Arbitrary Skepticism / Fan Works

Arbitrary Skepticism in Fan Works.

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Crossovers

• Abyssal Plain: Victoria is naturally unbelieving of them being in Hell, especially since she's been to their parahuman equivalent of the Afterlife.
• All For Luz: Luz is willing to accept The Multiverse as a thing but initially doesn't believe in parallel worlds in her own dimension until All For One dryly points out this flawed logic.
• In Avenger of Steel, Matt Murdock refuses to believe in Stick's story of how dragons once walked the earth thousands of years before. Stick points out Matt is standing next to an alien, a private eye with super strength and a trained assassin who works with the Norse God of Thunder, a scientist who turns into a giant green monster, a World War II supersoldier who had been frozen in ice and a billionaire who designs super suits of armor "but dragons is where you draw the line?"
• Boldores And Boomsticks: Downplayed and Justified with Gary Oak's dismissal of Professor Cypress' warnings about the Grimm, despite his own past experiences with bizarre and inexplicable events. The professor is a well-known doomsaying crackpot who has occasionally turned out to be right in the same manner as a Stopped Clock. Gary provides a reasoned and more plausible-sounding hypothesis that the Beowolf Cypress encountered was actually a Zoroark due to the Pokémon in question being rare, really good with illusions, and having a similar body shape. He also takes things more seriously when his Arcanine reports unsettling and unfamiliar scents at the site where Cypress encountered the Grimm, and immediately stops doubting when he sees them for himself.
  Gary: Hey, Cypress?[...] I'm ready to stop being a skeptic now.
• The Bridge (MLP):
  • Aria Blaze comes from a magical land of talking ponies and used to be a creature who would lure sailors to their doom with her singing, yet she finds the idea of aliens hard to believe.
  • On Terra, the events of the Jurassic Park films happened. Despite this being a world of Kaiju, when some people learn about this, they laugh and say dinosaurs being brought back sounds like science fiction.
• The Artemis Fowl characters, particularly the fairies, are not quick to believe that Armani Dove is a Demigod child of a Greek goddess in Broken Bow. He is quick to lampshade the fact that fairies are the ones disbelieving him.
• Can a monster act like a hero?: For some reason, Shirou is adamant that ghosts do not exist. Lala and Haruna point out that they know aliens, magic, and Servants, which are basically superpowered ghosts, are real, and Shirou himself is a Servant, but he says that is completely different. Even when the goddess of the dead Ereshkigal shows up and summons the Cute Ghost Girl Oshizu, Shirou still refuses to believe in ghosts, saying what Ereshkigal did is completely different.
• Chaldea Evil Incorporated!: Olga Marie Animusphere is a Magi and the leader of Chaldea, an organization dedicated to protecting human history through time travel and summoning Heroic Spirits. At Daybit's suggestion, she hires Mad Scientist Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz to be one of Chaldea's replacement engineers and has reluctantly allowed secret agent Perry the Platypus to stay undercover as her pet and keep an eye on him. Yet despite all this, she dismisses the idea of two pre-teen boys from Heinz's hometown of Danville inventing all sorts of crazy contraptions as mere rumors, at least until she gets in contact with them during the Incineration of Humanity. In Olga Marie's defense, she at least has evidence of Doofenshmirtz's inators while Phineas and Ferb's inventions vanish at the end of each day without any lasting impact.
• The Chaotic Masters:
  • Despite being a sorceress superhero, Raven at first refuses to believe Jade's stories of her family's adventures fighting criminals, demons and wizards. The Collector and Monkey King both later independently deduce that she just doesn't want to admit that all this was happening in her own backyard without her knowing about it.
  • Perfuma comes from a kingdom with a society built on magic, but still struggles with the idea of a school for villains like HIVE.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Hermione does not believe that Harry Dresden is an actual wizard even though she lives in a world where not only magic exists, but also aliens, gods (or god-like beings) and the Sorcerer Supreme, because Dresden is in the phone book as "Wizard" (which, in fairness, is against the laws of the magic community she lives in, though not Dresden's).
  • Ron has a very hard time accepting that mutants are real (or at least not some sort of wandless wizards) despite the aforementioned aliens, gods, and super science.
• In Cruel to Be Kind, Alexander has to deal with this whenever he claims to anyone of his legitimacy as a interdimensional traveler. He gets around it by teleporting them to Terra Prime, the homeworld of his inter-dimensional empire.
• Dead or Alive 4: The Devil Factor has two examples:
  • Despite fighting all manner of demons, devils, and monsters on a regular basis, Dante finds it hard to believe that Kasumi and her family are real ninjas.
  • Likewise, even after the Mugen Tenshin village is attacked by demons, Ayane is quick to dismiss the legend of Sparda as being just that.
• A Divine (Romantic) Comedy: Despite being a magic-eating shapeshifter from another dimension, Vee doesn't believe in aliens. When Luz calls her out on this, Vee comments that magic has proof of its existence, but aliens don't.
• Equestria Girls: A Fairly Odd Friendship averts this during the Internal Reveals. The Rainbooms expect Timmy to not believe them when they tell him about Equestria and all the related magic, but given all the other weird stuff he's been through, he takes it all in with ease.
• The Equestrian Wind Mage: Vaati calls out Twilight for not believing in curses, despite all the other magic present in Equestria. When Celestia later confirms that curses are real, Vaati doesn't hesitate to rub her face in it.
• Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness: When Megas ends up in Gensokyo and several of its crew aren't sure that magic's really a thing, it's Jamie of all people who believes Alice. According to him they'd gone up against the Glorft and opponents ranging from a planet killer to a planet eater, so why should they be surprised that magic's prevalent?
• Fate Kaleid Prisma Taylor: Victoria Dallon/Glory Girl dismissively says telepathy isn't real. Lisa comments that meeting Magical Girl Taylor should have made people more open minded.
• Fates Collide:
  • Francis Drake tells a tale of Apocrypha's first hero, Heracles, who liberated Apocrypha from the Grimm single-handedly (defeating twelve unique Grimm in the process), and inspired others to become heroes as well before disappearing. When Emerald Sustrai finds the idea of one man doing all that hard to believe, Drake calls her out on not believing after all the amazing things she had seen already.
  • Vlad III explains that his Noble Phantasm, Kazikli Bey, gives him power over the concept of impalement itself. Pyrrha Nikos is shocked and says that is impossible. He tells her that she should learn not to limit her thinking, especially with all the unusual things in the world already.
  • Archer and Cinder Fall run into BB, who is an Identical Stranger to Archer's deceased friend Sakura Matou. He thinks she may actually be Sakura, even though he watched her die and get torn to pieces. When Cinder does some research and concludes it is more plausible that BB is an android, Archer says Cinder has some nerve thinking his idea is stupid, because her idea is the stupid one.
• In Fate/Stay Night: Ultimate Master, Rin Tohsaka, a mage in a war between seven historical heroes, believes Ben Tennyson's transformations are magical in nature. She finds the concept of aliens from distant planets to be utterly ridiculous.
• Gospel of the Lost Gods: This being Westeros, there are inhabitants who don't believe the Wards are gods, but rather just people who can perform magic. None of the Wards believe in magic and chalk up what magic they do see as simply the appearance of superpowers.
• Harry Potter and the Boiling Isles: This occurs multiple times, on both sides of things.
  • Many of the Boiling Isles witches are skeptical at the idea of humans that are capable of using magic.
  • Despite being a wizard who is currently driving a flying car, Ron initially refuses to believe Luz about the Demon Realm before Eda gives a demonstration of her magic. When Luz lampshades the fact that he's in a flying car in response to his skepticism, and he doesn't get the connection between that and what they're claiming, Luz mentally notes that their magic gives human wizards a rather odd view of what is and isn't believable.
  • On the flip side a few minutes later, when Luz suggests that a "magical letter-goblin" is stealing Ron's letters to Harry, Eda and King are both rather skeptical about the idea despite (as the narration reminds us) being a cursed witch and tiny demon, respectively, who are both from a dimension of magic and horrors. Hilariously, in a way, she's exactly right.
  • In Harry's first meeting with Luz, he is quick to defy her skepticism about being a wizard simply by bringing his chocolate frog to life, burying all of Luz's doubts.
• In Hope Comes to Brockton Bay, Robin Maestra, a Time Master who can use her power to simulate Super-Speed and flight, thinks Legend's ability to make lasers turn corners is bullshit.
• It shows up in the Thor/Being Human (UK) crossover, Housemates. Nina, when informed that the lovely young woman she's befriended is a ghost, and one of her roommates is a vampire, her kneejerk reaction is to insist that there are no such things. Then she remembers that she's in a room with superheroes, two of them aliens. And one of those aliens is a sorcerer.
• In How the Light Gets In, Laurel is brought Back from the Dead. Felicity freaks right the hell out insisting things like this don't happen...despite several people in the room (Dean, Oliver, and Sara) all having also been resurrected at some point. Sara and Dean even comment on it.
  • A few seconds later Oliver and Diggle wonder how could she have possibly dug herself out of her own grave, only for Dean to point out not only is that if anything is the least bizarre thing to be happening, but logic has no real place here.
    Dean: You might not want to pull on that thread, John. None of this makes sense. She was also fucking embalmed. In case any of you have forgotten. But here she is. She's breathing. She bled. She crawled out of her grave. That's what happened. This is the supernatural. It's not about logic. Not the logic you've been taught anyway. It's about magic.
• If Wishes Were Ponies: Inverted; the ponies of Equestria (to whom magic is as common as nature) are shocked when they learn that magic isn't widely practiced on Earth, and that the few who can do it actively hide its existence from the world.
• I'm Nobody: Della Duck calls out the Citadel Council on dismissing the existence of the Reapers as a ploy that Shepard fell for when they openly admit that the Heartless are real during her "The Reason You Suck" Speech. In an earlier conversation when Shepard calls them out on the same thing, the Council admitted tha they would have dismissed the Heartless as tampered footage of not for all the eye-witnesses that saw the attack.
• My Ideal Academia: Angra Mainyu explains his origin story to All For One, but All For One thinks he is delusional. Angra asks why it is so hard to believe considering all the crazy, physics-defying Quirks in the world.
• Justice League of Equestria: When Shining Armor tells Cadance that he's been recruited by the Green Lanterns, she doesn't believe him, laughing it off as a joke. This despite the fact that she's had lunch with an alien superhero and is best friends with a demigoddess — something she herself pointed out when reassuring Shining that she'd believe whatever he told her, oddly enough. It takes actually seeing Shining transform for her to believe him.
• The J-WITCH Series:
  • When Irma is skeptical about Martin seeing a ghost, Taranee points out that, while she doesn't believe him either, they've seen a lot of other magical stuff since meeting Jackie. Irma admits the point.
  • Uncle being skeptical of psychics is lampshaded as this, given all the other supernatural stuff he interacts with on a daily basis.
  • In "A Jolly J-WITCH Xmas", Hay Lin calls out the others for not believing in Santa despite all the other magic in their lives.
• Kur and the Crown: In this Danny Phantom/The Secret Saturdays crossover, Doc Saturday doesn't believe ghosts are real. Past experiences like alternate dimensions, underwater civilizations and sentinent lakes are brought up as reasons Doc shouldn't be so unwilling to accept the possibility of ghosts being real.
• Averted in Land of the Dead. Lizzie Liddell, when being told that Downstairs has potions can help halt decay and keep maggots out, says that magic not real. But stops herself when she remembers that she and three-forths of her family are dead and in their burned-down house wanting for the afterlife. So why not magic?
• The Last Seidr: SHIELD has been dealing with superheroes, Asgardians, aliens, advanced technology, super spies, conspiracies, mutants, and enhanced humans for an untold amount of time. Yet Harry's magic and Fawkes' abilities still manage to surprise/stump them.
• Averted in the Fairy Tail/The Chronicles of Narnia crossover The Lion, The Witch, and The Fairy's Tail. In contrast to the book where the other Pensive siblings don't believe their sister Lucy about a portal in the wardrobe, the other Fairy Tail wizards believe Lucy Heartfilia when she says that an Anima exists in her new wardrobe and took her to Narnia. This is because the guild has experience with other worlds like Edolas, and they are more concerned about the consequences of getting involved with Narnia and if the Anima can be used by those on the other side.
• In Lost in Camelot, despite living in a kingdom that has dealt with magic for decades, Morgana initially doesn't believe Bo when Bo reveals that she's a succubus simply because they are described as having blue eyes while Bo's eyes are brown, until Bo shows Morgana her Occult Blue Eyes.
• Lost to Dust:
  • Yang Xiao Long dismisses the Maidens of the Seasons as just a story. Kairi Sisigou calls her out on this since they live in a crazy world and have seen a lot of crazy things already. She concedes his point.
  • Qrow Branwen is skeptical that Miyu Edelfelt could use Glyphs through training instead of being related to the Schnee family, then says it is impossible when Scathach says she is immortal. Scathach says he should learn not to limit his thinking.
• Mass Effect: Human Revolution has a fair bit of this:
  • Chapter 15: Garrus dismisses the idea of a shapeshifting killer, to which Adam says that he lives on a space station.
  • Chapter 26: "You're an artificial human that can regenerate from fatal wounds in seconds denying the possibility that a young Asari can breakdown alcohol quickly."
  • Chapter 38: Adam is confused by the sight of a sapient anthropomorphic rabbit-cat. Hannibal reminds him that they "live in a galaxy dominated by blue women that can mate with their brains" and just killed a flying shark.
  • Shortly afterwards in that same chapter, Hannibal expresses doubt about the idea of "a Krogan scientist worthy of the term", upon which Adam tosses the other's earlier words right back at him.
  • In chapter 39, Aya and Garrus can't believe the talk of psychic powers.
  • It's a sign of Garrus' Character Development in chapter 41 when his response to having killed a flying shark in a supersonic High-Altitude Battle is not "are you kidding?" but "this is so cool!"
  • Aya on the other hand still can't take talk of possession or ghosts seriously.
  • In chapter 43, Spooky doesn't believe Adam's exposition on the past of the Prometheans and Reapers. Lunchbox calls him out on it.
    Lunchbox frowned at him. "Oh, come on! You believe in countless conspiracy theories! You believe in ancient societies faking the first moon landing but ancient space ninjas fighting ghosts from hyperspace is too much?!"
• In The Maximoffs (And Friends and Family) vs The Multiverse! (And Sometimes With) most characters have trouble believing the main characters about the multiverse despite both universes being full of superheroes, time travel, and gods. To be fair, most of the skeptics come from the X-Men Film Series where most of the oddities are explained away by science and genetics (though Dark Phoenix still occurs, though no mention is made of aliens). As the MCU characters aren't particularly focused on in the first half, they're reactions are left offscreen, but it is implied that Team Cap at least accepts this. Meanwhile Vision does have amnesia for his confusion, whereas the S.W.O.R.D. team has a mixed reaction. To be fair, Wanda and Peter are.... alarmingly casual about explaining the very strange situation. Though subverted in that every X-Men character who was familiar with Wendy before her death easily believes it.
• Invoked in Mercy; even after spending years with Diana as a friend, Lois Lane is still surprised when Superman reveals that Diana's gods genuinely exist, to the extent that Persephone just visited the Watchtower to try and wake Diana up.
• Subverted in the Lilo & Stitch and Monsters, Inc. crossover Monsters Versus Aliens: Lilo and Boo need to get to the Monster World to rescue Stitch. To do so, they need to convince Russell to let them use his room (thinking a monster will try to use his closet). They tell him what they're doing, not expecting him to believe them. To their shock, he does, admitting that he had something equally strange happen to him when he was a kid and leaves them to their mission.
• In A New World, A New Way, Twilight Sparkle has a hard time accepting that Aegislash is a spirit of a dead warrior possessing a sword with a shield. For added skepticism, this is after she met Arceus, the god of Pokèmon (and is willing to accept the fact that Arceus is a god).
• Not the intended use (Zantetsuken Reverse):
  • Despite his family having dealings with the Mafia, and being surrounded by the supernatural and the giant robots, Soma still can't believe Mina when she tells him her roommate is in a crime syndicate. She immediately lampshades this.
  • Later on, Soma delivers this line. He's wrong.
    Soma: Just because I can do something like [steal Bigfoot's soul], it doesn't mean that other weird stuff automatically exists.
• In Origin Story, no-one at first believes that a character from a popular TV show is trapped in a superpowered woman's body and that their world is based on a comic book franchise. But eventually, some people — like The Avengers — came to (at some level) accept Alex's story. As Black Widow points out, they (the Avengers) have "encountered stranger things that were at least as improbable."
• Lampshaded in Our Teacher is a Devil. Most people insist the stories of a man who can give and take Quirks are just ghost stories and myths, but Himiko notes that she once blackmailed a man who could turn into a horde of rainbow-colored spiders and nothing could be weirder than that. As such, she fully believes that All For One is real.
• Cyborg in the Danny Phantom/Teen Titans story A Phantom Of A Titan insists ghosts don't exist, despite being half-robot and having one teammate that's an alien princess and another that's a half-demon sorceress. Danny, the one telling him about ghosts, is also half-ghost but he hasn't told the team that yet.
• Point Me at the Skyrim: Lampshaded by Victoria Dallon, a superhero from Ward who never believed in fairy tales, but after getting trapped in the parallel world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ends up wondering where she should draw the line.
  Now here I was, in a world of imaginary creatures given life, and I felt like I was experiencing some twisted cosmic joke.
  Where do I draw the line?
  Did the existence of Dragons mean the same should be said for krakens and minotaurs? Did Leprechauns live under this Earth's rainbows and Tooth Fairies exchange currency for baby teeth? Does magic mean curses and good luck charms were common place? What about if little nonsense rhymes like stepping on a crack really could break a mom's back?
• Realm of Entwined Science and Sorcery — Academy City:
  • Despite being a time traveler who has worked with several Servants, Ritsuka Fujimaru finds the idea of alternate worlds hard to believe at first. Da Vinci calls him out on this.
  • Despite working with the Servant Sakata Kintoki to fight the monsters invading Academy City, Mikoto Misaka does not believe in magic and is skeptical of Ritsuka and Mash's explanations.
• This permits Reflections Lost on a Dark Road (a crossover of two crossovers — The Road to Cydonia and Dark Titans) to get started as a case of Let's You and Him Fight. In TRTC, the Ranma ½ crew is abducted by aliens, then escape into the (not-so) gentle clutches of X-COM: UFO Defense, joining them in a Grimdark war against aliens and suffering severe cases of PTSD in the process. In DT, the Ranma crew befriend the Teen Titans and become part of The DCU. Several years later, Ryoga and several of the Titans are transported to the TRTC universe. Bad enough they're spandex-clad metahumans, or that the aliens' latest gimmick seems to be creating fake "metahumans" whom X-Com has responded to with a Mutant Draft Board, but as TRTC already has a Ryōga (with severe combat fatigue), he's more than ready to kill his alternate on sight rather than inquire as to the strangeness. Sociopathic Soldiers armed with Supernatural Martial Arts versus Thou Shalt Not Kill superheroes is a Foregone Conclusion — the only surprise is that X-Com didn't kill any of the Titans.
• In See the Stars, repli-Ada lives in a galaxy where killer robots, ascended beings and genetic semi-magical powers are a day-to-day occurrence, but she refuses to believe that ghosts exist. As it turns out, she was right. It was a glitch in the algorithm.
• Servants of Remnant:
  • The Servants who allied with Salem told her all about Ritsuka Fujimaru and her adventures. Salem, despite being an immortal magic user cursed by the gods and seeing the Servants' abilities, finds the stories hard to believe.
  • In the story "The Remnant of VIV", when Ritsuka tells them they are in the show RWBY, James Moriarty finds the idea of a fictional universe being real hard to believe, even though he's also from a story that is believed fictional. Sherlock Holmes chides him and points out they know there is a such thing as parallel universes.
• Shadows over Meridian: Caleb refuses to believe, despite all the evidence, that the Land of Eternal Shadows (the Shadow Realm) and the Shadow People (the Shadowkhan) could be anything other than a myth, or that Jade is their ruler instead of Phobos' creation.
• Shinji And Warhammer 40 K: Used then averted. Despite working for an organization that uses colossal biological warmachines made of reverse-engineered alien body parts to fight against the equally colossal aliens that border on Eldritch Abomination from which they are derived, numerous characters are initially immediately dismissive of things such as Psychic Powers or the existence of Machine Spirits. Then follows about a year of physics regularly being torn a new one to cause destruction on a scale the world hasn't seen since Second Impact, then all but the most mind-boggling things become almost mundane.
• Showa & Vampire: During the Sports Fest, Shinichi asks if they might run into a real minotaur. While going out with a vampire, a witch, a yuki onna, and a succubus, being a cyborg, etc.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Lost in Gotham: Averted. When Spider-Man admits to Oracle that he's from another dimension, she doesn't sound surprised and simply remarks "That makes sense." When Spidey asks why she believes him so easily, she tells him about some of the crazier things that Batman's done/been through over the course of his career. At this point, people dropping in from other dimensions is almost normal.
• Spy X Son: Despite remembering Perfect Cell's threat against the world from his childhood and learning more about that event when he joined WISE, Loid Forger treats the story of a giant monkey attacking a past World Martial Arts Tournament as a made-up story from his youth.
• Stardust:
  • Dr. Ngo refuses to believe Twilight Sparkle's stories of Princesses Celestia and Luna manipulating the sun and moon of her planet, despite the fact she's talking to a pastel purple unicorn the size of a large dog who can speak, teleport, change physical matter on a molecular level, and has enough telekinetic power she can crush a human into pulped gore with an idle thought.
  • Averted by Dr. Mills, who notes that his initial gut reaction is to dismiss such a story, but then reminds himself he's talking to a purple unicorn on the topic of magic, and so she might just be telling the truth.
  • In chapter 26 Dr. Shen says that the engineers, who had seen so much previously thought impossible, flipped out when the topic of invisibility devices was broached.
• In Superwomen of Eva: Emerald Fury, several people dismiss the existence of She-Hulk, despite the regular attacks by the Angels.
• Tales of the Otherverse: Sherri is willing to believe in alien humanoids, but she draws the line at alien dogs.
  Mon-El: "Dog? White? Named Krypto?"
  Sherri: "Yes. Supposedly he came from the same planet Superboy came from, though I find that hard to believe. It's hard enough to imagine that evolution followed similar paths with humanoids on other planets."
  Mon-El: "Depends. If you give credence to the theory that many worlds were seeded with similar life forms, then it stands to reason that those life forms might evolve along similar paths."
• Thousand Shinji: Kaworu isn't human but an Eldritch Abomination. Still, when Shinji states that he owes his Psychic Powers to daemon training, Kaworu replies that's ridiculous because there's no such thing as daemons.
• Turnabout Storm:
  • Happens to Phoenix Wright after he gets told the reason why lightning only makes the sound when it hits the ground in Equestria. He himself is the one that notes how he just pulled this off.
    Phoenix: I'm no meteorologist, but I'm pretty sure lightning doesn't work like that. Then again, I keep forgetting I'm in a land full of magical talking ponies who can manually change weather..
  • Phoenix refuses to believe in Pinkie Pie's Pinkie Sense.
• In the Miraculous Ladybug/Zootopia crossover Ultrasonic, this is subverted when Marinette is questioned about the akuma attack in Tundra Town and what she was doing there. Chief Bogo takes her explanation in stride, stating that he's willing to suspend disbelief a bit after what's happened that night. However, it's then played straight by Mayor Swinton, who dismisses Marinette as a delusional schoolgirl even after her warning of an army of Ultrasonic clones comes true, and refuses to let Bogo release her.
• In one chapter of Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse, our heroes the Kamikaze Pirates encounter a doctor in the White-White Sea who insists that Devil Fruits are a "Blue Seas fairytale". Said doctor lives on an island that's part of an entire ocean that floats ten thousand feet in the air, and said island is currently being visited by a Zombie Apocalypse. The Kamikazes, who have encountered a handful of Devil Fruit users and whose numbers include several Devil Fruit users (not to mention a skunk-woman and a giant shark-girl who have nothing to do with Devil Fruits), simply stare at him, and then decide as one it's not worth arguing with him.
• Worm Grand Order: Despite living in a world that is regularly threatened by the Endbringers and where many people have superpowers, pretty much no one in Earth Bet believes in magic, not even Hero, who was brought back from the dead as a Servant. Everyone insists that Taylor Hebert and her Servants' abilities are not magical and are simply science they haven't discovered yet.
• In "Who Ya Gonna Call?", a Doctor Who/Real Ghostbusters story, the Doctor and Peri land in Salem, Massachusetts where the people are frightened over weird things happening. The Doctor chalks it up to alien interference as he steadfastly refuses to believe in ghosts. When the Ghostbusters arrive, the Doctor even casts doubts about their profession and expertise. Not even his encounter with Slimer sways him. (And this is a guy who travels through time and space in a police call box that's bigger inside than out.)

General Examples

All of Us Are Dead

• This Is A Wild Game Of Survival: Due to her group not crossing paths with Gwi-nam, Ji-min has a hard time believing it when Na-yeon and Gyeong-su tell her that human-zombie hybrids are a thing that they have to take seriously as a threat, despite zombies being very real.

Animorphs

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: Unlike her husband, Jean is accepting of the fact that a telepathic silverback gorilla threatened to murder her son in "What if they saved Jake's family?", but she doesn't believe Marco when he casually reveals that his mother is still alive.
• In Lost World, Tom has spent the past few years surrounded by aliens, but refuses to believe that Jake has time-travelled multiple times.

Arrowverse

• Prophecy of the End:
  • In this story, set immediately after the Arrow Season 4 premier, Doctor Fate teleports into the team's bunker and tells them he's "of magic". When Laurel expresses disbelief, he dryly points out they know about Metahumans and just saw that Damien Darhk has magic. The team quickly concede the point.
  • Shortly after that, Diggle is skeptical that he could have delivered a real prophecy only for Laurel to comment:
    "After seeing Damien Darhk suck the life out of that guy with his hands, there’s nothing I won’t believe."

Bleach

• Vow of the King: Averted. Ichigo is willing to beleve that anything is possible after he joins Soul Society, such as Yoruichi being both a cat and an attractive woman.
  Ichigo: But we’re in the afterlife because my android ghost samurai girlfriend broke the law when she stabbed me in the heart so I could use a sword that’s also a queen to hunt monsters that turn into butterflies when I kill them. Honestly, I’m just kinda assuming anything’s possible at this point.

Buffyverse

• In Blue Belle, Willow has no problem accepting that a girl she recently met is the daughter of a lesbian couple from twenty years in the future but faints upon learning that her parents have been lying about who her father is.

Danny Phantom

• Danny Phantom Vs The Paranormal:
  • The Kentucky Goblins: Maddie is called out how she doesn't believe in aliens despite that she fights ghosts, her son has a ghost powers and they adopted a little girl cloned from his DNA. It takes sampling the DNA of one of the Goblins to realize that, yes, aliens are are real.
  • The Wendigo: Although she's a ghost, Ember had openly believed the Wendigo was just a bedtime story adults told their children in Canada to keep them from misbehaving. She's caught off guard when two of them attack her and Danny.

Darkwing Duck

• In the Negaverse Chronicles, the members of the Friendly Four are informed that Negaduck is spending time with a witch. Bushroot (the guy who is part plant), Megavolt (the one who can shoot electricity from his fingertips), and Liquidator (the person made completely out of water) don't believe in magic. Only Quackerjack takes the threat of Morgana seriously from the start.

Death Note

• I Won't Say:
  Light: You're not going to see a single ghost, not even the tiniest little spirit of a brutally murdered fly, because there are no such things.
  L: Light-kun is right. Believing in ghosts is like claiming that you own a magical notebook or that you have a pet monster that only eats apples. Don't be ridiculous.
• Averted and lampshaded in Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami: Dark asks Blud if ghosts exist, and Blud says it is impossible. Dark asks if this would mean Blud, as a Shinigami, is impossible, too, and Blud says that shinigami are possible in the Death Note universe. It soon turns out that Blud's wrong about ghosts, though, as L comes back as one with the help of God's Ghost Note.

Fire Emblem

• A Tactician's Testimony: Despite knowledge of such things as magic and healing staves, in "Sword of Spirits," Katri is in complete disbelief that the Mani Katti is sentient and chooses its owner.

Godzilla

• In Abraxas (Hrodvitnon), Mark Russell initially doesn't believe that Vivienne Graham is both Back from the Dead and has been transformed into a part-Ghidorah Kaiju. Mariko, invoking the trope name, promptly reminds him of the super-abilities Ghidorah displayed (which Mark observed himself) before Ghidorah's downfall, which In-Universe border on Eldritch Abomination. To be fair on Mark, Dr. Brooks says that what's happened to Vivienne is unprecedented even for Monarch.

Harry Potter

• Lampshaded in Life in Reverse when the token Muggle is the only one to believe Harry's "crazy story" about being from the future, because they already have Time Travel, so they feel fine with accepting Teleportation:
  Harry: You believe me?
  Owen: I don't know why I'm expected to accept appearing and disappearing but turn my nose up at time travel.

Invader Zim

• Gaz's Horrible Halloween of Doom: Despite knowing that aliens and other weird things exist, Gaz doesn't consider the possibility that gods might also exist as well. Or that they might not appreciate rituals in their name being deliberately interrupted and desecrated.
• Knows if You've Been Naughty: Despite everything she's seen as a result of Dib's paranormal studies, Gaz refuses to believe in Santa Claus, and holds it against her father that despite his scientific mind, he not only still believes in the jolly old soul but also holds an obsessive grudge against him. She appears utterly shocked when she meets Santa at the end of the story and realizes he's real.
• The New Adventures of Invader Zim: Despite being a vampire (and thus himself a paranormal creature) Norlock doesn't initially believe Dib when he says he arrived at his castle in an alien's spaceship.
• Re: My Hostage, Not Yours: As Gaz points out in the second story, despite the fact that Professor Membrane regularly makes sci-fi concepts a reality, he still refuses to believe in aliens and the paranormal because he feels there's no proof for any of it.

Jackie Chan Adventures

• In The Stronger Evil (the sequel to The Ultimate Evil), Nataline Homato shared Uncle's belief that Oni weren't real until Tarakudo's entrance. Valerie Payne notes the irony of a demon hunter raised by a Japanese family with history of hunting down demons not believing in Japanese demons. Nat defends herself by saying that there haven't been reports of any Oni for a thousand years.
  • Despite being magically bound to Shendu through a binding that happened in a rewritten reality, Valerie herself refuses to take seriously Uncle's words of a comet shower signaling the awakening of the Demon Sorcerers' chi fragments. She later berates herself for this.

Kingdom Hearts

• In Runaway Wind, Ventus is strangely doubtful of Naminé's memory manipulation power. "I mean, you probably could read memories fine, but changing them? That’s a little far fetched." She quickly convinces him otherwise by momentarily editing herself into his memory of waking up in the Castle.

Miraculous Ladybug

• In Outfoxed, Alya doesn't believe Ladybug when she suggest that André the ice cream guy is another magic user rather than just a quirky vendor. This is despite the fact that she is the illusion-using hero Rena Rogue and that she just exposed Lila by dispelling her Charm Person powers.
• There's More Magic Out There: In one chapter, Marinette jokes to Tikki that she could consider the reforming Chloe a potential hero if werewolves, vampires, or witches exist. Ignoring that Marinette is a superhero partnered with a tiny god of creation, she is unaware that her class already has a werewolf (Chloe), a vampire (Juleka), and a witch (Alix).
• The Wolves in the Woods: Gabriel gets quite excited when somebody intercepts and crushes one of his akumatizing butterflies, as he sensed great anger within them and believes he can exploit that by targeting them. Yet when Nooroo warns him that he's dealing with a werewolf, Gabriel immediately scoffs and tells his kwami that "Werewolves don't exist."

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• In Diaries of a Madman, no one except Nav believes Twilight when she claims the library is being haunted by something, despite this being a world filled with magic and far stranger things.
• Pony POV Series:
  • Some Jerkass asylum orderlies refuse to believe Fluttershy can really talk to animals and think she's just making up what the animals are saying. This is in spite of the fact they believe in the powers she wielded as Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper.
  • Flutternice refuses to believe that a Reaper's weapon is sentient and communicates with its wielder, in spite of everything else she has experienced.
  • Some characters find the stories of Megan Williams and her friends hard to believe. Except for Applejack and Pinkie Pie, who have firsthand knowledge of the subject, many of the characters find the idea of alternate universes hard to believe.
• Pound and Pumpkin Cake's Adventures (and Misadventures) in Potty Training: Pound Cake initially didn't believe in ghosts when he first encountered the "Butt Ghost". This is despite being in a world full of unicorns, time travel, spirits of disharmony, etc.
• In Princess Trixie Sparkle after being victims of a "Freaky Friday" Flip, The Mane Six have trouble believing in such thing as a magical gem that can swap bodies. The same Mane Six, that live in magical world where their princesses move The Sun and The Moom, magic is common place, and they themselves have repeatedly used The Power of Friendship to defeat Physical Gods, shape shifters, and a reality warping chimera can't wrap their heads around a magical gem.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse:
  • As in Friendship is Magic, no pony believes curses are real, dismissing them as "superstition" (or earth pony superstition if they're real assholes). Meanwhile, Princess Luna acknowledges the existence of curses in public, showing her position.
  • In Nightmares Yet to Come, Trixie immediately dismisses the idea of some pony being a time-traveller (who, admittedly, claims seconds later they were making it up). By this point Trixie has done some weird stuff, including travelling to another universe by accident, but the idea of time travel is just too ridiculous.

The Mummy Trilogy

• In Fairy Tales and Hokum, Rick thinks upon hearing a disembodied voice: "Walking, talking mummies existed, as did green little murder pygmies, and Jonathan's common sense – though this last one was occasional. Ghosts did not. That he knew of."

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• A Crown of Stars: Asuka has come to terms with Daniel being a God-Emperor from another dimension... but seeing winged humanoids render her speechless.
• Doing It Right This Time: Lampshaded. Time Travel? Shinji finds it perfectly believable and thinks being skeptical about it is silly. After all that has happened to him, why not?
  He didn't see any point in wondering whether or not this was real; considering he'd been at least partly responsible for shattering the very fabric of reality and/or turning the entire human race -less himself, a two-hundred-foot naked copy of his sister(?) and Asuka- into LCL to experience some rather nebulous transhumanist paradise, skepticism about mere mental time travel seemed rather silly.
• Read The Fine Print: When she meets Shinji and Asuka, Rei feels disturbed because she cannot see his "light", whereas Asuka's is too bright to stare at. When the duo explains he sold his soul to her for chocolates as a joke, believing they were signing a bogus contract, Rei finds their story difficult to believe... even though she has just told them she can see souls.
• Rise of the Minisukas: Even though both Evangelions and Angels have visibly used them in several battles, Tokita doesn't believe in the existence of the soul-powered energy barrier AT-Field. His creation, the Jet Alone Kai, claims AT-Fields are lies created to suppress the working class...as Shinji is using his own Field to repel its blows.

Odd Squad

• OSMU: Fanfiction Friction: The Odd Squad Mobile Unit deals with all sorts of oddities on the daily as part of their job, but when they visit Todd's Home for Villains™ and see him talking to his (named) shoes, they draw the line and are quick to leave.

Persona Franchise

• Hours 'Verse: Goro is rather skeptical when Minato informs him about multiverse theory while explaining the events of Persona 2 in My Kingdom for My Heart.
  Minato: I'm engaged to Death Incarnate in a world where a single person can currently rewrite reality however he wants.
  Goro: ......touché.

Pokémon

• Professor Kukui in A Professor and a Student has no problem admitting he lives in a world with time-traveling onion fairies, storm-causing kaiju fish, and talking Meowth, but humans having special abilities like Aura, Telepathy, and Telekinesis is where he draws the line and is adamant that they do not exist.

Power Rangers

• In Renegades, Rocky is surprised to hear that Shane and Tori (Both of who are training to be ninjas) thought that Power Rangers weren't real, despite the fact they live two hours from Angel Grove and there was a massive alien invasion in Califonia less than five years prior. Shane replies that when he first saw the Power Rangers on TV, he was a kid and thought it was a weird tv show.

Ranma ½

• Both Soun and Akane in Heated Storm Yields a Wild Horse's Heart initially refuse to believe in the Kiss of Death despite Ranma and Genma both changing forms when exposed to water.

Shazam!

• In Here There Be Monsters, Phantom Eagle finds size-changing magic more difficult to believe that all other instances of magic that he has witnessed.
  Ibis: "Ibistick! Restore this man to his normal size!"
  Phantom Eagle: "I've seen a lot, but if I see that, I'll start believing in the Tooth Fairy."
  (Ibis magically shrinks Red Crusher)
  Mr. Scarlet: "Well?"
  Phantom Eagle: (shrugging) "Guess I'll have to start leaving stuff under the pillows again. When I start losing 'em, that is."

Sonic the Hedgehog

• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Combined with Cassandra Truth - even after Obsidian creates an illusionary landscape where he shows his family visions from his previous life as Mephiles and directly talks to them, Tails still doesn't believe Knuckles when he says that Obsidian perfectly understands everything they're saying.

Star Wars

• The Desert Storm: Despite being able to verify that Ben is a future version of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Council still dismisses his claim that the Sith are alive. Ben is initially frustrated but admits to himself that in a similar situation he'd be equally skeptical. This attitude is called out by Quinlan when he gets a number of Ben's memories, bluntly telling Mace Windu that the problem isn't so much the Sith but that the Jedi refuse to listen. Around that point, partly thanks to the evidence of the Kenobi Report, their attitude shifts from "we don't believe it" to "we need proof to convince everybody else."

Streets of Rage

• Streets of Rage Saga: Skate scoffs at the idea of ninja-themed magical powers during the Crossover adventure with Joe Musashi in the fourth book, The New Syndicate... despite the fact that Skate has fought robots and clones and has teamed up with a cyborg to fight The Syndicate.

Winx Club

• You Were My Best Friend: When Bloom and Aisha meet again at seventeen, Bloom dismisses the similarities between her Childhood Friend Layla and this mysterious princess called Aisha. It's true Aisha is not wearing a beautiful dress but, at this point in canon, Bloom has dealt with all sorts of unexpected, weird magical events — some of them even being about meeting a real person through dreams. Worse even, Layla introduced herself with her full name: Laylaisha.
  Layla was prim and proper. She would never have been allowed to wear those ratty pants.

Young Justice

• With This Ring:
  • Wonder Woman briefly doubts the existence of a Zombie Green Lantern. Paul responds that there have been far stranger lanterns, listing off that there have been lanterns who have been a Mathematical Equation, a Robot, a Squirrel, a Plant, and a Planet (and yes, all of those are real.)
  • When Kid Flash decides to go on his "Magic isn't real" rant just before the battle with Klarion, OL points out that not only is it real, but that several League members and Aqualad are all proficient in its use.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

• In The Dimensional Drifter, Yuya expresses disbelief at the existence of Duel Spirits even though he created a brand new summoning method literally out of thin air just a few days prior. He also doesn't believe that aliens exist, but different dimensions are immediately accepted.

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