History Main / WeirdnessCensor

* ''Film/MaryPoppins'': Admiral Boom fires a cannon every hour on the hour, which results in tremors akin to an earthquake for any nearby houses, including the Banks residence. However, they're so used to it at the time of the film that it barely fazes them; they just take their posts to make sure that no valuables are broken, then go back to whatever they were doing before.

* Up until the "Gang War" storyline several years ago, the writers of DC {{retcon}}ned Comicbook/{{Batman}} so that he was still an urban myth not believed in by everyone in Gotham. An air of mystery around him is believable, or even confusion over what he is, but it was often taken too far. It's hard to explain away the thousands of criminals Batman has taken down, along with the [[EpicHail Bat Signal]] shining up every night, the dozens of supervillains committing crimes just to get his attention, as well as numerous public appearances with the JusticeLeague. And apparently, a guy like {{Superman}} is perfectly normal, but a guy dressed as a bat is ridiculous. As Monkey Joe says, "A hero operating as an urban myth only works in his first year. Tops."

* One of the primary responsibilities of the Film/MenInBlack (the other being handling lawful extraterrestrial alien visitor traffic) is policing for illicit alien activities on Earth. Part of that duty is ensuring that the humans on Earth outside the agency are completely oblivious to the aliens among them, be they legal or otherwise.

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter'' the entrance to Diagon Alley, a street filled with shops for wizards, is hidden behind a pub called The Leaky Cauldron which muggles never notice because they don't pay attention to their surroundings and don't expect it to be there. Though with memory charms, "Muggle repelling wards" and the charms that make Hogwarts [[InvisibleToNormals look like a pile of rubble]], it's not so much that Muggles wilfully ignore magic as that any interaction with magic tends to involve them getting parts of their cortex melted.
** Arthur Weasley also notes that {{Muggles}} who are the victims of such magical prankings as shrinking keys will always insist that they simply lost them.

** In Order of the Phoenix the majority of wizarding Britain was putting one on themselves with the Minster's smear campaign against Harry, and wilful denial of Voldemort's return.

* The [=iOS=] game ''Plague Inc.'' (similar in many respects to ''{{Pandemic}}'') has several types of plagues that can be unleashed. The "parasite" type has additional abilities that can be [[EvolutionaryLevels evolved]] that hide it from notice by people. In game terms, this decreases the "severity" stat to ''below zero''. What this means is that the symptoms can include nausea, coughing + vomiting (which enables projectile vomiting) and still not think anything is wrong. You can have the entire ''world'' have these symptoms with no one the wiser. It's not until you "evolve" deadly symptoms and people start dying by the millions that anybody starts to consider that something strange is going on. The same can be done with the special Neurax Worm plague type, but that is implied to be a semi-sentient PuppeteerParasite.

* ''Manga/ToAruKagakuNoRailgun'' has a girl whose special ability is Dummy Check. It makes her invisible to the naked eye but not to cameras. Apparently she can also use it as a Weirdness Censor in order to avoid drawing attention to herself (mainly due to her massive eyebrows).

** Also, no body seems to notice that Scott leaves frantically, right after the game in the second episode, both times. Right after he injures Jackson (which they also pay no mind to, except really Lydia), and right after he wins the game for them (except Stiles and Allison).

** In ''Film/TheAmazingSpiderman'', after getting his powers, Peter shatters a basketball goal when dunking the ball and later throws a football so hard that it slams into and bends a goal post. Each of these events had multiple witnesses who knew Peter, but nothing seems to come of them.

** Well, there was that period when the Grey Hulk worked in Vegas as a bouncer named "Mr. Fixit"....

* In ''HarryPotter'' the entrance to Diagon Alley, a street filled with shops for wizards, is hidden behind a pub called The Leaky Cauldron which muggles never notice because they don't pay attention to their surroundings and don't expect it to be there. Though with memory charms, "Muggle repelling wards" and the charms that make Hogwarts [[InvisibleToNormals look like a pile of rubble]], it's not so much that Muggles wilfully ignore magic as that any interaction with magic tends to involve them getting parts of their cortex melted.

* I once saw a tank roll down the main downtown street in Seoul at 3:00 am. Nobody else seemed to notice. (At the time, the military was still very powerful and it was dangerous to "notice" such activity.)

* In ''PrincessTutu'', the typical townsperson (and the majority of the main cast in the beginning) doesn't question any of the "odder" stuff that goes on in Kinkan, including ballerina-dancing Anteaters (and other anthropomorphic animals). Even visitors to the town are affected--one women wonders if her troupe leader used to be an electric eel before arriving to the town, then quickly brushes it off. Later on in the series, it's revealed that it's because of [[spoiler:the story magically controlling the town and the people inside of it]]. The only people that ever seem to realize something's off with the town are either important to the story, or actively go ''looking'' for something odd in the town.

* In prose, at least early on, the police denied that TheShadow existed, claiming he just represented a contemporary rumor. In the 1994 Alec Baldwin [[Film/TheShadow film]], a woman scoffs at the Shadow as just a rumor to get people to listen to the radio and read newspapers. (Earlier, the Shadow, while as Lamont Cranston at the Cobalt Club, used his powers of suggestion to dissuade Commissioner Wainright Barth from assigning his officers to investigate the rumors of the Shadow.)

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'', where Elliot's narration mentions annoyance that his parents aren't freaked out by the fact that their daughter has turned herself into a cat. Actually, the only time they freak out is when Elliot lied to them. Considering Moperville's track record...
** It's not a huge leap for Elliot's parents. After all, Ellen [[spoiler:is not their biological daughter but a magical gender swapped clone of their son created by a cursed diamond.]]
*** And Elliot apparently grew up being [[MadScientist Tedd's]] test subject. They've probably seen even stranger.
** Moreover, the aliens in the comic, when [[AlienAmongUs walking among humans]], use a system of disguise that involves wearing shirts bearing the label 'human'. Despite their natural forms looking like LittleGreenMen, this method somehow successfully convinces anyone who has not been explicitly informed of their existence.

* In Chapter 12 of the ''{{Hellsing}}'' manga, a group of tourists witness [[SdrawkcabName Alucard]] and [[ChurchMilitant Anderson]] preparing to fight to the death, and dismiss them as [[AllPartOfTheShow performance artists]]. You could say it was {{lampshaded}}, since they were inside a museum when that happened.

* ''StarTrek'' has an actual WeirdnessCensor built into their holodecks so that the holographic people ignore any discussions or unusual sights that don't fit within the context of whatever is being simulated. In the StarTrekVoyager episode ''Spirit Folk'' the Voyager crew leave the Fair Haven simulation running too long and the townsfolk start to become aware of the weirdness of their new visitors from the crew.
* One of the things ''{{Glee}}'' fans most frequently complain about when it comes to [[TheScrappy Mr. Schue]] is that he seems to be actively making an effort not to notice his students being bullied, so that he won't have to deal with it. He clearly knows that they ''are'' being bullied, because he mentions it sometimes, but whenever he's actually present while it's happening he never seems to notice.

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Transformers}}'' cartoons:

** In Anime/TransformersSuperGodMasterforce, [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Expose_the_Decepticons%27_Dark_Trap%21 This]] was a ridiculous case when the humans completely forgotten about what Autobots AND Decepticons are despite the series (in Japan) had already established the existence of both, not in the IdiotBall level, mind you, but it's as if they forgotten. The early episodes clearly shown that there is a few people who know about it. Maybe it's due to the fact that the Transformers had been off the Earth a long time, no one would remember them by then.

* One Episode of ''Series/CSI'' referenced "[[http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html The Invisible Gorilla]]", one of the most well-known experiments in the history of modern psychology, as an explanation for why a group of bystanders just stood there and ignored a horrible crime happening in their presence: they are concentrating so hard on one thing that they miss everything else around them. The experiment happens thusly: a test group watches a video that featured six people, three in white shirts, three in black shirts, passing a basketball back and forth. The test group was instructed to carefully count the number of passes made from one person to another. Afterward, the test group was asked, "Did you notice the gorilla?" Turns out that at one point in the video, a man in a gorilla costume walks into the middle of the basketball players, thumps its chest a few times, then walks off-stage. In total, the gorilla is onscreen for nearly nine seconds, and no one ever spots (even those people who go into the experiment knowing there is going to be a gorilla tend to not spot it at all).

* The citizens of the Manga/DragonBall Z universe seem to quickly get over the fact that several towns and cities suddenly explode when a MonsterOfTheWeek comes by. In one episode, Nappa is seen destroying a naval fleet sent out to stop him, but after that, the military is never seen retaliating against future villains other than against Perfect Cell.

* In ''Kamichu'' a middle school girl becomes a goddess. It's just another after school job as far as most of the townsfolk are concerned.

* In Lars Von Trier's Danish miniseries ''{{Riget}}'' which takes place in a haunted hospital, the head of administration Moesgaard seem completely oblivious to all the strange things that happen. For example, when one of the doctors come back ''from the dead'' (more or less), Moesgaard's first comment is an annoyed "Why am I always misinformed?". Then he just reintroduces the resurrected doctor to the staff as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened, and quickly changes the subject. In another scene, he walks in on Rigmor who is holding a gun, and she accidentally points it at him ''three'' times without him noticing it.