[[http://www.banksy.co.uk/ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/elephantinthelivingroom.jpg]]
[[caption-width:323:[[MoveAlongNothingToSeeHere Nothing to see here!]]]]

-->'''Peter:''' Let's just ignore it and hope it goes away. Just like we do with the squid.\\
(giant squid knocks the plates off table)\\
'''Lois:''' [[ItsProbablyNothing Uh, earthquake.]]\\
'''Peter:''' Truck passing by.
-->--''FamilyGuy''

Also rendered "the elephant in the corner", the ElephantInTheLivingRoom is a large topic or issue which should be obvious to everyone but which is deliberately or conspicuously avoided. In most cases this is used to create comedic tension, for example when a character has a BigSecret he must struggle to divert conversation away from. In stark contrast, some cases of the trope creates a ''tragic'' vibe, with an Elephant so awful that nobody can bring themselves to raise the topic.

For cases where a subject within the series that simply cannot be questioned, or else the whole premise will fall apart, it's a case of why they don't JustEatGilligan. If a subject is addressed with some form of implausible explanation, that is most often a HandWave or ScotchTape; when the subject is simply verboten, it is the Elephant in the Living Room.

In Anime, this trope is known as a ''[[MisterSeahorse Pregnant]] [[RanmaOneHalf Ranma]] Problem'', based on the following anecdotal discussion between the artist of Ranma 1/2 and a random fan at a convention:
-->Random Fanboy: What would happen if Ranma got pregnant as a girl, then changed back to a boy?\\
Rumiko Takahashi: "[[MST3KMantra I don't think about that, and neither should you]]."

Which just about sums up 90% of these examples. Cheers!

See also UnusuallyUninterestingSight.

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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Advertising]]
*One public awareness commercial that this editor remembers seeing once (possibly during a Superbowl?) has a man walking into an office accompanied by an elephant, with the nametag of "AIDS." Certainly a very effective message.
* Ads for AXA Equities invoke this trope by having as a spokesperson the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room, reminding people to invest for retirement.
** Which is a ''bizarrely'' mixed metaphor. The proverbial 800-pound gorilla represents the ability to do whatever you want because nobody dares to stop you...
*** Where do you invest your money when there's an 800-pound gorilla in the room? ''Anywhere he tells you to.''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In ''MahouSenseiNegima'' Negi often uses the excuse that he's considering one of his [[OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent students]] to become his magical partner in order to prevent other mages from using LaserGuidedAmnesia on them to maintain the {{Masquerade}}. The Elephant is that this excuse won't protect the {{Muggles}} in his class forever.
** At the rate things are going, will there ''be'' any {{Muggles}} left in said class by the time they graduate? They're down to somewhere around 7/31 at this point...
***Were there many in the first place?
****Out of the starting 31 students? In the manga, 12. Plus, another 4 that have dealt with magic but are kept in the dark by relatives/close friends, and another 4 that are aware of some weirdness, but not about magic until their dealings with Negi, so there's no Elephant there.
** He only used this excuse in ''[[AdaptationDecay Negima!?]]'', the second anime. In the manga, it seems that as long as his magic doesn't go public, it's okay for people to know.
* One of Kousaka's major character traits in ''{{Genshiken}}'' is that he has absolutely no awareness that the elephant in the room is supposed to be hiding. As a result, he says what everyone's thinking without hesitation. A key example is when the rest of the club is unsure of whether Ohno and Tanaka are dating; as everyone else vacillates, he just yells, "Hey! Are you two going out?"
* The big one from ''AhMyGoddess'', eventually brought up in a recent [[LightNovels Light Novel]] for the series: what will happen to [[MayflyDecemberRomance Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship]] as Keiichi grows old? Interestingly, Keiichi and Peorth ''did'' have a rather evasive conversation about it. Keiichi's biggest concern, to Peorth's surprise, was how it would hurt Belldandy.
** This troper has [[{{AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence}} a preferred solution]].
* Precisely the same in ''{{Kanokon}}''. The female lead is some 25+ times older than the male. That means, by the time he dies of old age, she'll only ''just'' have got out of adolescence. Yet no-one mentions it, ever.
* In ''CromartieHighSchool'', no one but Kamiyama and Hayashida seem to realize that Mechazawa is a robot, and even they never directly say it.
** This an the general weirdness is lampshaded in the last scene of the anime: Hayashida and Maeda ask Kamiyama what they're going to with their lives. Kamiyama then points out the window to Mechazawa, [[LawyerFriendlyCameo Freddie]], his horse, and [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys Gorilla]], stating that's whatever the three of them might do doesn't interest him nearly as much as ''what those other guys'' might do.
*In ''DetectiveConan'', Conan's increasingly noticeable failure to act as a normal little boy arouses suspicions from just about everyone in the cast not privy to his secret, yet nobody really thinks of just sitting the kid down and asking him just how on earth does he know so much, rather preferring to harbor vague suspicions relatively forever.
**Considering a lot of the information Conan spouts is related to weapons, death and chemicals, they just might be scared that he'll kill them if they point something out. After all, there are plenty of people who've seen him shoot that soccer ball with all the force and accuracy of a heat-seeking missile.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* In ''{{Fables}}'', the protagonists rarely talk about much of their pasts, even if it was full of abominable deeds. Which, considering they're all old-school [[{{Grimmification}} Grimm]] storybook fables, can be extensive indeed. The in-story explanation is they were all given amnesty when they entered the mundane world. This doesn't keep them from being wary of each other, nor from falling back on old habits.
* Despite the fact that {{Marvel Comics}}'s version of New York City has been the site of multiple alien invasions, a demonic infestation, has suffered through every kind of cockamamie plot imaginable, and is routinely targeted by supervillains of every stripe, there has never been any sort of mass exodus or serious damage to the economy in spite of all the upheavals.
** Probably because Damage Control repairs everything so efficiently.
* Similarly, [[Comicbook/{{Batman}} Gotham City]] never suffers from any long-term economic damage or loss of population, despite the fact that a number of psychopathic supervillains routinely use the city as a stage for their grisly "performances" (the Joker), a giant petri dish for their scientific experiments (the Scarecrow and his attempting to use the people of Gotham as test subjects in his experiments in fear), or a base for their environmental crusades (Poison Ivy). And even ignoring them, the city has long been a WretchedHive of endemic police and civic corruption and mob activity, making it curious that anyone would willingly choose to live there.
** Things ''did'' eventually get so bad that, after an earthquake damaged the city, the government isolated Gotham from the rest of the USA (in the "No Man's Land" story arc) on the excuse that it was too expensive to rebuild it. People who refused to leave were left inside to their own devices, and even outside help was forbidden! This is of course completely absurd (and illegal).
*** Illegal except for biological epidemics. The only difference between that and the U.S. government's plan in case of a smallpox epidemic (a few vials from the Soviet Union disappeared and remain unaccounted for) is to tear up all roads leading out of an infected city are to be destroyed and anyone from that city that tries to leave is to be shot on sight. [[SoYeah Of course since smallpox has a period of dormancy that last months after infection, and people travel around the travel great distances, and the U.S. has only about 300,000 vaccines in a population of multi-millions, make this unlikely to stop the spread so...]]
*** On the other hand, it would take almost no time at all to create enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate everyone on earth. It's easier to create than penicillin and a lot cheaper: simply infect cows with cowpox and three days later you have vaccine - enough to vaccinate 300 people from one cow. Seriously: the needles would cost more and take more time to produce.
*** What most people forget is that prior to the quake (literally almost happening a month or two earlier) is that Gotham was struck with '''two''' plagues: one was, of all things, the '''Ebola Virus''' and the other was a super plague that was released by Ra's al-Ghul. So by the time of the quake, the government said "Fuck it" and sealed Gotham up.
**** Biological epidemics, eh? They probably could have used Man-Bat, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, fear gas, said plagues, etc. as loopholes to justify it then.
** Most cities in superhero comics suffer from at least one ElephantInTheLivingRoom. Why don't the super-powered villains move out of the city where Superman lives? Why don't all the unpowered white-collar supervillains (or at least the two or three of them that don't have a major case of FoeYay for Batman) move out of the city where the World's Greatest Detective lives? Why don't Marvel villains move out of the one city where [[BigApplesauce almost every single non-comedic superhero lives]]?
*** Maybe the police in other cities, unlike Gotham's, are competent enough that the villains would get caught there anyway.
*** This was {{Lampshaded}} in one episode of ''KimPossible'', about the location of their ArchEnemy's lair:
----> '''Hego:''' No, that's the peak of Go Mountain, just outside of Go City.\\
'''Kim: '''Convenient.\\
'''Hego:''' I found that a long-distance relationship with a foe never works. It's a strain on everyone.
**This was {{lampshaded}} and {{subverted}} a bit in the {{Flash}} comics back in more innocent days. The Central City and Keystone City crooks were generally harmless and some even had codes against killing, so they were more seen as nuisances then anything. GeoffJohns added another reason: most of the people in Keystone work in Heavy Industry, and it's unlikely that their jobs would exist anywhere else.
**Also explored in a short story by KimNewman: A [[{{Batman}} Commissioner Gordon]]-like character has questions nagging at the edge of his consciousness about the way Coastal City is always being trashed by {{supervillain}}s but it's always rebuilt in no time, and his war-hero {{backstory}} is [[ComicBookTime periodically updated]] to a newer war.
** [[EricDVH I]] always [[FanWank imagined]] that Gotham/Metropolis/etc… being plagued by supervillain crime, rampaging kaiju and the wrath of eldritch entities on a regular basis was ''perfectly normal'' in the typical comic book setting, and that there were other superheroes fighting other supervillains in every corner of the world every week too. Just that this particular superhero was the one being followed by the story I'm reading.
* In Mini Marvels, this trope is parodied by Elephant Steve. He [[BerserkButton really hates]] this expression, by the way.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* There's a subplot in ''{{Freaks}}'' in which Roscoe the clown, who is engaged to Daisy Hilton, is introduced to the fiance of Daisy's sister, Violet, and the line "You must come over and visit us some time," is used. At no point does anyone explicitly mention the fact that Daisy and Violet are joined at the hip. The whole thing is going to be very awkward.
* Most of the cities in Japan but ''especially'' Tokyo in Kaiju movies, especially those starring {{Godzilla}}.
* A literal and classic example appears in the play (and later film) ''Billy Rose's Jumbo''. Jimmy Durante's character is attempting to "sneak" an elephant out of his failing circus as the creditors close in. He and the elephant are of course promptly confronted by the sheriff and the repo squad:
-->'''Sheriff:''' ''Hey!'' Where are you going with that elephant?\\
'''Durante:''' (Pauses with the elephant looming directly behind him, looks left, looks right) Elephant? ''What'' elephant?
* ThisTroper can't remember the name of the movie, but there's one where some hunting buddies find a crashed plane full of money. [[spoiler: By the end of the movie, two out of the three are dead and the remaining one had to burn the money so he wouldn't be found. The ending narration mentions that he and his wife never mentioned the money again and tried to live a normal life, but the fear and greed and loss prevented them from ever being happy again.]]
** That would be A Simple Plan, starring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton.
* IceAge 2 features a literal example. Elly is supposedly a possum. Who's 10 feet tall and weighs 9 tons. And has huge tusks. And is otherwise shaped like a mammoth. Her "brothers" don't seem to find this odd, except for her lacking the ability to sneak around. Elly herself is in complete denial about possibly being a mammoth, and still tries to hide, even though no tree can hold her and no bush can cover her.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In the ''{{Discworld}}'' novels, one of the Canting Crew is a beggar named Duck Man, for the very simple reason that he has a duck on his head. Most people don't mention the duck out of politeness, and those who ''do'' bring it up will be met with the response "What duck?" It's mentioned that he used to quite normal "before everyone else started seeing ducks".
** Another member of the Canting Crew is Altogether Andrews, who has several split personalities, none of which is named Andrews. This is never brought up.
** To a lesser extent, Shawn Ogg's parentage is this. His father is publicly accepted to be Sobriety Ogg. The only problem with this idea is that Sobriety Ogg died some ten years before Shawn was born. Most people avoid the issue(probably out of fear of [[BewareTheNiceOnes Nanny]]) and are quick to silence outsiders who try to mention it.
** Death himself is visible to all inhabitants of the Discworld, but he is so frightening in his appearance that most people desperately attempt to not notice anything strange about him to preserve their sanity, even when having a conversation with him.
* KimNewman's novel ''TheQuorum'' follows on from his short story "Organ Donors", and references it a few times, including the characters of private investigator Sally Rhodes (and her child, conceived in "Organ Donors") and Derek Leech, satanic media magnate who uses black magic to advance his cause. Sally discovers Leech's nature in "Organ Donors" but has forgotten by ''TheQuorum'': Newman admitted there's no reason for this beyond it breaking the story.
* The DouglasAdams novel ''DirkGently's Holistic Detective Agency'' features a man at a university with a very long nose. He never speaks, and is never spoken to because people are too startled by the sight of his nose, and don't want to bring it up. He also constantly taps his fingers and makes other odd gestures, and nobody asks why due to their reluctance to speak to him. Finally one character ends up addressing him after accidentally knocking on his door. The man stops twitching and calmly announces that nobody has spoken to him in almost two decades (quoting the exact time to the second). Apparently all the gestures were him counting the seconds.
* A more serious example can be found in ''Literature/InvisibleMan'', in which characters do their very best not to bring up the subject of race relations.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* In ''DeadLikeMe'' there are {{grim reaper}}s, in public. The living interact with them like normal people, but when on the job they aren't noticed as extraordinary even when arguing with [[InvisibleToNormals ghosts]].
** Popular theory among viewers is that when Reapers are...er...reaping, they turn invisible to normal people. Which then raises the question of what people think when the Reaper suddenly ''disappears''.
** Possible homage to Piers Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series, where Zane/Death is described as "socially invisible"?
** I think that, at some point during the first season, it's mentioned that people just sort of ignore Reapers while they're on the job. They don't disappear so much as [[WeirdnessCensor stop being interesting]].
* Not subverted, but occasionally addressed in ''BattlestarGalactica''. While the remains of humanity are on the run after the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt destruction of their homes]], and shower vitriol on the [[AIIsACrapshoot Cylons]] for it, no one talks about the reasons for the Cylon's hate of humanity. Only commander Adama points out that "We deserved what we got for enslaving our creations; we were terrible parents, do we deserve to survive?" ''(Paraphrased)'' The question is occasionally brought up to reinforce that humanity is not blameless in the show's BackStory, and needs to atone.
** Adama actually directly asks [[spoiler:Athena]] why the Cylons hate humanity so much in one episode. She replies that during Galactica's decommissioning speech during the pilot episode, Adama asked whether humanity deserved to survive. Then she adds "Maybe you don't."
* In a SciFi ''{{Stargate SG-1}}'' special, a letter had one viewer asking why all the [[AliensSpeakingEnglish aliens speak English]]. The reader, David Hewlett, simply laughed and playfully stated that he couldn't believe the audience caught onto that.
* Averted in ''TopGear'': When Richard Hammond returned from an accident that left him with a serious brain injury, the three presenters took an episode to deal with it by thanking the emergency responders on the scene, showing the crash footage, and cracking jokes about Hammond's driving skills, together with an ounce or two of heartwarming. It was a masterful way to take most of the awkwardness out of a potentially painful situation.
* In the ''DoctorWho'' episode ''The Unicorn and the Wasp'':
-->'''Doctor''': She’d just discovered her husband was having an affair.\\
'''Donna''': You'd never think to look at her. Smiling away.\\
'''Doctor''': Well, she’s British and moneyed. That’s what they do. They '''carry on'''.
* [[BuffyTheVampireSlayer Sunnydale's]] vampire problem could be thought of this way, as several episodes make it obvious that the {{Muggles}} know what's going on (especially after season three), they just try to ignore it and get on with their lives.
* Nobody in [[DegrassiTheNextGeneration Degrassi]] talks about the unusually high rate of horrible things that happen to its students. Despite the school shooting, stabbing, rape, attempted rape, STD outbreak, and umpteen teen pregnancies, which in the real world would make Degrassi the most infamous school in all of Canada (''[[CanadaEh oooh!]]''), everyone still thinks that it's a fabulous school and nobody moves away to find a safer one.
* In an early ''{{Dexter}}'' episode, after an..awkward moment with his girlfriend (who had been abused by her husband, who was now in jail), he says, "There's an elephant in the room and its name is sex."
* ''PushingDaisies'' just seems to gloss over the problem of Ned and Chuck not being able to touch each other. Although it is mentioned a few times, it doesn't really seem to matter or affect their relationship and is never really addressed. See RuleOfRomantic.
** Apparently, Ned has built "devices" to enable them to have some degree of a sex life. It probably also helps that neither of them seem to have any past relationships for comparison.
* In ''{{Lost}}'''s fifth season, John Locke mentions this trope by name while talking to [[MagnificentBastard Ben Linus]]. So, what's the elephant? John's DEATH. [[spoiler:At Ben's hands.]]
** [[spoiler:Then again, the real John Locke is dead... or there are two John Lockes... or he's going to send his corpse back in time at some point in the future... or J. J. Abrams loves MindScrew.]]
** No no, the second John Locke is simply [[spoiler:the other immortal shown earlier in the episode. He mentions wanting to find a loophole so that he can kill Jacob. When the apparently arisen John Locke convinces Ben Linus to kill Jacob he says "I guess you found your loophole." The real John Locke is dead and the whole thing is a huge XanatosGambit by the second immortal.]]
* Played for horror in the ''TwilightZone'' episode "It's a Good Life", where the residents of Peaksville, Ohio have to pretend that everything is fine and perfectly normal, to avoid angering the [[AGodAmI all-powerful]] mind-reading child who controls their lives. To openly admit the horror of their situation leads to madness and/or a horrible death.
** That one is parodied in a halloween special of TheSimpsons, though it's a dream of Bart. Bart has that power and it goes pretty much like the original, only naturally less horrible. Then Bart gets therapy to get over whatever they called what he was doing (the forcing people to be happy, not the being all-mighty), which he does and develops a sane relationship with Homer. In the end they hug in sign of friendship, and then Bart wakes up, screaming in terror.
* A common AlternateCharacterInterpretation in ''{{Merlin}}'' is that Arthur is aware of Merlin's magic, and simply choosing to ignore it. This is sometimes extended to Gwen and Morgana, or even to pretty much the entire castle except, obviously, King Uther.
** Or even to Uther. It's backed up by ''A Remedy to Cure All Ills'', in which Merln uses magic to save Uther while he is unconcious... but Edwin specifically said a few scenes earlier than Uther would be awkwae and aware while he was dying, suggesting that, maybe, Uther heard everything but is letting Merlin live as a reward for saving him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
*Parodied by ''PearlsBeforeSwine'' in one [[http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2009-01-13/ strip]]:
--> '''Rat:''' You know, every time someone discusses these issues, they always like to conveniently avoid the elephant in the room.
-->'''Goat:''' You mean Social Security?
--> '''Rat:''' I mean the elephant in the room.
-->'''Tiny (the elephant):''' I like to discuss issues, too.
*In ''AlleyOop,'' the character Oscar Boom went straight so many decades ago that many current readers weren't aware that he started out as a crook, and that he had never gone to trial or served jail time for his crimes. Recent storylines have finally addressed this.
* ''F Minus'' illustrated a [[http://comics.com/f_minus/2009-02-15/ literal example]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* In ''[[AbeKroenen Abe&Kroenen]]'', almost nobody mentions the fact that Kroenen was and is a Nazi assassin. For some reason his presumed Nazi beliefs never actually make an appearance, probably because that would be a good way to lose a lot of viewers.
** His Nazi affiliations are addressed in small ways, like claiming that V is so cool it almost makes him want him give up Nazism, or giving Abe a speech about staying strong, or else the sub-humans will over-run the earth, and no glory will be brought to the Fatherla--and then he wisely shuts up.
* This ''{{Sinfest}}'' comic is not exactly an example of the trope, but still terribly [[http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2723 appropriate]].
* Another direct reference to the phrase is found [[http://cectic.com/066.html here]].
* [[http://jonnycrossbones.com/ Jonny Crossbones]] is either an undead creature or wears a skeleton suit all the time. No one has noticed so far.
* [[http://www.pennyandaggie.com/index.php?p=203 This strip]] of ''PennyAndAggie''
* In ''SluggyFreelance'' no one ever seems surprised when Bun-Bun (a rabbit) and Kiki (a ferret) start speaking English, despite several instances suggesting that [[TalkingAnimal Talking Animals]] are ''not'' considered normal in the [[TheVerse Sluggyverse]]. How this works is never addressed.
** Actually, recently I've been rereading early strips, and there are a lot of times when people ''do'' act surprised. Presumably, after the 10th time someone got horribly mangled and nearly killed by a rabbit with a switchblade, word got around.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* The basis of a long-running introduction to an episode of ''TheFarSide'' animated series. [[CowTools Probably]].
* It was a RunningGag in ''TheOblongs'' that everyone avoided directly referencing the fact that Bob doesn't have arms or legs.
** Although, in the episode "Bucketheads", Tommy Vinegar does call him a Weeble.
** And in another episode (the one where Helga gets her parents back, I think) Bob goes to play the piano, which leaves Milo embarrassed and the people shocked. [[GagPenis I wonder what they could be alluding to...]]
[[/folder]]

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