History Main / WeirdnessCensor

* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'': This is actually a ''stat'' in this game; increasing your Insight represents your weirdness filter being slowly removed, so you notice things like arcane beam attacks, the Witch of Hemwick summoning Mad Ones, the Plain Doll being alive, [[spoiler;and the [[EldritchAbomination Lesser Amygdalas]] hanging around everywhere]]]]. Rom is also implied to be a living WeirdnessCensor; as long as she's around, the truth of [[spoiler:the Mensis Ritual being performed and the Blood Moon]] will never reach Yharnam proper.

* 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 Characters/{{Wolverine|JamesLoganHowlett}} who finds the concept of the X-Men bizarre despite the fact that he is a mutant himself.

* ''TabletopGame/TheKingInYellowRPG'' has the ''This is Normal Now'' setting, which is our modern day reality... being slowly invaded by Carcosa, to the point that supernatural causes are responsible of 15 out of 100,000 deaths per year. People notice, but they don't ''care'' as much as they should, due to a psychic effect called the Reintegration Complex. While people joke about "threatening my integration" the same way some people might joke about trigger warnings, thinking too hard about the monsters and other strange phenomena stalking the world can cause mental breakdowns and death in some people.

* ''TabletopGame/TheKingInYellow'' has the ''This is Normal Now'' setting, which is our modern day reality... being slowly invaded by Carcosa, to the point that supernatural causes are responsible of 15 out of 100,000 deaths per year. People notice, but they don't ''care'' as much as they should, due to a psychic effect called the Reintegration Complex. While people joke about "threatening my integration" the same way some people might joke about trigger warnings, thinking too hard about the monsters and other strange phenomena stalking the world can cause mental breakdowns and death in some people.

* The Galactic Grand Inquisitor from ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' also tries to enforce this, following the characters around everywhere and yelling '''"IGNORE ME!!"''' whenever anyone looks at him.

* Lampshaded in the yaoi manga ''Sex Pistols'': any "Madararui talk" overheard by the "normal" humans is automatically and subconsciously discarded. The art plays it literal for laughs: inside the normal people thought-clouds, a paper with "Madararui talk" written on it is crushed into a ball and then thrown into a garbage bin.

* This is exploited in ''Series/WarpZoneProject'' to cover up the fact that ComicBooksAreReal. A character sums up the idea behind it as "Imagine you run into Franchise/SpiderMan. The next moment, you'll think you're just remembering a scene from a movie, a comic book or a video game.".

*** In ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension'', humanity has been so convinced to accept a paradigm of what is and what isn't possible that anything too blatantly "magical" usually results in reality itself backlashing against mages in the form of "Paradox." The presence of normal humans actively disrupts magic. The mere act of observing a mage's supernatural abilities can cause their spells to decay into nothingness. The Arcane advantage doubles down on this by making the mage himself tend to slip out of both physical records and human memory, meaning that the censor extends even to people actively trying to figure it out.

* ''Anime/ReCreators'' is supposedly set in the "real world" but employs this to such a high degree that it borders on parody. Fictional characters including mages, fantasy swordswomen and mecha pilots pop up in the real world, but nobody ever seems to care, and the one time the aftermath of one of their battles was pointed out, it turned out there was a ConvenientlyEmptyBuilding. The ObviouslyEvil character couldn't be more blatant if she tried and yet everybody falls for her tricks. Another character blows herself up generating what amounts to a FantasticNuke, yet nobody ever comments on it afterwards.

* In the children's novel ''Whispering in the Wind'' by Creator/AlanMarshall, the KidHero meets a witch who [[FlyingBroomstick flies him to the Moon]] where they're seen by an astronaut, who reacts by following the advice of MissionControl to take a pill which will stop him having any more hallucinations.

* The premise of ''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/harry-is-a-dragon-and-thats-okay-hp-au-crack.731548/ Harry is a Dragon and that's okay]]''. Harry Potter turned into a dragon as a young child but dragons have an inborn magic that keeps muggles from noticing them, meaning they think Harry's an ordinary boy even though he has wings and a tail [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and goes around naked]]. It's not until Hagrid's arrival that anyone comments on Harry being a dragon.

* 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 ComicBook/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.

* 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 presence 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.

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

* ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'':

* 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 [[OnceDoneNeverForgotten 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 ''LightNovel/NyarukoCrawlingWithLove'', the characters ''do'' try to keep the {{Muggles}} from realizing that there are Franchise/CthulhuMythos monsters in their town (with the title character erecting a "convenient barrier" to block out her battles) -- but they don't bother hiding much else. Nyarko introduces herself at school as Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos and Mahiro's wife and nobody bats an eyelash. Cuko introduces '''her'''self as Nyarko's wife with nary a remark (except for Nyarko's friend remarking "You're pretty lucky!"). Nyarko's pet shantak-bird (which looks like a mix of hippopotamus, bird, and bat) does draw some brief commentary, but they just shrug it off.

* 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.

** Subverted in ''Literature/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.

* In the 2008 ''WesternAnimation/HortonHearsAWho'', the only one to make the connection is the Mayor. Other than that, Whoville makes [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer Sunnydale look like a highly alert town.]] Though, the members of the city council help to actively enforce the Weirdness Censor, which helps a little to justify this. Not by much, but still...

* In two of the four main variants of the TabletopGames ''TabletopGame/D20Modern'', monsters roam the modern world. However, most humans can't believe that they exist, so they just see humans where player characters see monsters. (These settings are called Urban Arcana and Shadow Chasers, if you're wondering.) The average joe walks around in a state of autopilot, it's explained, so while they do see monsters as monsters while they're around, their mind subconsciously edits it out later, remembering a troll as a massive brute of a man, the dragon's fireball as a gas leak, the gnoll in the corner a shady guy wearing a trenchcoat. They also don't notice things that the more alert player characters and "aware" [=NPCs=] do, such as aforementioned shady man having slightly protruding ears...

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' pits the Dark Knight against the Condiment King: a [[LargeHam hammy]] [[PungeonMaster 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.

* Agent "!" of the Brotherhood of Dada (antagonists of the ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'') has the specific power that he "comes as no surprise", i.e. nobody finds his appearance or presence particularly unexpected or notable, so people tend to ignore him. Given that he's dressed in a suit of exclamation marks and his chest is a gilded cage with a small airplane in it, this is quite an accomplishment.

* Agent "!" of the Brotherhood of Dada (antagonists of the ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'') has the specific power that he "comes as no surprise", i.e. nobody finds his appearance or presence particularly unexpected or notable, and tend to ignore him. Given that he's dressed in a suit of exclamation marks and his chest is a gilded cage with a small airplane in it, this is quite an accomplishment.

* The villain uses an actual device to keep up the {{Masquerade}} at his hideout in ''Fanfic/TheManWithNoName'', similar to what the [[Series/DoctorWho TARDIS]] has.

* ''Fanfic/PonyPOVSeries'': The Interviewers are a mysterious trio who go around interviewing various characters and giving cryptic advice. Except for rare occasions like when they [[spoiler:handed Twilight Sparkle Razzaroo's ApocalypticLog]], none of the characters ever question their presence and their habit of appearing and disappearing at will.

** ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'' introduces the SEP, or "Somebody Else's Problem", field, a device which renders things effectively invisible by suggesting to an onlooker's subconscious that it's somebody else's problem and can therefore be safely ignored.

** ''Literature/LifeTheUniverseAndEverything'' introduces the SEP, or "Somebody Else's Problem", field, a device which renders things invisible by suggesting to an onlooker's subconscious that it's somebody else's problem and can therefore be safely ignored.