The Dissenter Is Always Right

Groupthink can be a powerful drug. If enough people believe something, that makes it more likely for others around them to start to believe it too, even if it's just a subconscious measure to fit in. A character who disagrees with the popular opinion can be ostracized and ignored, no matter what their arguments are. That character can also be completely right.

Unlike The Complainer Is Always Wrong, the character isn't shown to be needlessly negative or stupid, and they're not the ones who need to learn a lesson. They may only be Right for the Wrong Reasons, but sticking to their guns is still a powerful show of their beliefs and desire to see and do the right thing. At the end, the story proves them correct. However, unlike the similar trope Cassandra Truth, these characters don't already have proof that they are correct. Their protest is based on an instinctual hunch or a guess that they stick to, or their own personal logic, rather than based on any objective evidence. This is because the reveal that they're right is usually meant to be a shock to the audience as well as the other characters, and if the audience already knows the character is in the right, the plot becomes less about the discovery and more about the audience waiting for the other characters to play catchup.

The issue is often a society-wide one. Sometimes it might be a long-term belief, other times it might be a new rumor floating around town. At times it's more localized, with just a certain group believing something and the one outlier being against them. The scope matters less than the actual plot of one character being proven right for standing alone with their beliefs or taking action to prove themselves right and prevent more problems later. Them going against the grain of whatever group they're arguing against, though, can easily lead to An Aesop about trusting your own instincts, not following the herd, or even just being a faithful and compassionate person, depending on what the conflict is. There may be a Subverted Suspicion Aesop about how the newcomer isn't always trustworthy after all. It may even be a Hard Truth Aesop, about how someone who disagrees with their culture or their family isn't always in the wrong for it. It's hard to go against your entire community just to stick to your beliefs, even if they may seem outlandish at first, so these stories often portray the characters as brave, willing to risk their reputation and peaceful life for what they believe in.

That said, a character being validated by this once doesn't mean they'll be right every other time, nor that they were right for any actual reason other than luck. Someone who is very often wrong can be finally proven right just for one episode as a subversion of the normal formula. Or, someone who is initially in the right can start to slip in their beliefs and go against things that are actually good ideas. A Rebellious Spirit might be proven right one day for sticking it to "The Man", but not all of society's rules are there just to be oppressive. The resident Paranoiac might be the only character who doesn't trust the Devil in Plain Sight one day, but on other days they're just being Improperly Paranoid as usual. And, of course, being technically correct doesn't necessarily mean everyone will just turn around and apologize to them, especially if they went against direct orders or caused more harm than good in trying to fix things.

The inversion of this is The Complainer Is Always Wrong. There are times when a character can fall under both tropes on two or more separate occasions. Compare Peer Pressure Makes You Evil, a Stock Aesop where someone going along with the group is portrayed negatively- the two concepts can easily overlap. The dissenter can fit into a variety of other tropes, like Only Sane Man, Steamrolled Smart Guy, the Jerkass or Dumbass who has a point, an Ignored Expert, or a No-Respect Guy. A more lighthearted take might incorporate tropes like The Cloud Cuckoolander Was Right or Strange Minds Think Alike. Other characters involved might be portrayed as being bad judges of character. Compare and contrast Cassandra Truth.

As this trope is often used as a twist, spoilers will be unmarked going forward.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In one episode of Space Battleship Yamato 2199, the crew of the Yamato is being hounded by a dimensional submarine. The enemy sends a decoy to say they've surrendered. Niimi suggests using a dimensional sonar ping to see if they're still there, but Kodai points out that it'll reveal their location. Sanada, the XO, agrees with Niimi, and orders the dimensional sonar array set up. After a speech from Okita to Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!, Kodai commandeers a Seagull recon-plane to drop "dimensional sonar buoys". The ping indeed alerts the enemy, but the buoys that Kodai disperses allow them to intercept the torpedoes. They also allow the Seagull to locate the submarine's periscope, blinding the enemy ship. They're safe in another dimension but cannot continue their attack. Kodai is let off easily for saving the ship despite breaking orders.

Comic Books

• Zigzagged in the run-up to Civil War (2006), where of the leaders of Marvel's superhuman community (e.g. Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Reed Richards, Professor Xavier), Captain America is most against the Superhuman Registration Act ^note  Doctor Strange was indifferent due to having bigger concerns, while Xavier was likewise dealing with more urgent business. While Word of God is that Iron Man was supposed to be the one in the right (i.e. people with superhuman powers should be registered), Cap was later proven to be correct in his fears that the SHRA would be misused. Ironically, it's Iron Man himself who shows this by doing things like attacking people in their own homes because they didn't register, recruiting Ax-Crazy Psycho for Hire-types like Bullseye to hunt down dissenting heroes, and tossing people into the Negative Zone.
• Squadron Supreme: Of the Squadron, only Nighthawk and Amphibian express concern with the Utopia Program and then later the B-Mods. Amphibian sticks around, but gets increasingly irate at feeling he's being ignored, while Nighthawk breaks from the Squadron and makes plans to destroy the entire Squadron. It's only at the climax he fully explains his reasoning (by which point several people have died because of his decision), namely that while the Squadron's intentions are good, someone else can easily misuse their ideas. Follow-up stories show Kyle was absolutely right.

Films — Animation

• Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman: Alvin thinks that Mr. Talbot is a werewolf. No one else thinks so and they just shrug off Alvin's beliefs, but it's later revealed that Mr. Talbot really is a werewolf; specifically, the one who bit Theodore.
• The Angry Birds Movie: When the pigs arrive on Bird Island, Red is the only one to feel like they shouldn't be trusted, and Red is shunned and ignored. It turns out that Red was right to be distrustful, as the pigs were really planning to kidnap all of the birds' eggs and eat them.
• The Boss Baby: After Boss Baby arrives, Tim immediately dislikes having him around. During a dinner time conversation, Tim tries to convince his parents that he's up to no good, pointing out the strangeness of a baby wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. His parents dismiss his concerns and insist that he's just a baby. It's only after this that Tim discovers that Boss Baby can talk and has been sent to his family to spy on his parent's place of work.
• Coco: Miguel grew up in a family that hates and has banned music, but Miguel loves it and wishes to be a musician. His family, both living and deceased, try to discourage Miguel's dreams, insisting that music does nothing but split families apart. In the end, Miguel's playing helps Miguel's great-grandmother, Coco, who was going senile, to remember her past and connect with her family again. The family realize that they were wrong to ban music so they allow Miguel to pursue his dream.
• The Lion King II: Simba's Pride: When Simba banishes Kovu from the pride after wrongfully believing that Kovu led him into an ambush, all the other animals in the Prideland join together to ridicule and shun Kovu. Only Kiara believes that Kovu is innocent and runs away to join him in exile. She is also the only one of the Pridelanders to believe that the Outlanders can be good if given the chance, and it is her and Kovu who eventually convince the two groups to come together in the end.
• In My Little Pony: A New Generation, Sunny and her father Argyle are the only ponies in Maretime Bay that don't think unicorns and pegasi are evil monsters. Campaigning for peace between the tribes makes Sunny into a pariah, and when she sticks to her guns and helps the unicorn Izzy escape, a criminal. Despite this, she's proven completely right over the course of the story, making friends with other pony races and helping to bring magic back to Equestria as a result.
• Planet Hulk: When the Warbounded each talk about how they ended up fighting in the gladiator games on Saakar, Hiroim reveals he had a falling out with the Shadow/Oldstrong Priesthood, of which he was a prominent member when he refused to acknowledge the Red King as the prophesied Saakarson who was destined to save Saakar. His fellow priests tried to persuade him to change his mind by bringing up how the Red King has been uniting the various kingdoms of Saakar and ended the Spike Wars, but Hiroim fired back by pointing out that the very same forces the Red King had used to protect those kingdoms from the parasitic Spikes were then being used to oppress them and indirectly accuses the Red King of being the Worldbreaker, a being mentioned in the very same prophecy as the Saakarson as the one who would destroy Saakar. He was excommunicated from the Priesthood as a result, but he ended up being completely right anyway about the Red King, as he is not only a monstrous tyrant, but the one who created the Spikes and instigated the Spike Wars in the first place.
• Sleeping Beauty: Merryweather, the youngest and stubbornest of the Three Good Fairies, is always the first to call out flaws in Flora's plans. Though Flora and Fauna are often frustrated by her negativity, her contrarian nature ends up helping the group throughout the movie, as her paranoia about Maleficent is consistently justified.
• In Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Grumpy is ridiculed for his fears that Snow White will lead the Queen right to them. Turns out he's bang on the money on that one.
• Spirited Away: Chihiro Ogino and her parents, Akio and Yūko, come across what appears to be an abandoned amusement park. While exploring the place, they come across a huge spread of freshly made food, which Mr. and Mrs. Ogino immediately dig into. Chihiro argues that they shouldn't take food without permission, but her parents don't pay her any mind, with her father commenting that his money excuses his bad manners. This turns them into pigs because the food was meant for spirits.

Films — Live-Action

• Alien: Ripley at first seems harsh and wrong for refusing to let the crew in when a face-hugger attacked one of them, coldly citing quarantine procedures. In the end, it turns out she was entirely correct and had they listened to her she might not have been the only survivor.
• Darkest Hour: Since 1932, Winston Churchill has been the only senior official in the British government insisting that the Nazis have to be opposed, that Adolf Hitler's territorial ambitions cannot be appeased by giving him free passes on seizing the Rhineland and the Sudetenland, and that Germany cannot be allowed to rearm. Everyone else dismisses him as a dangerous warmonger, especially after the disastrous outcome of his Gallipoli campaign in World War I. Then the Germans seize Czechoslovakia and Poland, and are poised to invade Holland and France in short order. Oops...
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas!: Cindy Lou is this on two counts. First, she was the only one in Whoville who believed that there was goodness inside the Grinch, even after the Grinch wraps her up in wrapping paper in the post office. Though she would initially appear to be wrong about him, as he would go on to ruin the holiday festival and steal everything from their homes, the Grinch eventually has a change of heart and returns everything, proving Cindy Lou right. Secondly, she was the only one who started to reject the materialism that was surrounding the Christmas festivities, while all the other Whos insisted that that was what Christmas is all about. In the end, the Whos only began to feel the Christmas spirit after all of their material possessions were stolen and then realize that Christmas is really about being around the people you love.
• The Last Outlaw:
  • Zig-Zagged with Potts. He is generally the voice of dissent against Graff and his successor Eustis's decisions. While he's clearly wrong at several points, he's right when he points out that Graff's callousness and ruthlessness has made him a danger to everyone around him and later when he bluntly tells Eustis that they should stop trying to engage the posse directly and instead focus on fleeing to Mexico.
  • Wills, terrified for his life after the posse managed to kill two members of the gang, grabs the money they had stolen during their heists and returns it to the posse to get them to stop their chase. While the gang lambasts him for his cowardice, Wills's decision almost works; McClintock is ready to call off the posse once the money is returned and let the outlaws escape, only for Graff to covertly kill him to keep the chase going.
• The Wolf of Snow Hollow: Shortly after John goes Off the Wagon, somebody is found dead with plenty of incriminating evidence. The egotistical John refuses to accept the notion that he managed to miss somebody who was this obvious, which only amplifies how much others mock and resent his failure to solve the case. Naturally, it turns out that the apparent murderer wasn't the actual culprit; John was right all along, but he'd been such a Jerkass and people were so desperate for closure that they latched onto the obvious suspect.

Literature

• Marco in Animorphs can either be this trope or The Complainer Is Always Wrong. His cynical side is often useful for finding traps and not having the group rush in recklessly. On the other hand, despite being the best tactician of the team, he often ends up wrong simply because luck and the demands of the plot conspire to make him look stupid. So most of the time, he's just a wiseass, but a smart one.
• In Ayn Rand's novels, the "complainer" (or loner or dissident) is always the hero. However, the message is not nonconformist so much as it is revolutionary; Rand preached an ideology which was and is in conflict with most existing philosophical schools, rather than a right to one's own opinion as such (which she was inconsistent on).
• The Hobbit: When the men of Lake-town see fire burning on the mountain, most of them think that Thorin and the other dwarves have retaken it and lit their forges, with only Bard suggesting that the fire means the dragon is coming to attack the city. Everyone tells him to stop being so gloomy but he raises the alarm anyway, so it's thanks to him that the town even survived long enough for him to kill Smaug.
• In Prince Caspian, Lucy insists the group is going in the wrong direction, because she can see Aslan leading them a different way—but none of her siblings can see Aslan at all. Edmund at least decides to trust Lucy because he's making an active effort not to be a prat. But Peter and Susan overrule them, and the group continues down the other path. Lucy, of course turns out to be right, and when the group does later take Lucy's path, her siblings all eventually see Aslan themselves.
• Warrior Cats: In Dark River, Hollypaw is the only cat who doesn't panic and think that RiverClan will start a war for territory once they can no longer live at their camp. The other warriors ignore her, not helped by her age and inexperience, so she sneaks out to talk to Willowpaw from RiverClan and discovers the truth about why the Clan moved onto the island, but for her trouble, she gets confined to the new camp for a few days and a battle between RiverClan and WindClan nearly breaks out anyway thanks to everyone else's paranoia.
• World War Z: Invoked by the Israeli intelligence community. After being caught by surprise in the Yom Kippur War, they developed a policy that if 9 intelligence analysts came to the same conclusion, it was the duty of the tenth to disagree. While the dissenter wasn't always necessarily right, the policy ensured that they were at least seriously considering any potential threat no matter how unlikely. This is how Israel ends up uncommonly well-prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse.

Live-Action TV

• CSI: NY:
  • In "Rest in Peace, Marina Garito", Stella is adamant that the deceased is a murder victim; while everyone else, including ME Sid Hammerback, is convinced the woman committed suicide. The detective spends a good bit of time miffed at everyone (especially Sid) and trying to prove her point. Then, the ER doctor who had examined the victim makes an off-hand comment to Mac which leads to proof that Stella was right all along.
  • In "The Untouchable," Mac, Jo, Danny and Lindsay are all at the scene of a young woman's death. She is surrounded by candy wrappers and has a needle stuck in her arm. Mac is the only one who doesn't think she's an addict. Sid finds evidence at autopsy that proves he's right.
• House of Anubis: Patricia's Dislikes the New Guy tendencies became something of a Running Gag by the end of the series, always portrayed as her arbitrarily creating conflict with the new House resident and becoming friends with them later on. In "Touchstone of Ra", this gets flipped on its head when it comes to the issue between Sophia and Dexter. Dexter gets accused of stealing a priceless artifact from a museum and attempting to frame Eddie for it, with everyone else taking the side of Sophia the accuser... except for Patricia, who insists that Dexter is innocent and blames Sophia. It's at first portrayed as her just being irrationally jealous of how close Sophia and Eddie are, but she's quickly proven right for once when Sophia turns out to be not only the thief but the Big Bad of the episode, whereas Dexter is innocent and heroic.
• Is It Legal?: In "Infatuation", a new employee named Peter comes to work at the firm. Everyone is infatuated with him except Bob, who Dislikes the New Guy and tries to find discriminating evidence against him. In the end, an audiotape is found which had Peter basically criticize the rest of the staff at the firm (except ironically enough, Bob, who he genuinely liked).
• Law & Order: SVU frequently indulges in this: whenever the majority of the detectives are convinced they have an Open-and-Shut Case, except for one person who thinks something doesn't quite add up, you can almost always bet hard money that person will be proven right before the episode is out.
• Monk: Many times during a case, Monk will pick a suspect that he believes committed the murder very early on based on very little or very flimsy evidence, and most of the other main characters won't believe him, usually because the suspect Monk picks has an incredible alibi or because they believe it's somebody else that's more obvious. Of course, in the end, Monk is always right. In one example in "Mr. Monk and the TV Star", an actress is murdered in her own home, and Monk suspects that the murderer was her ex-husband who is also a famous TV star. All of the remaining main characters disagree with Monk, partly because the actor was outside being photographed by paparazzi when the murder was occurring, but mostly because they're starstruck with him and get to go to cast parties and hang out with him on a TV set if they don't accuse him of murder. Monk momentarily changes his view after another suspect has confessed to the crime and after the actor passes a polygraph test and partly due to being peer-pressured by the other characters, but goes back to his original theory when he realizes the man is a sociopath who could easily beat a polygraph. In the end, Monk manages to prove that the actor committed the crime, and his friends very quickly turn against the actor as they go to arrest him.
• Power Rangers:
  • While Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers usually played The Complainer Is Always Wrong completely straight, the very first episode flips it around. When Zordon offers the original five "teens with attitude" the chance to become power rangers, Jason is the only one who seriously considers it, while the rest of the team walks away in disbelief. Of course, by the end of the episode, all five of them are in, or there wouldn't be very much of a series.
  • Power Rangers RPM: The way things usually work is for the Rangers to defend Corinth from one monster attack at a time, but newcomers Gem and Gemma are unimpressed, saying that they'd rather take the fight to the bad guys. They strike out on their own, and Scott, who couldn't get Colonel Truman to listen to his theory about the villains' real plan, goes with them. Naturally, the reckless rebels learn their lesson about going off on their own, right? Wrong. The villains had found a way to suck the air out of the city through its force field, and with the shields powered as high as they were, they couldn't be powered down in time to save everyone. The outpost Gem and Gemma wanted to attack? Guess what it was being used for? Yeah. If not for the trio doing everything you're not supposed to do on Saturday morning TV, everyone in Corinth, the last human settlement on Earth, would have been very dead.
• Psych: Happens quite a lot with Shawn as the dissenter, much to the annoyance of Head Detective Carlton Lassiter.
  • Many episodes such as Truer Lies, Dead Bear Walking, and Shawn, Interrupted feature Shawn going against Lassie's belief that a certain suspect was responsible for the crime of the week, outright going beyond the law to assist said suspect. In other episodes, when a suspect claims to be innocent of a crime, Shawn tries to prove their innocence, regardless of everyone else's opinion.
  • In The Head, Tail, and the Whole Damn Episode, Lassie pre-emptively claims that a shark attack victim was murdered to avoid getting showed up by Shawn. This results in him becoming a laughingstock in the media. However, Shawn insists that Lassie was right and encourages him to follow his gut instinct. As per formula, the victim was actually murdered, having been stabbed to death with a serrated blade that resembled a shark tooth.
  • Gus himself gets a moment in Cog Blocked, where he insists that a man with a boring, unremarkable life was murdered and did not commit suicide (Even Shawn himself is pretty sure it was a suicide). It turns out that the killer was his boss, who killed him to cover up an insurance fraud scheme.
• Star Trek:
  • In the Season 1 episode "The Galileo Seven" of Star Trek: The Original Series, a shuttlecraft commanded by Mr. Spock crashes on an alien planet. Spock finds many of his subsequent decisions are contested by his companions. The most evident is his decision to burn off the remaining fuel to create a flare to attract the Enterprise's attention so they can be rescued. Despite objections, his plan works.
  • In the episode "Valiant" of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Jake Sisko and Nog are rescued from a Dominion attack by a Defiant-class vessel manned by a skeleton crew of Starfleet Academy cadets whose supervising officers were killed in action. Because the cadets form the elite "Red Squad" back on Earth, their acting captain, Tim Watters, hatches a plan to take down a prototype Dominion battleship that they have been gathering intelligence on. Jake, the only civilian aboard, objects that the mission is too dangerous for a ship the size of the Valiant, even if that ship had a full crew complement of experienced officers. He is ignored, and disaster ensues.

Theatre

• Henrik Ibsen was generally not fond of The Complainer Is Always Wrong (perhaps because, as a critic of Victorian society, he ended up being shouted down a lot) and used pretty much every one of his plays as a celebration of individualism and dissent. Especially An Enemy of the People is particularly harsh in criticizing groupthink, with the complainer ending up something of a Doomed Moral Victor.
  Dr. Stockman: (...)The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.
• La Nona: The only one who is realistic about Chicho's artistic aspirations is María. All of her political family is willing to excuse Chicho's willful unemployment under the guise that "he would lose his muse if he had to work". María is the only one who sees it as utter bullshit and pushes for Chicho to support the family's income. As the play progresses, Chicho's ridiculous schemes and excuses to escape work are half the reason for the family's tragic downfall.

Video Games

• Drawn to Life: At the beginning of the first game, the Darkness has pretty much overtaken the raposa village thanks to The Creator's disappearance. The only character who still has any faith in The Creator at that point is Mari, who's brushed off as naive by everyone else, including her father. Just a few minutes into the plot, she's proven right when The Creator comes back and sends a hero to help save the village.
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location: It's revealed near the end of the game that Ballora was against the plan to scoop Eggs in order to use his body to escape the underground facility the animatronics were locked in, fearing it wouldn't work. Baby and the others completely ignore her, tricking the workers into having Ballora scooped so they could all combined into Ennard. Once they do escape, however, it turns out that Ballora was right to worry as, while the plan works for a while, Eggs' body starts to rot and eventually rejects Ennard completely, forcing them into the sewers and making their lives even worse.
• Persona 5 Royal: Maruki grants everyone's wishes so they can live in an idealistic utopia where all their past suffering is erased. While the Phantom Thieves easily fall under the spell, Akechi, being too cynical and broken to believe it, pushes Joker to reject Maruki's world. In the Bad Ending, despite Akechi's protests, Joker accepts it and Mementos fuses with reality, causing a Death of Personality for Sumire and Akechi, the former forever believing she's Kasumi and the latter left a pleasant and friendly husk, with mankind ceasing to progress as their wishes all come true.
• In the Zerg campaign of StarCraft, Zasz is an obnoxious lieutenant in the ranks of the alien race. He spends the first half of the campaign being obviously jealous because The Overmind has chosen Kerrigan as his ultimate creation. When Zasz protests that the Protoss are setting up an obvious trap and Kerrigan is falling right into it, nobody else listens, but he turns out to be right—though he also dies in the process.

Visual Novels

• Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony: This is a trend for Kokichi, who is highly intelligent and integral to exposing the Blackened, yet his status as a chronic liar and The Gadfly causes everyone to distrust anything he says. This results in him often making good points that no one believes or wants to hear, with some even actively fighting him over it, usually Kaito. In Chapter 2, he tries forcing the class to watch their motive videos together, but everyone rejects the plan. After the next murder, it becomes clear that had the students followed Kokichi's plan, their classmates wouldn't have died as the murder was enabled by the fact that no one knew Kirumi's secret.

Western Animation

• Played with in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. Most of the time Jimmy is completely right and he'll always be the one to solve the problem, but no one ever trusts him because he's such a jerk about it and half of the problems were caused by him in the first place. For example, when the Yolkians (the villains from The Movie) come to the Earth, Jimmy says they're not to be trusted, even after they seem harmless and give everyone free stuff. It turns out they were trying to destroy the Earth and were only giving them stuff to get on their good side. After saving the town, Jimmy makes them say "You were right and we were wrong" in English and French (and tries with Chinese, but nobody knows it).
• Zig-zagged in Avatar: The Last Airbender. The Complainer of the group, Sokka, is also The Smart Guy... and the Butt-Monkey. So it varies whether he's right to dissent from the group or not. Basically, if the thing being discussed is a trivial matter, Sokka will almost always be wrong, often for comedic effect. If it's something plot-relevant, he's almost always right. This is prominently displayed in the episode "The Fortune Teller": at first, Sokka's skepticism towards the eponymous fortune teller is played for laughs. As the episode goes on, however, his complaints about the town's blind trust make more and more sense.
  Villager: Can your science explain why it rains?
  Sokka: YES, IT CAN!
• Codename: Kids Next Door: This role will usually get swapped around between Numbuh One and Numbuh Five on occasion. If Nigel's suggesting ridiculous theories of what the adults could be planning, they'll likely end up being true. For Abigail, most of this role is relegated to Heinrich Von Marzipan, a former partner who refuses to believe every warning of hers due to his greedy sweet tooth, which would lead to things not ending in his favor, and then immediately blaming her for it. His way of holding a grudge for what happened between them in Guatemala.
• Dungeons & Dragons: The character Eric was created for the very trope of The Complainer Is Always Wrong. However, the writers rebelled against the trope, and sharp-eyed viewers noticed that though it wasn't pointed out in-show, almost all of Eric's dire predictions were often validated in the course of the episode.
• Justice League:
  • The very first episode, "Secret Origins", deals with a US Senator's campaign for global nuclear disarmament. This plan appears to be popular with everyone except for one military general who protests the idea. It turns out that the senator is actually an invading alien in disguise and the call for disarmament is an attempt to weaken Earth so they cannot defend themselves. This is clearly satirizing the plot of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.
  • In "Twilight", Darkseid comes to the Justice League for help. Superman initially refuses, having been brainwashed by him in the past, an event his reputation never fully recovered from. Everyone, even Batman, chalks Superman's distrust up to holding a rather understandable grudge, then goes to help anyway. Darkseid ends up stabbing everyone in the back.
  • In "Hereafter", Superman seemingly gets vaporized by one of Toyman's weapons. While the rest of the Justice League discuss what should be done after Superman's death and who they should recruit to replace him, Batman refuses to take part (aside from attending the funeral). He alone suspects Superman is still alive somewhere and focuses instead on finding out what happened and how to get Supes back. In truth, Superman is still alive, just blasted into the far future. Ironically, for all Batman's efforts, he plays no part in actually finding or rescuing Superman—and he's on the verge of accepting that Superman might really be dead when Superman finally does return.
  • In "Panic in the Sky", when the Justice League are blamed for an attack against Cadmus, the founding members of the League agree to surrender to authorities until they can prove their innocence. Batman is once again the lone dissenter, arguing that they're more likely to bring the real culprit to justice if they aren't behind bars. His confrontation with Amanda Waller proves crucial to uncovering the truth and preventing Lex Luthor from transferring his consciousness into a powerful and immortal android, making himself a living god.
• The Legend of Zelda (1989): In "The White Knight", Zelda is instantly smitten with Façade, and her father treats him in a friendly enough way. Only Link dislikes him from the start. He turns out to be right when Façade reveals that he absolutely refuses to dirty his clothes, even to save Zelda from being kidnapped. However, given that they're both attracted to Zelda, Link could have been simply Right for the Wrong Reasons.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Bridle Gossip", almost all of Ponyville believes that Zecora is an "evil enchantress", fearing her so much that everyone hides indoors every time she comes to visit. When the Mane Six all come down with mysterious maladies, most of them assume Zecora put a curse on them. Twilight Sparkle and Apple Bloom are the only ones who remain skeptical; Twilight in particular pokes holes in her friend's reasoning and insists that curses aren't real. By the end, Zecora is proven to be innocent, and in fact, she's trying to brew a cure for the Mane Six's ailments. Ironically, this happens almost immediately after circumstantial evidence finally convinces Twilight that Zecora really is dangerous.
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1", the Mane Six are called to help plan Princess Cadance's wedding. Twilight Sparkle, the only one of the group who knows Cadance from her childhood, is taken aback when Cadance doesn't seem to remember her—and she gets more suspicious as Cadance exhibits Bridezilla behaviors quite unlike the kind pony Twilight remembers. But Twilight's suspicions fall on deaf ears as the rest of her friends, and the groom and Princess Celestia, just write off Cadance's behavior as the effects of pre-wedding jitters. Just as Twilight begins to doubt herself, Cadance captures and imprisons her, proving Twilight was right to be suspicious all along. The followup episode reveals that the real Princess Cadance had been captured and replaced by the shapeshifter Queen Chrysalis. And when Chrysalis is on the verge of victory, she rubs salt in the main six's wounds by lampshading how no one believed the one pony who was correct about her from the start.
    Queen Chrysalis: It's funny, really. Twilight here was suspicious of my behavior all along. Too bad the rest of you were too caught up in your wedding planning to realize those suspicions were correct!
  • In "Keep Calm and Flutter On", the Mane Six start off convinced the villain Discord can only be changed through force, watching him with their Elements of Harmony at the ready to turn him back to stone if needed. But Fluttershy quickly realizes that trying to impose authority on Discord only gives him more pleasure in defying it. So, against the constant urges of her friends, she treats him with unconditional trust and kindness. This actually works, much to the surprise of everyone — most of all Discord himself, who's just manipulated the Mane Six into a situation where they can't use their Elements on him again, only to realize he cares about Fluttershy too much to take advantage of his new position.
  • In "Bats!", a swarm of vampire fruit bats infest Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack argues the bats are too destructive and need to be driven away, while Fluttershy is the only one who argues that these bats are an important part of the ecosystem, so they should set aside a bat sanctuary instead. When the group goes with Applejack's plan, it has the unexpected side effect of turning Fluttershy into a vampony. Shenanigans ensue as the group tries to get Flutters back to normal. Afterwards, Applejack apologizes for not listening to her, and the group builds the bat sanctuary like she suggested in the first place.
  • In "What About Discord?", Twilight becomes jealous when all her friends had fun with Discord over the weekend that she spent indoors re-shelving her library, and she gets particularly upset at all the inside jokes they keep laughing at. She eventually thinks Discord put her friends under a spell — and when she says this aloud, her friends are offended that she would suspect Discord like that. Twilight finally admits her jealousy and apologizes. And as Discord gloats that Twilight has learned a valuable lesson, he lets slip that he really did (non-magically) manipulate Twilight's friends into excluding her over the weekend, specifically to make her feel jealous. The others are not amused.
  • In "No Second Prances", Twilight is mentoring the former villain Starlight Glimmer, and she disapproves of Starlight befriending another former bad-pony, the Great and Powerful Trixie, suspecting that Trixie might be manipulating Starlight for her own ends. Starlight eventually gets fed up with Twilight's meddling and calls her out on being so suspicious of Trixie. Twilight is suitable ashamed — and then Trixie lets slip that she really did just befriend Starlight for the sole purpose of getting back at Twilight. (Although she grew to genuinely appreciate her bond with Starlight.) It's an odd case where Twilight the dissenter is both right and wrong: Twilight still apologizes to Starlight for trying so hard to control her, while Trixie apologizes to Starlight for living down to Twilight's low expectations of her.
  • "Sounds of Silence" features a village of Kirin who, when angered, transform into creatures of fire called Niriks. In the backstory, a particularly nasty argument turned destructive, and the Kirin tried to prevent a reoccurrence by bathing in the magical Stream of Silence, which rendered them speechless and suppressed their emotions. But Autumn Blaze found she couldn't stand living this way — and when she stumbled upon a flower that could reverse the effects of the Stream of Silence, she tried to share it with the rest of the village. The other Kirin rejected this and gave Autumn Blaze the ultimatum to either bathe in the Stream again or be banished. Autumn chose banishment. In the episode proper, Applejack and Fluttershy arrive and attempt to reconcile the two sides — but even they're divided, with Applejack taking Autumn's side while Fluttershy agrees with the rest of the village. In the end, Autumn Blaze wins the rest over by demonstrating how to go full Nirik without becoming a danger to herself or others, thanks to healthy anger management techniques.
• Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures: In "The Adventure Begins: Part 1", Ms. Globular asks for a show of hands as to how many students believe in ghosts after Skeebo claims no one thinks they're real. Nobody raises their hands until Pac reveals that he still thinks ghosts exist. Later, Pac accidentally stumbles into the Nether World, where ghosts reside.
• In Sonic Prime's second season finale, Shadow makes it clear he does not trust Nine to actually follow the plan despite Sonic's insistence that they're all on the same side. Nine ultimately turns on them and takes the shards to create his own world, much to Shadow's anger.
• South Park:
  • Played for Laughs in "Red Hot Catholic Love" when Cartman, being Cartman, comes to the conclusion that it's possible to stuff food up your butt and crap through the mouth. Reactions range from "let's see you prove it" to "absolutely not" with only Cartman believing to be the case, so much so that he bets Kyle $20 that it'll work. Insanely, and much to the surprise of everyone including Cartman, it works.
    (Beat)
    Kyle: Get the fuck out of here!
  • Also Played for Laughs in "Reverse Cowgirl". Butters reveals that he's been sitting on the toilet backwards so that he can put objects like books on the tank, as opposed to everyone else, who sits on toilets forwards. Then the ghost of John Harrington reveals that the toilet is actually meant to be sat on facing the tank so you can place things there.
    Butters: (triumphant) Aha! I told you you should sit on it that way! I told you!
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Kenny the Cat", Sandy is the only one who doesn't believe that the eponymous Kenny is capable of holding his breath underwater for days on end. She turns out to be correct when SpongeBob catches Kenny using an oxygen tank in the men's room.
• Typically in Steven Universe, the Crystal Gems tend to turn toward violent responses towards enemies, while Steven is the only one compassionate enough to try negotiating with their opponent instead. As the series progresses, the Crystal Gems get familiar enough with this routine that they're more open to letting Steven try being merciful first, though they're still reluctantly suspicious. A few inversions to the scenario also occur:
  • In "Bismuth", Amethyst is the only Gem who distrusts the returning Crystal Gem Bismuth, as she's too young to have met her in the past and finds it weird such an important friend was never mentioned previously. She drops her suspicion after Bismuth makes her a fancy new flail, but it turns out there was a reason Bismuth was never discussed among the others before.
  • In "Room For Ruby", Lapis is the only Gem who distrusts Navy and turns out to be right when Navy betrays the Gems. This is a reversal of her previous situation in "Barn Mates" where she was distrustful of Peridot but portrayed as wrong and bitter.
  • In the Future episode "Bluebird", Steven is suspicious of Bluebird Azurite, while everyone else thinks she's harmless. Steven's fear of her turns into self-doubting paranoia as every one of her tricks appears to turn out to be well-meaning. By the end when it turns out Bluebird was Evil All Along, Steven has been so gaslit he can barely even tell anymore if anything she's doing is a murder attempt or just another misunderstanding.
• In ThunderCats, the cats need to get into an elephant village held by the lizards. Lion-o decides they should go in quietly and use stealth, but Tygra argues that, given the lizards' superior firepower, they should charge in with the Thundertank. The cats are spotted and Lion-o's plan fails, then, just when it looks like the cats are doomed, Tygra comes in Big Damn Heroes-style with the Thundertank and saves the day.
• The Transformers:
  • Gears complains about everything, but the other Autobots actually like having him around. Partly because they find his complaints amusing and his behavior never leads him to trouble—and because, amidst all his complaints, he also points out legitimate flaws that need to be addressed and fixed, and sometimes they're things the other Autobots hadn't even noticed. (Amusingly, the one time he was content and helpful, it was because the Decepticons were controlling him.)
  • The Decepticon's resident complainer, Starscream, is far more likely to be wrong and just give the Autobots an opening for victory. But even he gets to point out legitimate flaws in Megatron's plans sometimes. In the opening episodes, for instance, Starscream is the only one to think of trying to destroy the Ark that still contained the defunct Autobots before getting yelled at by Megatron. ^note  Although Ironically Starscream's attempt is actually what revives the Autobots
• In Unikitty!, Unikitty and the others have a tendency to brush off Richard's complaints of various situations, purely because they think his ideas are "boring". In the end, being the eldest, the wisest, and the most serious, Richard is the one in the right, forcing the others to relent with much hesitation and agree with him.

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