History Main / PoorlyLitPareidolia

* To start the third act of ''WesternAnimation/PoohsGrandAdventure'', the "Skull" cave, which Pooh Bear and company react with terror [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHDQNcy8AC8 on waking foggy morning and see a terrifying visage.]] However, after they find Christopher Robin (or more accurately, Christopher Robin finds them) and exit the cave in broad daylight, they discover that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRvr0NgzEtA it's just a rather benign pile of rocks.]]

** "Arthur's First Sleepover": Arthur recounts being afraid of the dark as a child, and envisioning the radiator in his bedroom as a toothy monster.

This only applies to everyday objects such as trees or rocks or furniture happening to resemble monsters. If it turns out there's an actual, literal monster stalking the character, it isn't an example. (Sometimes, a character might think something is a monster, verify that it's just an inanimate object, only for it to then turn out that, no, actually it really ''was'' a monster after all). This also doesn't encompass objects purposely-sculpted so as to resemble monsters, such as statues. Can overlap with BewareTheSkullBase, if the base is in a natural formation (such as a cave) resembling a human skull rather than intentionally built or carved to look like one.

[[folder: Film - Animated]]

-->'''Pooh''': Wasn't that a big, umm... bigger?\\

'''Christopher Robin''': Well, things can seem that way when we're alone and scared.

* ''[[Film/HomeAlone Home Alone]]'': Kevin is scared of going into the basement because he envisions the furnace as a monster.

[[folder:Videogames]]

[[folder:Live-Action Television]]

* In one ''[[Series/SesameStreet Sesame Street]]'' skit, Cookie Monster sleeps over at Ernie and Bert's house (Bert is absent because he's visiting his grandmother, so Cookie Monster gets his bed). After the lights are turned out at bedtime, he gets scared of what he thinks is a monster in the corner of the room. It turns out to be a rumpled blanket on a toy chest.

Pareidolia is the human tendency to mistakenly interpret random visual stimuli as meaningful. More specifically, it entails seeing faces in inanimate objects. Does the door of that house look like a mouth, those two windows above the door like eyes, and the keystone of the door like a nose? That's pareidolia. Combine this tendency with humans' tendency to be afraid of the dark -- [[DarknessEqualsDeath on the grounds that humans are vulnerable to predators in the dark]] -- and you get this trope.

** In ''Literature/ReaperMan'', Death is trying to find a tarpaulin to protect Miss Flitworth's harvest on a stormy night. He thinks he sees the silhouette of the New Death coming for him, but it turns out to be Ned Simnel's harvesting machine. Later inverted, when Death assures Miss Flitworth that a figure on the hillside illuminated by lightning is just the shadow of the Combination Harvester, but it turns out to be the actual New Death.

* In ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'', one of the thugs' great childhood fear was a wardrobe with a carved door that vaguely resembled a face. And in the night...
-->"...it whispered things," said Chickenwire, in a quiet little voice, like a vole in a dungeon.

** "Under Chuckie's Bed": Chuckie - his father having traded in his crib for his first bed - is afraid to sleep in it because he sees a monster underneath it. Turns out, it's just his father's sweater.

* ''The Fox and the Child'': The protagonist (a little girl who has been following a fox through a forest) emerges from a cave back into the forest at night, and is scared by the shapes of the tree branches and all the noises made by all the local wildlife.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'' movie ''WesternAnimation/TaleOfTheBrave'', Percy imagines that a pile of scrap is a monster, but it really wasn't, as James left it there [[KickTheDog to scare Percy]].

This only applies to everyday objects such as trees or rocks or furniture happening to resemble monsters. If it turns out there's an actual, literal monster stalking the character, it isn't an example. (Sometimes, a character might think something is a monster, verify that it's just an inanimate object, only for it to turn out that, no, actually it really ''was'' a monster after all). This also doesn't encompass objects purposely-sculpted so as to resemble monsters, such as statues. Can overlap with BewareTheSkullBase, if the base is in a natural formation (such as a cave) resembling a human skull rather than intentionally built or carved to look like one.