History Main / TheTreacheryofImages

[[folder: There is No Manga & Anime Here ]]
* Washu does this to Tenchi concerning [[spoiler:Sakuya Kumashiro]] near the end of ''[[TenchiMuyo Tenchi In Tokyo]]''.
* In ''UminekoNoNakuKoroNi'', the only reason Battler has anything remotely resembling a chance is that most of what we "see" is Beatrice's explanation of what happened. In the third arc in particular, she tried to distract him with shiny, epic magical fight scenes, but Virgilia pointed out that he could always deny that it reflected reality, since no objective evidence was left. And yes, [[MindScrew it's confusing]].
[[/folder]]

* This troper's professor once illustrated this lesson by attempting to "sell" a chalk doodle of a house as if he were selling a real house. The key skeptical question to ask was ''where'' the house was.
** Someone actually succeeded at selling something similar. The Xbox 360 was in low supply at the time and some crafty hoaxers at eBay managed to sell pictures of the actual console by hiding "This auction is not for a Xbox 360 game system, but instead a picture of one" within a lot of specs and praise for the console.
*** Another guy did the same thing selling pictures of a mobile phone.

When someone wants to really blow your mind, he will show you something. It can be an ordinary object or a piece of music or anything really, as long as he can see or hear it. And then they say, "This ''does not exist''." With this mantra, the falsity of the world is stripped away and perhaps the hidden [[{{Masquerade}} mask]] of reality is revealed. This is often an indicator of a MindScrew. Compare and contrast ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve. See TrueArtIsIncomprehensible. Can be dreadfully annoying and dull if [[SeriousBusiness it takes itself too seriously]], or [[{{Postmodernism}} delightful and intellectually stimulating]] if it doesn't.

[[SelfDemonstratingArticle You are not seeing this page]]. There is no page. There are merely [[ZeroesAndOnes a series of HTTP messages sent as TCP segments]] twisted into a form resembling a page. [[ParanoiaFuel Believe nothing.]]

When someone wants to really blow your mind, he will show you something. It can be an ordinary object or a piece of music or anything really, as long as he can see or hear it. And then they say, "This ''does not exist''." With this mantra, the falsity of the world is stripped away and perhaps the hidden [[{{Masquerade}} mask]] of reality is revealed. This is often an indicator of a MindScrew. Compare and contrast ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve. See TrueArtIsIncomprehensible. Can be dreadfully annoying and dull if [[SeriousBusiness it takes itself too seriously]], or [[Postmodernism delightful and intellectually stimulating]] if it doesn't.

When someone wants to really blow your mind, he will show you something. It can be an ordinary object or a piece of music or anything really, as long as he can see or hear it. And then they say, "This ''does not exist''." With this mantra, the falsity of the world is stripped away and perhaps the hidden [[{{Masquerade}} mask]] of reality is revealed. This is often an indicator of a MindScrew. Compare and contrast ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve. See TrueArtIsIncomprehensible.

[[folder: Art ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Manga & Anime ]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

[[folder:Radio]]

[[folder: Video Games]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* In ''Dave Barry Hits Below The Beltway'', Dave Barry wonders how lawyers become "people who refuse to make a simple, understandable statement about ''anything''," and imagines a scene in law school, with a law professor holding up a spoon (possible ShoutOut to ''TheMatrix''?), and [[ElectricTorture turns on the electrodes attached to his students]] each time they say that it looks like a spoon. This is apparently the kind of response the professor wants to hear:

** The wall is no more real than the hammer. How real that ''is'' is where it gets [[MindScrew interesting]].

** Also, [[spoiler:it's also David Lynch genuinely slapping the audience, who by now is surely trying desperately to find the meaning in it all. In the end, nothing in the film really happens. Nothing in any non-documentary film really happens.]]

°° So... Plato was right after all?

* In Pokemon, Team Rocket captures a Ditto (shapeshifting pokemon), then start showing it pictures of things they want it to transform into. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MO_Dbennkc The attempt fails spectacularly]].

* Scott [=McCloud=] (of ''[[{{ptitle4sx0pqptj9fe}} Zot!]]'' fame)'s ''UnderstandingComics'' takes this to a thought-provoking extreme to explain... something. (It might have been comics as a "cool" medium per [=McLuhan=].) Not only is it not a pipe, it's not even a painting of a pipe. Is it a drawing of a painting of a pipe? No, actually it's not even that -- it's a ''printed copy'' of a drawing of a painting of a pipe. In fact, it's ''several'' printed copies, appearing in multiple panels, each one dependent on the reader to observe.
** "You hear what we're saying? Well I hope not, because no one SAID anything!"

* A central theme of British Cult shocker ''{{The Last Horror Movie}}''.

** This most likely explains the lack of respect most laymen have for philosophers.
*** A related concept. An ancient philosopher purportedly argued that, since you could continually half the distance between two objects (or similar reasoning), there were an infinite number of points in between, making it impossible to traverse the distance. A man in the audience essentially said, "I will disprove you." [[CrowningMomentOfFunny And walked out.]]

*** Which, when you think about it, makes most laymen rather pathetic creatures. "Hey. What if what we see, and what we care about, isn't actually what it appears to be?" "Who cares. Let's get drunk."
*** Alternatively, it makes most laymen rather pragmatic creatures. "Hey. What if what we see, and what we care about, isn't actually what it appears to be?" "Doesn't much matter. It's functional for our purposes and rarely, if ever, an issue in real life. I'm going to work to produce something useful to society which in turn provides me with financial security."

* You are not reading this.

** [[http://safebooru.donmai.us/post/show/436576 Ceci n'est pas une Tsukasa.]]

* [[http://www.agonybooth.com/recaps/Monster_A_Go_Go_1965.aspx "There is no monster."]] One of the worst films of all time tried (and [[SoBadItsHorrible failed]]) to have a Mind Screw ending: ''[[MysteryScienceTheater3000 Monster A Go-Go]]'' was about an astronaut who crash landed and mutated into a giant monster and a scientist tries to save him. Except the end revealed that the astronaut actually landed safe someplace else and the monster - gasp! - wasn't real:

*** No you don't. You see a projection of a film of a computer simulation of ''Simulacra and Simulation'' on Neo's shelf. ''None of it exists!''
**** Technically, you see a projection of a film of a computer simulation of ''Simulacra and Simulation'' on Neo's computer simulation of a shelf, since the shelf isn't there either.
***** ''Technically'' you see a film of a copy of ''Simulacra and Simulation'' in a movie studio somewhere. You only think it's a copy of the book on Neo's shelf because that's what the story tells us. Reality was different.
****** Strictly speaking, you see a film of a prop that appears to be a computer simulation of a copy of ''Simulacra and Simulation'' in a movie studio that appears to be Neo's computer simulation of a shelf. The prop might actually be a copy of the book, but there's no way to know that.
******* Wait, isn't it actually a projection of a film of (a prop that appears to be a computer simulation of a copy of ''Simulacra and Simulation'', sitting on another prop that appears to be a computer simulation of Neo's shelf, in a movie studio that appears to be a computer simulation of Neo's apartment)? Or in case you're watching the [[strike: DVD version]] video display of the composite video/S-video/component video/whatever signal coming from the device [[OverlyLongGag decoding the MPEG-2 video decrypted from the VOB stream being read out of the UDF filesystem embedded in the byte stream encoded in the pattern of pits and lands pressed into the 12 cm plastic disc spinning past the 650 nm laser inside the aforementioned device]]...
******** [[CompletelyMissingThePoint You're not seeing any projection of a film or a screen displaying a a prop that appears to be a computer simulation of a copy of ''Simulacra and Simulation'', sitting on another prop that appears to be a computer simulation of Neo's shelf, in a movie studio that appears to be a computer simulation of Neo's apartment. You are in fact reading a small section of a web page about said scene.]]
********* Actually, unless we told you where to find the whatever of ''Simulacra and Simulation'', it is very likely that you didn't see it at all, regardless of what method you actually used to perceive the piece of media we refer to as ''TheMatrix''. [[JustifyingEdit So there]].
********** Taking it a step further, whatever images you think you're seeing are the result of your eyes receiving the actual, accurate light rays, coding them into electrochemical signals, and then reconstructing forms and colours based on what your brain thinks makes the most sense. So technically, from your point of view, not even the universe exists.
*********** Oh, hush, all of you.

******* Wait, isn't it actually a projection of a film of (a prop that appears to be a computer simulation of a copy of ''Simulacra and Simulation'', sitting on another prop that appears to be a computer simulation of Neo's shelf, in a movie studio that appears to be a computer simulation of Neo's apartment)? Or in case you're watching the [[strike: DVD version]] video display of the composite video/S-video/component video/whatever signal coming from the device [[OverlyLongGag decoding the MPEG-2 video decrypted from the VOB stream being read out of the UDF filesystem embedded in the byte stream encoded in the pattern of pits and lands pressed into the 12 cm plastic disc spinning past the 650 nm laser inside the aforementioned device]]... SoYeah.