History YMMV / BeyondBeliefFactOrFiction

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: ''Beyond Belief'' was a relatively popular show in Germany (called "X-Factor") during it's run, perhaps even more so than in it's parent country the United States. It has aired on sundays for the last ''17 years'' due to its constant high popularity. ''The Paranormal Borderline'' and ''Scariest Places on Earth'' were also advertised as being part of the show, but were soon ditched in Germany as the format proved too different and thus unpopular.

* HilariousInHindsight: One story involves an animatronic gorilla seemingly coming to life, over 10 years before the popular ''Franchise/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' franchise was released.

** In the "Mirror of Truth", a vain, shallow woman obsessed with her appearance enters a beauty parlor and is given a makeover. Dissatisfied with the results, she treats the beautician with rude indignation, and in response the beautician apparently casts a curse upon her. Although we never see her face, the woman believes her good looks are rapidly fading, and soon states that she finds herself grotesquely ugly. In TheReveal, she looks into a mirror, and her reflection shows a hideously deformed face with bugged out eyes and diseased skin. When we see the woman's actual face, her youthful, photogenic appearance remains, it was only that the curse caused her to perceive herself as ugly. The deformed face is NightmareFuel at its finest for anybody that wasn't expecting it..

* TheWoobie: Anatole. Who can possibly look into those defenseless looking eyes and not feel instant sympathy? May also count as WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds considering the events that follow.

--> An awful, awful man...Not well-bred...No respect for anyone...Not even...THE DEAD!

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Beyond Belief was a relatively popular show in Germany (called "X-Factor") during it's run, perhaps even more so than in it's parent country the United States. It has aired on sundays for the last ''17 years'' due to its constant high popularity. ''The Paranormal Borderline'' and ''Scariest Places on Earth'' were also advertised as being part of the show, but were soon ditched in Germany as the format proved too different and thus unpopular.
* GrowingTheBeard: The first season was not exactly bad, but the show's more memorable segments and Jonathan Frakes's corny puns, along with more episodes a season, can after. Convenient with Frakes' involvement, given he helped create the term due to his role in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''.
* HarsherInHindsight: Comedian Rachel Reenstra appeared in the segment "The New House," where she played a mother who sees a vision of a ghost warning her there's a fire, and to save her daughter (it's revealed the ghost was of a woman who was unable to save her own daughter from a previous fire, and the story was listed as true). Only a couple months after the episode this segment was a part of aired, Reenstra's apartment caught fire, and burned down.
* InformedWrongness: The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both somewhat {{Designated Villain}}s who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were literally kicking and dragging her out of the house. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive if anything, yet both are treated as despicable people by both the woman and the events of the episode that follow.
* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The first season was released on DVD in August of 2007, but no other seasons have been released. The show does air on the Chiller Channel in the US but very sporadically.

** From [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwPNncEHMJg#t=0h7m16s The Wealthy Widow]]:
--> I'm Milo Younstun, and I want you to leave my ''Cassy'' alone.
** The story "Cook Out." During a family barbecue, the grill malfunctions in strange ways long enough for a family member to learn that the meat is contaminated with e. coli. Out of nowhere and for no apparent reason, the family patriarch attributes the malfunctioning to divine intervention by a recently deceased uncle.

** The story "The Candidate." During a senatorial debate at a hotel, a dishonest political candidate suddenly CannotTellALie, unwittingly endorses his opponent, and blows the election. What made him do it? It turns out the hotel at which the debate took place was recently renamed the Lincoln Hotel, meaning it must have been Honest Abe's spirit that intervened, of course. One of the more farfetched and unintentionally hilarious stories.
* NightmareFuel: If they're not {{Glurge}}, most episodes fall under this. Major offenders include the stories "Red-Eyed Creature" and "The Mirror of Truth." To elaborate:
** In "Red-Eyed Creature", a couple, their young son, and their nanny purchase a new home. On the night they move in, the young son goes downstairs, and in the dark kitchen, witnesses a pair of ominous red eyes floating towards him, accompanied by a disturbingly loud whooshing sound. The parents think the frightened son just imagined the whole thing, until the same thing happens to the wife some time later. When the father inspects the house, he notices that the panel of the family's thermostat on the wall has two red lights that could easily be mistaken for glowing red eyes in the dark, and postulates that the whooshing sound was just the heater kicking in. The parents are relieved by this rational explanation, but the son remains unconvinced. When the son is in bed that night, the nanny goes to tuck him in and reassures him that there's nothing to be afraid of. As she leaves the son's room, she pauses, faces the audience, and her eyes glow red and emit a whooshing sound, implying that she's some sort of [[BeneathSuspicion supernatural entity intent]] on terrorizing the family.
*** Of course, she might be a supernatural creature who looks scary but is otherwise a nice person. Jonathan Frakes even brings up the possibility that the woman/creature is ''protecting'' the family, not terrorizing it, as no bad incidents happened to them while they were in the house even though bad things always happened to past owners.
** In the "Mirror of Truth," a vain, shallow woman obsessed with her appearance enters a beauty parlor and is given a makeover. Dissatisfied with the results, she treats the beautician with rude indignation, and in response the beautician apparently casts a curse upon her. Although we never see her face, the woman believes her good looks are rapidly fading, and soon states that she finds herself grotesquely ugly. In TheReveal, she looks into a mirror, and her reflection shows a hideously deformed face. When we see the woman's actual face, her youthful, photogenic appearance remains, it was only that the curse caused her to perceive herself as ugly. The deformed face is NightmareFuel at its finest, especially since you're not expecting it.

** "The Land" is about a farmer who is about to lose his land because of a long drought and makes a deal with someone(and to the writers credit, it's not implied to be The Devil or some demonic entity, just some guy who lives in town) for the land to be fertile for the next twenty years. The next day his family wakes up to find that it is indeed fertile, and the man is heavily implied to have ''become'' the land itself. The imagery in this story is ''creepy''.
** While even most of the scary stories are tinged with {{Narm}}, "The Stalker" is a truly terrifying segment. Revolving around [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a stalker]] who escapes from jail and torments a lady and her daughter by hiding in their home, it is one story that can seriously leave you scared and paranoid, especially if you've had an experience with stalking in your past.

* RecycledScript: A large number of stories follow this basic formula: the spirit of a dead person warns someone of an impending doom, rescues someone in danger, or exacts revenge on the person who killed them. Another common theme is an apparently inanimate object coming to life (an animatronic gorilla, mannequins, a wax figure, a rubber hand, a doll).
** While the Fiction stories are certainly to blame for repeated variations, one can't fault them entirely when the stories turn out to be Fact. Even if they are VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, they are still based upon outside claims and recordings. Any repetition there is not entirely the writers' fault.
* TheOtherDarrin: The show was originally hosted by James Brolin before Creator/JonathanFrakes took over.

* FridgeLogic: Many stories include details that could only be known by the person involved and are thus impossible for us to have knowledge of if he or she dies or disappears as a result of the events of the story. Similarly, if there are details that are revealed to the audience but never to any character, how did the show's writers know about them? FridgeBrilliance if the story is revealed to be fictional, FridgeLogic if it's purportedly true.
** One example where a story like that turned out to be true had a woman who was hit by a car see her dead aunt as she's lying there, dying. There was no indication in the segment that she said to any bystanders, "Oh my gosh, as I am dying I am seeing the ghost of my dead aunt and here is what she's saying to me!" Because of the instances of [[DanBrowned Dan Browning]] on this show, one must take their claims of factuality with a grain of salt.

* HarsherInHindsight: Comedian Rachel Reenstra appeared in the segment "The New House", where she played a mother who sees a vision of a ghost warning her there's a fire, and to save her daughter (it's revealed the ghost was of a woman who was unable to save her own daughter from a previous fire, and the story was listed as true). Only a couple months after the episode this segment was a part of aired, Reenstra's apartment caught fire, and burned down.

* {{Narm}}: A lot of this comes from the show's scting, which tends to be silly or over the top at moments clearly meant to be serious. Every other story is guaranteed to have a bit of this.

--> "I'm Milo Younstun, and I want you to leave my ''Cassy'' alone"

** Even though it was a pretty creepy and well told story, ''The Hooded Chair''(which is based on the Busby Stoop Chair in Thirsk, England) has an [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkf2MoJ_Mg0#t=7m32s ending]] which is incredibly narmy.

* NightmareFuel: If they're not {{Glurge}}, most episodes fall under this. Major offenders include the stories "Red-Eyed Creature" and "The Mirror of Truth". To elaborate:

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Beyond Belief was a relatively popular show in Germany during it's run, perhaps even more so than in it's parent country the United States.

* InformedWrongness: The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both somewhat {{ Designated Villain}}s who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were literally kicking and dragging her out of the house. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive if anything, yet both are treated as despicable people by both the woman and the events of the episode that follow.

* InformedWrongness: The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both somewhat [[DesignatedVillians Designated Villians]] who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were literally kicking and dragging her out of the house. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive if anything, yet both are treated as despicable people by both the woman and the events of the episode that follow.

InformedWrongness: The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both somewhat [[DesignatedVillians Designated Villians]] who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were literally kicking and dragging her out of the house. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive if anything, yet both are treated as despicable people by both the woman and the events of the episode that follow.

* InformedWrongness: ''Mirror of Truth''. The protagonist wasn't satisfied with the service given, so she received personal insults from the cosmetician, rude demand to pay anyway and a curse for daring to retort. She may have been narcissistic, but that was none of the cosmetician's business.
** The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both somewhat [[DesignatedVillians Designated Villians]] who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were literally kicking and dragging her out of the house. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive if anything, yet both are treated as despicable people by both the woman and the events of the episode that follow.

* InformedWrongness: ''Mirror of Truth''. The protagonist wasn't satisfied with the service given, so she received personal insults from the cosmetician, rude demand to pay anyway and a curse for daring to retort. She may have been narcissistic, but that was none of the cosmetician's business. Plus, she assumably didn't want to be loved only for her looks, but what can she do if she is made believe that's all she has? She was basically punished for being the way she was '''forced''' to be.

* InformedWrongness: ''Mirror of Truth'' for this troper. The protagonist wasn't satisfied with the service given, so she received personal insults from the cosmetician, rude demand to pay anyway and a curse for daring to retort. She may have been narcissistic, but that was none of the cosmetician's business. Plus, she assumably didn't want to be loved only for her looks, but what can she do if she is made believe that's all she has? She was basically punished for being the way she was '''forced''' to be.

** The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both somewhat [[DesignatedVillians Designated Villians]] who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were literally pushing her off the property. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive if anything, yet both are treated as despicable people by the woman.

** The Realtor couple in ''The Greedy Invester'' are both [[DesignatedVillians Designated Villians]] who are just doing their job of foreclosing a house and requesting a woman to leave as per a previous agreement. Not only does the woman feel that ''they'' are completely in the wrong, but also puts on a fit (complete with a 'this house will never belong to you' curse) and acts as if the realtors were dragging her out by her feet. Instead the wife is clearly empathetic and the husband was merely insensitive to the situation, if anything. Yet both are treated

** From [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwPNncEHMJg#t=7m16s The Wealthy Widow]]:

* {{Narm}}: The story "Cook Out." During a family barbecue, the grill malfunctions in strange ways long enough for a family member to learn that the meat is contaminated with e. coli. Out of nowhere and for no apparent reason, the family patriarch attributes the malfunctioning to divine intervention by a recently deceased uncle.

* RecycledScript: How many variations do we need on the whole "Ghost of a dead person assists a living friend/relative/descendant/complete stranger" premise?
** While the Fiction stories are certainly to blame for repeated variations, one can't fault them entirely when the stories turn out to be Fact. Even if they are VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, they are still based upon outside claims and recordings; any repetition there is not the writers' fault.

* RecycledScript: A large number of stories follow this basic formula: the spirit of a dead person warns someone of an impending doom, rescues someone in danger, or exacts revenge on the person who killed them. Another common theme is an apparently inanimate object coming to life (an animatronic gorilla, mannequins, a wax figure, a rubber hand, a doll). The show's final season was replete with rehashes of previous stories, perhaps constituting the moment the series JumpedTheShark.
** There was one story about a girl who goes into a graveyard on a bet and accidentally pins herself to the grave with a knife, causing herself to die of fright. Or whatever. This was the exact plot of an episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone''. The original one.
** To be fair, that story is itself a somewhat-old urban legend. It's also in the book Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

* ClicheStorm: How many variations do we need on the whole "Ghost of a dead person assists a living friend/relative/descendant/complete stranger" premise?

* ClicheStorm: How many variations do we need on the whole "Ghost of a dead person assists a living friend/relative/ancestor/complete stranger" premise?

* InformedWrongness: ''Mirror of Truth'' for this troper. She wasn't satisfied with the service given, so she received personal insults from the cosmetician, rude demand to pay anyway and a curse for daring to retort. She may have been narcissistic, but that was none of the cosmetician's business. Plus, she assumably didn't want to be loved only for her looks, but what can she do if she is made believe that's all she has? She was basically punished for being the way she was '''forced''' to be.

* SturgeonsLaw: Let's face it, many of the stories are lame. It's the awesome ones that makes the show worth watching.

[[redirect:Series/BeyondBeliefFactOrFiction]]

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: The spooky music played throughout each episode greatly amplifies the eerie atmosphere of the show.
* EarWorm: The old woman's chant from "The Gravedigger's Nemesis":
--> An awful, awful man...Not well-bred...No respect for anyone...Not even...THE DEAD!
* FridgeLogic: Many stories include details that could only be known by the person involved and are thus impossible for us to have knowledge of if he or she dies or disappears as a result of the events of the story. Similarly, if there are details that are revealed to the audience but never to any character, how did the show's writers know about them? FridgeBrilliance if the story is revealed to be fictional, FridgeLogic if it's purportedly true.
** One example where a story like that turned out to be true had a woman who was hit by a car see her dead aunt as she's lying there, dying. There was no indication in the segment that she said to any bystanders, "Oh my gosh, as I am dying I am seeing the ghost of my dead aunt and here is what she's saying to me!" Because of the instances of [[DanBrowned Dan Browning]] on this show, one must take their claims of factuality with a grain of salt.
* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Beyond Belief was a relatively popular show in Germany during it's run, perhaps even more so than in it's parent country the United States.
* HarsherInHindsight: Comedian Rachel Reenstra appeared in the segment "The New House", where she played a mother who sees a vision of a ghost warning her there's a fire, and to save her daughter (it's revealed the ghost was of a woman who was unable to save her own daughter from a previous fire, and the story was listed as true). Only a couple months after the episode this segment was a part of aired, Reenstra's apartment caught fire, and burned down.
* {{Narm}}: The story "Cook Out." During a family barbecue, the grill malfunctions in strange ways long enough for a family member to learn that the meat is contaminated with e. coli. Out of nowhere and for no apparent reason, the family patriarch attributes the malfunctioning to divine intervention by a recently deceased uncle.
** Even though it was a pretty creepy and well told story, ''The Hooded Chair''(which is based on the Busby Stoop Chair in Thirsk, England) has an [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkf2MoJ_Mg0#t=7m32s ending]] which is incredibly narmy.
-->'''Talbot''': I will not be destroyed by a chair!
** The story "The Candidate." During a senatorial debate at a hotel, a dishonest political candidate suddenly CannotTellALie, unwittingly endorses his opponent, and blows the election. What made him do it? It turns out the hotel at which the debate took place was recently renamed the Lincoln Hotel, meaning it must have been Honest Abe's spirit that intervened, of course. One of the more farfetched and unintentionally hilarious stories.
* NightmareFuel: If they're not {{Glurge}}, most episodes fall under this. Major offenders include the stories "Red-Eyed Creature" and "The Mirror of Truth". To elaborate:
** In "Red-Eyed Creature", a couple, their young son, and their nanny purchase a new home. On the night they move in, the young son goes downstairs, and in the dark kitchen, witnesses a pair of ominous red eyes floating towards him, accompanied by a disturbingly loud whooshing sound. The parents think the frightened son just imagined the whole thing, until the same thing happens to the wife some time later. When the father inspects the house, he notices that the panel of the family's thermostat on the wall has two red lights that could easily be mistaken for glowing red eyes in the dark, and postulates that the whooshing sound was just the heater kicking in. The parents are relieved by this rational explanation, but the son remains unconvinced. When the son is in bed that night, the nanny goes to tuck him in and reassures him that there's nothing to be afraid of. As she leaves the son's room, she pauses, faces the audience, and her eyes glow red and emit a whooshing sound, implying that she's some sort of [[BeneathSuspicion supernatural entity intent]] on terrorizing the family.
*** Of course, she might be a supernatural creature who looks scary but is otherwise a nice person. Jonathan Frakes even brings up the possibility that the woman/creature is ''protecting'' the family, not terrorizing it, as no bad incidents happened to them while they were in the house even though bad things always happened to past owners.
** In the "Mirror of Truth," a vain, shallow woman obsessed with her appearance enters a beauty parlor and is given a makeover. Dissatisfied with the results, she treats the beautician with rude indignation, and in response the beautician apparently casts a curse upon her. Although we never see her face, the woman believes her good looks are rapidly fading, and soon states that she finds herself grotesquely ugly. In TheReveal, she looks into a mirror, and her reflection shows a hideously deformed face. When we see the woman's actual face, her youthful, photogenic appearance remains, it was only that the curse caused her to perceive herself as ugly. The deformed face is NightmareFuel at its finest, especially since you're not expecting it.
** The reveals. Seeing FACT or FICTION stamped over the creepiest screenshots of each segment and holding it for a few seconds was rather nightmare-inducing. Especially ones that were revealed as FACT.
** "The Land" is about a farmer who is about to lose his land because of a long drought and makes a deal with someone(and to the writers credit, it's not implied to be The Devil or some demonic entity, just some guy who lives in town) for the land to be fertile for the next twenty years. The next day his family wakes up to find that it is indeed fertile, and the man is heavily implied to have ''become'' the land itself. The imagery in this story is ''creepy''.
* PeripheryDemographic: Even if you're a skeptic who doesn't buy into the supposedly truthful supernatural elements, enjoying the show is still very possible if you just find the stories entertaining.
* RecycledScript: A large number of stories follow this basic formula: the spirit of a dead person warns someone of an impending doom, rescues someone in danger, or exacts revenge on the person who killed them. Another common theme is an apparently inanimate object coming to life (an animatronic gorilla, mannequins, a wax figure, a rubber hand, a doll). The show's final season was replete with rehashes of previous stories, perhaps constituting the moment the series JumpedTheShark.
** There was one story about a girl who goes into a graveyard on a bet and accidentally pins herself to the grave with a knife, causing herself to die of fright. Or whatever. This was the exact plot of an episode of ''Series/TheTwilightZone''. The original one.
** To be fair, that story is itself a somewhat-old urban legend. It's also in the book Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.
* SturgeonsLaw: Let's face it, many of the stories are lame. It's the awesome ones that makes the show worth watching.
----

-->: An awful, awful man...Not well-bred...No respect for anyone...Not even...THE DEAD!