (with a break for a fancy dinner) doesn't finish until hours have passed. When Peter finally returns home, battered and bleeding, Lois is still sitting there waiting for him, and they finish the conversation as if nothing happened.
* Officer Barbrady does this a lot in the early episodes of ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'', whether it's political corruption or alien plots.
* Played straight and subverted in the [[https://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...
-->'''Old Man:''' [[CurseCutShort What the ffff--]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'' 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 MouseWorld, such as ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'', ''WesternAnimation/TheRescuers'', ''WesternAnimation/ChipAndDaleRescueRangers'' and others, rely on this trope. Humans never notice they're surrounded by clothed, talking mice with their own human-like civilization.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' has an episode in which the crew go back in time, first to visit the American Revolution and then to help America win because their last visit caused Britain to win. Not one colonial notices that Bender is a robot -- Paul Revere believes he's a cannon, Creator/BenjaminFranklin mistakes him for an oven, and so on. [[RuleOfFunny Much to Bender's surprise, he proves capable of shooting cannonballs out his ass and baking a turkey in his compartment.]]
* At the end of the second season of WesternAnimation/{{WITCH}} the five girls have ascended to their zenith forms (pure whatever element they are--air, earth, fire, water and quintessence) and are fighting a giant snake monster who at Phobos and gained his power. No one in the city notices this fight because the regent for the heart of Earth makes it look like it was a cartoon on a big billboard downtown.
** Also, during the first season no one seems to notice or question the frequent appearance of portals or girls with wings and magical powers closing those portals.

* The military in ''WesternAnimation/SheepInTheBigCity'' try to enforce this, not even bothering to hide their giant top secret military bases and helicopters, but instead just putting up signs telling people to ignore them.

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': Grunkle Stan either doesn't see or doesn't seem bothered by the supernatural events in the town. When he sees preserved dinosaurs, he only thinks of how much money he can make by using them as attractions. [[spoiler:Though by the end of season 1 it's revealed that he knows a lot more than that as he's been gathering the secrets of the books to unlock something.]] When Dipper presents evidence in the form of his book, Stan makes a few jokes about it, reads it, and gives it back, thinking them funny stories [[spoiler:when in reality he used the books for his machines and photo copied the contents]]. When Dipper unleashes zombies in season 2 [[spoiler:Stan fights them off, and reveals he's known all along about the supernatural, having lived in the town for years. He pretended not to notice because messing with that stuff is dangerous and could get the kids killed]].
** The rest of the town, however, barely reacts to any of the strange things going on. While a lot of the weirdness is occurring in the woods and may not be perfectly in sight, things like a giant rampaging gnome made of smaller gnomes or a two-dimensional, pixelated video game character destroying things throughout the town would be pretty hard to miss. All it takes for Mermando to hide his identity as a mermaid is a conveniently-placed pool raft, and the teenagers seem to go more or less back to normal after their encounter with the convenience store ghosts and never mention it again.
*** Possibly justified because even without the supernatural elements, the town is pretty strange by itself: for example, one episode has Pool Check the pool manager ''lock a kid up in the drain'' for unknown reasons and an indeterminate amount of time.
** There turns out to be a good reason for this in the season 2 episode "Society of the Blind Eye": [[spoiler:the eponymous Society has been kidnapping people who ''do'' see the supernatural and erasing their memories]].
** Then, in the final episode after [[spoiler:said Society was no longer active]], the mayor declares the "Never Mind All That" act, wherein the whole town agrees to [[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain not talk about]] [[spoiler:Weirdmageddon]] with outsiders. Though there is a shot of a farmer shooing "eye-bats" out of his barn, so they are acknowledging ''some'' of the weirdness, at least.
* The titular character of ''WesternAnimation/ArchiesWeirdMysteries'', given all the odd things that happen in that God-forsaken town, is pretty quick to accept the existence of anything from aliens to a giant blob monster made of tapioca pudding. Subverted (and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]) when Santa Claus comes to town and Archie can't believe it's really him:
-->'''Santa Claus:''' Archie. You believe in ghosts, werewolves, aliens, and monsters. Why's it so hard to believe the real Santa Claus would come to Riverdale?
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' pits the Dark Knight against the Condiment King: a [[LargeHam hammy]] [[JustForPun pun-dropping]] IneffectualSympatheticVillain who uses ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce as weapons. Good old Bats is ''so used'' to villains with outlandish costumes and motives that he doesn't even think twice about it; he simply assumes the guy is new at it and even ''offers to go easy on him''. He does mutter, [[GoingToBeOneOfThoseDays "It's gonna be one of those nights"]] when he hears the initial police radio report, suggesting that the situation is weird even by his standards.
* ''WesternAnimation/ShaunTheSheep'': The Farmer will willingly ignore all the evidences that the sheeps and other farm animals are clearly sentient and acting like humans.
* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WesternAnimation/LittlestPetShop2012'' episode "[[Recap/LittlestPetShop2012S4E5LittlestPetShopOfHorrors Littlest Pet Shop of Horrors]]": The shop receives a guest, a vampire bat named Vlad. Vlad openly does stereotypical vampire-like things, like attempting to bite the other characters' necks, lacking a reflection, repulsion by crosses and garlic, sleeping in a coffin, and getting burned by sunlight. Only Russell catches on that he's a vampire, but [[CassandraTruth everyone else refuses to believe him]] (under the idea that Vlad never said he was a vampire), forcing Russell to fight Vlad on his own while being hindered by his friends.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "Romeo And Smurfette", when the Smurfs capture Papa Smurf posing as Gargamel after a FreakyFridayFlip and stake him down, they refuse to believe that he is actually Papa Smurf despite the fact that he is clearly speaking to them in Papa Smurf's voice. Since this scene was actually adapted from [[ComicBook/TheSmurfs the comic book]] story "Smurf Vs. Smurf", it's obvious that the attempt to translate this mistake in knowing who's actually in the appearance of Gargamel did not work as well as it did in the comic book, where even Hefty without his tattoo mark in the comic book version of "King Smurf" had trouble convincing his fellow Smurfs who he actually is.
* In ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'', '''nobody''' in Boxwood Terrace (save for Mitchell), acknowledges the alien behaviors of the Propulsions, or notice their minivan turning into a flying saucer.
* Played for laughs in ''WesternAnimation/KingOfTheHill''; Hank Hill's unique form of eccentricity makes him literally ''incapable of understanding'' things that strongly contradict his [[GoodOldWays strongly conservative]] GoodOlBoy values. Most notably, in one episode when he meets his wife Peggy's friend, "Caroline", a DragQueen, Hank genuinely believes that "she's" a woman because [[IRejectYourReality he refuses to believe that men would dress as women even after being told the truth]].

* In a study about ball lightning, a very poorly understood electromagnetic meteorological phenomenon, it was found that a third of people in the United States had seen ball lightning but never told anyone. The reason was simple, ball lightning has no pressence in modern day pop culture (unlike cryptids) and is visually simple enough (a ball of light) that the ones that do can simply convince themselves it was simply an optical illusion.

* Invoked by various conspiracy theories, New Age mythology and fringe cults- that the human race is instinctively in denial of the true nature of reality.

* The ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'' films use this as an excuse to SnapBack in [[Film/GhostbustersII the sequel]]. In spite of a 50 ft tall marshmallow man rampaging through the city in the [[Film/{{Ghostbusters 1984}} previous film]], by the sequel everyone has become convinced that it was all a hoax and the Ghostbusters are ordered to pay the damages.

* In a study about ball lightning, a very poorly understood electromagnetic meteorological phenomenon, found that a third of people in the United States had seen ball lightning but never told anyone. The reason was simple, ball lightning has no pressence in modern day pop culture (unlike cryptids) and is visually simple enough (a ball of light) that the ones that do can simply convince themselves it was simply an optical illusion.

* In a study about ball lightning, a very poorly understood electromagnetic meteorological phenomena, found that a third of people in the United States had seen ball lightning but never told anyone. The reason was simple, ball lightning has no pressence in modern day pop culture (unlike cryptids) and is visually simple enough (a ball of light) that the ones that do can simply convince themselves it was simply an optical illusion.

* ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooAndTheGhoulSchool'': Despite living next door to Grimwood's Finishing School, which houses a vampire, a Frankenstein, a ghost, a werewolf and a mummy, the Calloway Cadets and Colonel seems incapable of recognizing they're literal monsters.

* In Creator/SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/NightWatch'' and its sequels, the [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual Others]] use pretty basic spells to keep [[{{Muggles}} humans]] from noticing anything out-of-the-ordinary. This is done in order to prevent world-wide witch hunts. For example, the headquarters of the Moscow Night Watch are located on several floors of an office building, but these floors are invisible to humans (i.e. they think the building is smaller). It is common for crowds to simply pass by an Other hiding himself from humans without knowing why they are leaving a small area open. Also, no Other has to worry about burglars, as other spells make humans instinctively want to avoid certain places. This is mentioned by Anton when he has to pretend to be a human for several days and is not allowed to use any magic. He suddenly realizes his car could be stolen without any active wards.

* ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'' runs on this (and [[NoFourthWall fourth wall breakage]]).

Also see CityOfWeirdos. Possibly overlaps with SupernaturalProofFather.

* Inverted in ''Fanfic/TheDetectiveAndTheDiplomat''. While most people in Ankh-Morpork [[CityOfWeirdos don't even blink at a lot of stuff in the city]], Literature/SherlockHolmes has trained himself to pay attention to his senses and unusual clues and thus his Weirdness Censor ''doesn't work''. This becomes a considerable problem when he is trapped there.

** Subverted in ''Dark Dawn'' when Briggs recognizes Matthew & Co. when he spots them handwaving crates around on the other side of the dock... but it's implied that he ''knew what to look for'' since he's [[ContinuityNod dealt with Adepts before]] (and [[MuggleBornOfMages lives with a few]]), making him more of an exception that proves the rule.

* In ''LightNovel/IsThisAZombie'', the heroes normally erase the memories of the normal people to keep the {{Masquerade}}. In the first episode of season 2, Ayumu is forced to fight a tentacled monster in broad daylight, yet everybody seems to only give it a passing glance and concentrate on the fact that Ayumu is in a dress. After defeating the monster, the device Ayumu uses to erase memories breaks down, leaving him a laughingstock as everyone [[NeverLiveItDown brings up the crossdressing for a long, long time]]. At the very least, Taeko noticed the monster and thanked him for saving her life.

* Cartoons and movies that take place in a MouseWorld, such as ''WesternAnimation/AnAmericanTail'', ''Disney/TheRescuers'', ''WesternAnimation/ChipAndDaleRescueRangers'' and others, rely on this trope. Humans never notice they're surrounded by clothed, talking mice with their own human-like civilization.

** And in ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' 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 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]].

* In the anime version of ''Anime/{{Pretear}}'', Shin's spell Beyondios creates a [[PhantomZone 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 reasons -- but they ''still'' manage to stay unnoticed even by the [[MagicalGirl protagonist's]] family, who only become aware that ''something is going on'' when the BigBad invades their BigFancyHouse. And ''then'', it takes awhile for them to notice. At least a few episodes. In which they go on a "ghost hunt".

* This is often played for laughs in the typically bizarre world of ''Manga/OnePiece''. Particularly because the captain of the Strawhat Pirates, who is ''literally'' [[RubberMan made of rubber]], and who has recruited a large cast of truly freaky characters 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.

* A running gag of the Italian [[ComicBook/DisneyMouseAndDuckComics Disney Comics]] of old was that WesternAnimation/{{Goofy}} was a massive skeptic, steadfastly refusing to believe in magic and supernatural, no matter how many times Witch Hazel tried to impress him. Of course, this didn't stop him to take part in various sci-fi and fantasy adventures by various artists.

* Inverted in ''Fanfic/TheDetectiveAndTheDiplomat''. While most people in Ankh-Morpork [[CityOfWeirdos don't even blink at a lot of stuff in the city]], SherlockHolmes has trained himself to pay attention to his senses and unusual clues and thus his Weirdness Censor ''doesn't work''. This becomes a considerable problem when he is trapped there..

* In prose, at least early on, the police denied that Radio/TheShadow existed, claiming he just represented a contemporary rumor. In the 1994 Alec Baldwin [[Film/TheShadow 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.)

* This is a big part of Creator/HPLovecraft's Franchise/CthulhuMythos; the premise being that if the vast majority of human beings actually inquired into the weirdness and vastness around them, they'd go insane from the knowledge of "gods" and monsters. From "Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu":

** There's also ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'', where an actual horse (Binky) walks into a library to pick up Susan. Except that everybody knows that that doesn't happen, so it's obviously not real and therefore nothing to be concerned about.

* ''Literature/{{Edgedancer}}'' (a novella of ''Literature/TheStormlightArchive''): The people of Yeddaw outright ignore a miracle happenning in the middle of their town (specifically a tree growing ten feet in seconds), despite being exceptionally good at spotting street urchins and lawbreakers. Lift snarks that they must be doing so on purpose.

*** ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken'' has Lunacy, which is equivalent to Delirium. Instead of being the ancestral memories of werewolves culling humans, however, it's a gift by their patron goddess Luna that keeps humanity from easily finding the beasts in their midsts.

*** Other fan-game ''TabletopGame/PrincessTheHopeful'' has an optional rule allowing to apply the trope to Princesses' outfits; according to this rule, the Nobles' magic combined with mortals' natural tendency to ignore the supernatural means a Princess dressed in a futuristic scifi outfit can go around in public completely unnoticed, aside from people noticing she looks a bit "nerdy".

* Averted in the ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' games, when bystanders will basically go "WTF?!" when they see Altair, Ezio and so on climbing up a wall, and so on.

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the Hyrule Castle Townsfolk do not notice, or at least have nothing to say about, their castle being taken over by an evil warlord and his moblin army, which is then encased in a crystalline force field, and especially not right after [[spoiler:said force field is broken by a giant glowing spider demon]]. They do however react when the player's wolf form runs around town. The ignoring (or being completely blind to) the barrier is lampshaded by one character.

* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, Tamriel has one, partly thanks to ArtificialAtmosphericActions. [=NPCs=] will suffer odd pathing issues and will get stuck trying to walk through eachother. Guards will ignore people attacking you, but if you attack someone, they'll immediately try to arrest you for committing a crime. You can murder someone in cold blood in the street, pay your fine, and then otherwise walk away scot-free. You can fire an arrow into a person's head from stealth, and that person will dismiss it as ''the wind''. Odd circumstances crop up where two guards will suddenly try to kill each other because one accidentally struck a friendly NPC while fighting a legitimate enemy and the other considered it a crime. You may help a village defend against an attack but then immediately find yourself under arrest because you accidentally killed a chicken in the fighting. You'll wake up to find yourself being attacked by an assassin or a zombie but your bunkmate won't lift a finger to help you. Many fans actually ''enjoy'' this aspect of the series because the weirdness is just that entertaining sometimes.
* VideoGame/{{Touhou}} Project's Koishi Komeiji [[SuperpowerLottery has the ability to manipulate the subconscious]], the most common application of which seems to be to trigger peoples' Weirdness Censors, [[PerceptionFilter thereby making herself invisible to them]].

* Most of the stages in ''VideoGame/JoJosBizarreAdventureAllStarBattle'' have onlookers, most of whom watch the fight, with some commenting on hazards. However, the background characters for the Cairo stage simply do not care about the insanity occurring right next to them. Granted, Stands are InvisibleToNormals, but they should still see such things as a man teleporting around and dropping ''steamrollers'', a woman unraveling herself into string, a man's bullets being redirected in a zig-zag pattern, or ''a long-dead president of the United States (though to be fair, not one from this present timeline) disappearing into an American Flag'', or any one of the crazy things from the first two parts, but no one bats an eye. They don't even react when a car speeds ''right past'' their table.

[[/folder]]
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* In ''Anime/SailorMoon [=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}}d by [[MonsterOfTheWeek the Lemures]] immediately after its appearance - they mocked the citizens for not noticing it.

* ''Manga/DetectiveConan''. In order for the {{masquerade}} to be sustained, there are [[ElephantInTheLivingRoom a number of details that the cast is forcibly required to ignore]], otherwise the whole charade would fall apart rather quickly. With time, most of these have been either {{lampshade|Hanging}}d to death or even seriously acknowledged by the cast.

* In ''LightNovel/IsThisAZombie'', the heroes normally erase the memories of the normal people to keep the {{masquerade}}. In the first episode of season 2, Ayumu is forced to fight a tentacled monster in broad daylight, yet everybody seems to only give it a passing glance and concentrate on the fact that Ayumu is in a dress. After defeating the monster, the device Ayumu uses to erase memories breaks down, leaving him a laughingstock as everyone [[NeverLiveItDown brings up the crossdressing for a long, long time]]. At the very least, Taeko noticed the monster and thanked him for saving her life.

* In the manga ''Manga/NagasareteAirantou'' [[spoiler: Ikuto has a spell placed on him to cause him to disregard any supernatural events he witnesses and if forced to witness an event to handwave it with a scientific explanation even if his explanation makes no sense. (And double down if he's called out) This was done to prevent him from noticing that his sister is a Youkai because she was worried he'd be scared of her if he knew she wasn't human.]]

* ''ComicBook/XMen''
** For a while, Professor X would use his telepathic powers to erase the memories of local citizenry. Yes, he has done this to save lives, which is fine, but he used to do this just to simply act as a Weirdness Censor and keep the X-Men secretive. [[MemeticMutation Professor Xavier is a jerk]].

* In the first arc of the ''ComicBook/{{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 StageMagician with [[MagiciansAreWizards actual magical powers]] who is a member of the Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica. 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 Franchise/TheDCU. 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. The alternate argument would be that in a world populated by aliens who can fly and shoot lasers out their eyes and gets invaded once a month, most people probably don't really see much difference between natural and supernatural as one could easily be used to mimic the other.

* Overlaps with FailedASpotCheck in ''Film/KnightAndDay.'' After June exits the bathroom on the plane, she fails to notice that [[spoiler:everyone on board except for herself and Roy is dead.]] She continues to block it out when Roy points this out to her. It's not until Roy [[spoiler:takes control of the aircraft and June sees the bodies fall out of their seats]] that she's finally convinced.

* The ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'' 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 ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} who finds the concept of the X-Men bizarre despite the fact that he is a mutant himself.

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter''

* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia''

* ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''

* Verge Foray's novella "Practice" has an incident of this. A school for "disturbed children" is actually for psychic children. A private institute, it's subject to surprise accreditation inspections and the children conspire in the masquerade with the non-psychic adults. When one of the kids does make a minor slip, another kid checks the inspectors' minds and finds that one of them "saw it, but he didn't believe it, so he didn't ''see'' it."

* TheMasquerade in ''LightNovel/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'' is maintained thanks to this. In the setting, summoners and supernatural beings have a specific form of InvisibleToNormals: whenever they leave a normal person's field of vision, that person will lose all of their memories of the supernatural. The explanation given is that an uninitiated person's mind is unable to properly comprehend the supernatural.
* In the ''Literature/{{ONSET}}'' series, it's theorized that one of the effects of the Seal of Solomon which has kept most of the really powerful supernatural entities away from Earth for a few millennia is that it increases the probability that people will avoid consciously noticing the rare supernatural events that take place (unless they're made aware of TheMasquerade). However, as the Seal weakens not only does it increase the odds of something powerful getting through, people are more likely to notice odd things.

* ''Literature/{{Illuminatus}}'': fnord

* From ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar''

** In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'', the Hyrule Castle Townsfolk do not notice, or at least have nothing to say about, their castle being taken over by an evil warlord and his moblin army, which is then encased in a crystalline force field, and especially not right after [[spoiler:said force field is broken by a giant glowing spider demon.]] They do however react when the player's wolf form runs around town. The ignoring (or being completely blind to) the barrier is lampshaded by one character.

* At the end of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'', [[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 because it's New York and they're used to that.

** [[spoiler:This is actually intentional. The patriots wanted to put their all-controlling super-AI to one final test: suppose that one day, the mind-control nanomachines and the ID-controlled guns go completely haywire. Can the AIs come up with a plan to prevent would-be rebels reacting poorly to the newly-revealed broken masquerade, even if they see it in all of its full glory? The fact that the patriot AIs were able to micromanage New York so that a giant submarine crashing into the city was considered "normal" means that the test was an extremely productive success.]]

** The trope actually ends up being subtly deconstructed as TheUnmasquedWorld really isn't any different from before. People still go about their lives as usual, TheMenInBlack still do their job as before, and most denizens of the magical world still stay out of sight. Even while the {{masquerade}} was in place [[http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1650 a lot of people knew about magic]]. It seems like people just don't let all the weirdness going on around them get in the way of living their lives, yet aren't in the least bit of denial about how strange things are. They just treat the fantastic the same way as they treat the mundane.
** The above gets {{Lampshaded}} when a security guard in ''EGS:NP'' calls someone's sleeves shrinking a "neat trick". TheRant says "Oh my god. We found him! We found the one character in EGS who makes excuses when he sees obvious magic and doesn't just accept it as a thing!"

** Nobody even seems to notice when someone or something starts breaking stuff in Tokyo, no matter if it's Ping the overpowered RobotGirl, a giant drunken turtle, or a Rent-a-Zilla. This is [[JustifiedTrope 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 InvisibleToNormals, but the actual extent of this effect remains unclear. Also, the people don't look up particular iteration is alluded to in ''Webcomic/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 [[WordOfGod his explanation for this phenomenon]]: "[[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 scale--Piro only sees "mundane" things (and dismisses the fantastic things as mundane things) and Largo only sees "fantastic" things, and comes up with fantastic explanations for the mundane things he sees. Everyone else is somewhere else on this scale, nearly always between those two extremes.

* In the ''Webcomic/{{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.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''

** The [[WesternAnimation/TheTransformers 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.

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': Grunkle Stan either doesn't see or doesn't seem bothered by the supernatural events in the town. When he sees preserved dinosaurs, he only thinks of how much money he can make by using them as attractions. [[spoiler:Though by the end of season 1 it's revealed that he knows a lot more than that as he's been gathering the secrets of the books to unlock something.]] When Dipper presents evidence in the form of his book, Stan makes a few jokes about it, reads it, and gives it back, thinking them funny stories [[spoiler:when in reality he used the books for his machines and photo copied the contents.]] When Dipper unleashes zombies in season 2 [[spoiler:Stan fights them off, and reveals he's known all along about the supernatural, having lived in the town for years. He pretended not to notice because messing with that stuff is dangerous and could get the kids killed]].

** There turns out to be a good reason for this in the season 2 episode "Society of the Blind Eye": [[spoiler:the eponymous Society has been kidnapping people who ''do'' see the supernatural and erasing their memories.]]

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' pits the Dark Knight against the Condiment King: a [[LargeHam hammy]] [[JustForPun pun-dropping]] IneffectualSympatheticVillain who uses ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce as weapons. Good old Bats is ''so used'' to villains with outlandish costumes and motives that he doesn't even think twice about it; he simply assumes the guy is new at it and even ''offers to go easy on him''.
** He does mutter, [[GoingToBeOneOfThoseDays "It's gonna be one of those nights"]] when he hears the initial police radio report, suggesting that the situation is weird even by his standards.

* A third type is known as a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_bias "memory bias"]]; a tendency to rationalize, dismiss, or otherwise distort memories that are unpleasant, unusual, or inconvenient enough. Your brain, in effect, decides that an unsettling event was just a dream or that something that has changed was always that way, and you simply never noticed. This is the reason why people idealize the TheGoodOldDays, for instance. They literally only recall the good parts.

** Employed more subtly in the Discworld novel ''Discworld/InterestingTimes''. Rincewind, on yet another foreign jaunt, figures out nobody really notices men on horseback because doing so tends to get people stabbed.
** An unusual example is in ''Discworld/{{Mort}}'', where the title character changes history by saving the life of a princess doomed to die, and everyone in the kingdom except a wizard find themselves unconsciously acting as though she had died, and feeling upset and nauseous when confronted with the fact that she still lives, then revert back to believing her dead once away from her.
** Inverted in ''Discworld/{{Maskerade}}'', wherein the cast of the Opera House can't come up with the most obvious solutions because those just ''aren't'' theatrical enough.
** Subverted in ''Discworld/WyrdSisters'': Death was visible because the audience expected he was an actor. He fit in quite well, since he forgot the lines just like the other actors.
** The Weirdness Censor appears to have been (mostly) left out of ''Discworld/TheAmazingMauriceAndHisEducatedRodents''. When said rodents decide to have a talk with the townspeople, it takes a few minutes for most of the humans to accept the existence of talking rats.
** Lord Rust in ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'' confirms that it's not just the supernatural that falls subject to this trope on Discworld: his personal Weirdness Censor is so strict that it even blots out his perception of ''rudeness'', on the grounds that a lowborn churl like Sam Vimes wouldn't possibly dare snark off to an aristocrat like him. ''Discworld/{{Snuff}}'' would later expand this into a superpower; his absolute certainty that he was invincible caused arrows to curve in flight and hit the man behind him instead.
** Moreover, it is described in both ''Discworld/MovingPictures'' and ''Discworld/GuardsGuards!'' as a kind of permanent level of intoxication generated by the brain to be able to ignore things that could drive it to madness, which can happen if one were to ever become "knurd" (a state of sobriety so stark that the Weirdness Censor is shut off). Some people are born "knurd", or it can be achieved by, say drinking extra-strong KlatchianCoffee.
** There's also ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'', where an actual horse (Binky) walks into a library to pick up Susan. Except that everybody knows that that doesn't happen, so it's obviously not real and therefore nothing to be concerned about.

** In ''Anime/TransformersSuperGodMasterforce'', [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Expose_the_Decepticons%27_Dark_Trap%21 This]] was a ridiculous case when the humans completely forgotten about what Autobots AND Decepticons are despite the series (in Japan) had already established the existence of both, not in the IdiotBall level, mind you, but it's as if they forgotten. The early episodes clearly shown that there is a few people who know about it. Maybe it's due to the fact that the Transformers had been off the Earth a long time, no one would remember them by then.

** Lord Rust in ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'' confirms that it's not just the supernatural that falls subject to this trope on Discworld: his personal Weirdness Censor is so strict that it even blots out his perception of ''rudeness'', on the grounds that a lowborn churl like Sam Vimes wouldn't possibly dare snark off to an aristocrat like him. ''Discworld/{{Snuff}} would later expand this into a superpower; his absolute certainty that he was invincible caused arrows to curve in flight and hit the man behind him instead.

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[[folder:Myths & Religion]]

* Exaggerated in ''Anime/CromartieHighSchool'', where the majority of the school doesn't bat an eye that among the student body is a TinCanRobot, a gorilla and a man who may or may not be Music/FreddieMercury. Mechazawa (the aforementioned TinCanRobot) in particular is especially odd in that not only do most people not even realize that he's a robot, but ''Mechazawa himself'' doesn't seem to realize it, either.

* During a HalloweenSpecial on ''ThatGoshDarnHippieShow'', the host got numerous [[{{Kayfabe}} (fake)]] phone calls from listeners who were obviously not human, and although she was slightly bewildered she completely failed to realize what was going on. She cottoned on by the end of the show, though, and was surprised when the last caller ''didn't'' make any bizarre threats against her life.