Elephants in the Living Room in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Diamond and Silver's Excellent Adventure has a literal elephant sitting in the Earth Liberation Front's meeting room. Diamond Tiara naturally wonders why nobody says anything about her. As it turns out, everybody else already knows the elephant, and she's not interested in idle chit-chat.
- Played for Drama in Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: When Parker admits that he recalls seeing his sister writing a poem on how she wanted to be Icarus, everyone immediately doesn't want to tell him the truth that she didn't want to be free. Rather his older sister has been having suicidal thoughts for some time. Eventually his father confesses the truth.
- An Anthem for Sheltered Bays: After finding the badly wounded merman, Levi attempts to nurse Eren back to health. Neither is willing to acknowledge how his condition is deteriorating, instead acting as though he'll eventually be able to leave of his own free will.
- In The Stalking Zuko Series addresses the how the Gaang tried to leave Aang ignorant of the fact that he unintentionally violated his own Thou Shalt Not Kill beliefs by letting the Ocean Spirit possess him and drowned the invading fleet. Shot down when Arnook gleefully tells Aang of all he had killed by drowning.
- The premise of Blackened Skies is that all of the students who committed murder in the three main games of the series are thrown into a new killing game together. Naturally, this proves to be a touchy subject; several of them strive to avoid touching on those issues or anything related to them as much as possible.
- the superhero game has the events of Flashpoint treated in this fashion. All of the Era 2 Justice League is highly reluctant to discuss what happened. This is a point of minor contention between Wallace and his teammates/friends; while they want him to open up enough that they can figure out ways to prevent another such incident from occurring, none of them actually blame him for his hesitance.
- In Kira, Sweetheart, everyone who is aware that Light was Kira has been sworn to secrecy, as Light himself suffered Laser-Guided Amnesia after the Death Note was destroyed.
- In Darkness Burning, Elsa's family dances around the topic of her Interrupted Suicide for almost the entirety of the second chapter. This makes Anna's Wham Line of "You're the ones who made her ill. You're the reason she tried to kill herself." all the more effective.
- The Planets has Winry begrudgingly helping a seriously wounded Roy recover after he loses an arm. Both are fully aware that she hates him for executing her parents during the Ishvalan War, but neither is willing to openly address the issue until tensions finally boil over.
- In Son of the Desert, Edward invites Roy and other military members who participated in the Ishval Massacre to a party full of Ishvalans. Interestingly, it's the military members who are uncomfortable with the implications. The Ishvalans surprisingly don't care.
- While there are tons of explained randomness in My Immortal that should at least raise some suspicion amidst rational people, Ebony doesn't find it the least bit strange that characters from the 80s know about future events. Granted, we do get some sort of explanation via Tom Satan/Bombodil/Andorson being actually future!Voldemort, but it is never explained why "Lucian" and "Samaro" know that their kids will be named Draco and "Vampire", or that they'll be friends/lovers, and Ebony still doesn't bring that up.
- In Wish Carefully, after the Death Eaters find the glaring flaws in their dream of a pureblood-only utopia ruled by Voldemort, no one wants to talk about how they are becoming too inbred, people are becoming magically weaker with each generation and that they're slowly dying off.
- Webwork: None of the men like thinking about the idea of Jade being pregnant, something Viper finds shameful; they can deal with dragons and demons without batting a lash, but are disgusted by the prospect of her having children...?
- Scarlet Lady has Mme. Bustier's status as a Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher. While she initially appears to be well regarded, it gradually becomes clearer and clearer that most of her students recognize that she's not really that great... especially given her massive favoritism towards Chloé, enabling her constant bullying and casual cruelties by refusing to punish her while claiming her victims should 'lead by example'. However, none of them wanted to risk standing up to the 'nice teacher'. Once Marinette finally cracks and rips into her for being worse than useless, most of the class praises her for finally saying what they were all thinking, despite this resulting in Mme. Bustier's akumatization.
- Referenced in Tangled Up In You in one of Adrien's jokes: "I bought my friend an elephant for their room. They said thanks. (Beat) I said don't mention it."
- Anyone: Shouto studiously avoids bringing up Endeavor around Dabi, not wanting to risk tainting their reunion by discussing the reason why they were separated in the first place. This backfires; avoiding the topic means that Dabi doesn't learn about how Shouto refuses to use the flame half of his Quirk until it comes out during the U.A. Sports Festival. He's not happy about that.
- Failure to Explode has a Downplayed example. When the infamous villainess Star Heart visited Japan, many of the local heroes who were asked to help Legacy capture her were more interested in stealing the glory of taking down such a high-profile villain themselves. Thanks to their Skewed Priorities, half of Rishi City wound up leveled, with many civilian casualties. In the wake of this incident, it's clear to all involved that the Hero Ranking system is heavily flawed; however, the Hero Commission only wants to address these issues behind closed doors. So while renovations are being made behind the scenes, they aren't openly discussing the matter with the public.
- Mastermind: Rise of Anarchy:
- Played somewhat for laughs with the Wild Wild Pussycats. Pixiebob catches Mandalay completely off-guard when she abruptly broaches the matter of how each member has been sent strange notes. Mandalay's further thrown off when the rest of her team proceeds to focus on decoding the secret message contained in said notes, rather than questioning where they came from.
- During an argument, Natsuo asserts that their father was an Asshole Victim who only cared about breeding the 'perfect heir', declaring that he married a quirk rather than a woman. Their mother Rei then remarks that she also hurt her children, resulting in an awkward silence.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Many spin-offs of The Conversion Bureau paint the ponies up as being inherently morally superior to the "brutish humans" while ignoring the existence of the canonical Jerkasses like Trixie and Flim-Flam brothers, snooty and boorish Canterlot nobles, Rainbow Dash's Cloudsdale bullies, or straight up villainous tyrants like King Sombra, and the fact that even the Mane Cast have had moments of being bullies/jerks/selfish/insensitive as well. The existence of hostile Equestrian races, refuting the common conceit of Equestria-as-Utopia, is also often swept under the carpet.
- Frigid Winds and Burning Hearts: Despite Celestia's efforts to cover up the truth, the general public is largely aware that Princess Luna was formerly the "dreaded Nightmare Moon". But nobody is willing to breach the issue around their royalty... until Blueblood angrily declares that she's Hated by All after she accidentally spills some soup on him.
- In Ultra Fast Pony, the (pony) cast know about humans, but are afraid to directly mention them. It starts off rather subtle, with knowledge of humans merely implied by the characters not following the Hold Your Hippogriffs and Flintstone Theming that characterized the canon series. Then, in the episode "Purple Party Pooper", the issue accidentally gets brought to the forefront by Twilight and Rarity, who panic before agreeing to just pretend the conversation never happened.Twilight: You don't have time for that? You, of all people?
Rarity: (gasp) You said "people"!
Twilight: There's nothing wrong with "people". It's "human" we're not allowed to say.
Rarity: You said "human"!
Twilight: Oh no! Oh, wait, so did you!
- In Naruto: Rend
, Naruto is this to his parents and little brother and sister Jiraiya and Tsunade what with him suddenly being "alive" again. Kushina and Minato feel guilt at Naruto's life and the fact that they never got a chance to repair their relationship in the prequel before Naruto died. Naruto later mentally notes that Tsunade and Jiraiya are completely unaware of the history and baggage between their parents and brother and must be perplexed at his hostility towards them. - In Reverse: no one in any of the Hidden Villages wants to acknowledge that their abuse and isolation of their respective jinchuuriki is why so many of them run away with Kurama when he finds them. They refuse to acknowledge it, believing that Kurama is a kidnapper. They are forced to answer for it when Han and Roushi, two adult jinchuuriki publicly proclaim that they’re on Kurama’s side and fend off the trackers hunting him.
- Team8:
- Hinata's Big, Screwed-Up Family. All of Team 8, the Third and Jiraiya know about it. Gai, Kakashi, Asuma and Iruka also seem to have an inkling. Not only can they not really talk about it publicly, but Hiashi has such powerful connections that he won't answer for his actions (something the Sandaime points out). They collectively decide to come up with plausible reasons for her not to be at her house or near her father.
- To a lesser extent, Naruto and Gaara being jinchuuriki.
- In This Bites!, when Vivi tries to use this metaphor to get the other Strawhats to address the floating island-turned-ship that Shiki floated out of, which even with a Devil Fruit is a grand feat, half of the crew say hello to Funkfreed (the sword that turns to an elephant) in deadpanned politeness.
- A Professor and a Student: Ash and his mother strenuously avoid the matter of him being The Chosen One, or any of his more dangerous adventures. This is eventually revealed to have its roots in an argument they had after the events of the third movie.
- In Chapter 21 of One Year, Yu Narukami thinks that this applies to some of his old friends' academic performance. While Yu, Sakura and Kenji are doing fairly well, Kaoru's grades are low enough that he's in danger of being dropped from the basketball team, while Hitomi's mediocre at best grades mean that she doesn't have much of a future apart from accepting her Arranged Marriage. Fittingly enough, one of his teachers asks a question about the "elephant in the room" question in that chapter, which also bears the name.
- Throw Away Your Mask: Akechi doesn't know why there's a fox in the TV World, and the Investigation Team have no answers for him.Akechi: Why is there a fox?
Yosuke: Don’t question it too much.
Akechi: What does the fox do with the money?
Yukiko: We don’t really know.
- Dragons of Red, Dragons of White: Everybody at the court knows the events surrounding Jon Snow's conception, birth, and parentage, but nobody is willing to address the matter aloud.
- In The Measure of a Titan, the Titans meet and take into protective custody a metahuman teen named David Foster. This usually would not be a bad thing, but it happens mere months after Terra's betrayal. They are too unwilling to even discuss her with David for him to get why everyone's always walking on eggshells, which the Big Bad uses for his own ends.
- Played With in Twenty Years Later: Reimu's Successor: Patricia takes this attitude towards the idea of Jean potentially having a relationship with Marisa.
- Tales of the Emperasque goes a long way with the Emperor reborn or his children not bringing up the fact that the Emperor is now worshiped as a god across millions of worlds, which was what he essentially banned. By the time they sit down to discuss the issue, the author literally calls it the elephant in the room.
