The Marvel Cinematic Universe is full of strange and wonderful things. But even when people witness these things first hand, that doesn’t mean that they’ll believe in other strange things.
Film
- Doctor Strange (2016):
- The title character doesn't believe in "fairy tales, chakras, or energy, or the power of belief." The franchise already has superheroes, Norse gods, and aliens. One would think that, at this point, people would start just believing in anything.
- It hits a rather high extreme with Christine Palmer, who accuses Strange of joining a cult based on his strange attire and his difficulty explaining his whereabouts for the recent past. However she accuses him of all this mere minutes after talking to his Astral Projection, who was giving her directions on how to save his dying body. Justified in that she is not saying magic is not real, she just claims Stephen's new friends are a cult.
- In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Sonny Burch has a drug expert working for him who has created a drug cocktail that makes it easier to convince people to tell the truth. When they use it on Luis, he and his friends say that it sounds like Truth Serum, only for the expert to angrily say that there’s no such thing. At the end of the movie, when Luis and friends have knocked them out before handing them over to the cops, Sonny and his goons are injected with the cocktail, and start blurting out all of their crimes to the cops, causing the drug expert to realize that it really was Truth Serum.
- Defied pretty strongly in Avengers: Endgame. Scott Lang has just spent a minute rambling his theory that the Avengers could use the Quantum Realm to travel through time, and eventually loses steam, saying it sounds crazy. Natasha gently explains to Scott, however, that she now gets emails from Rocket Raccoon, meaning nothing sounds crazy anymore.
- In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Shang-Chi refuses to even entertain the idea that his mother's ghost could have contacted his father. Said father is over a thousand years old and possesses ten magical rings. Wenwu also owns a carving of a dragon that, when two amulets are placed in its empty eye sockets, creates a map out of water that leads to a magic village. Similarly, his friends at the end find his story of his adventures at the end to be ridiculous despite being New Yorkers who have survived everything up to that point.
- Played with in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Quentin Beck considers Mysterio's backstory (a refugee sorcerer from an alternate Earth who lost his world to the Elementals) to be ridiculous, but he thinks that that's exactly what makes it work after that giant purple alien invaded Earth for some magic gemstones- nothing seems too crazy to be true. This despite the fact that several magic users helped defend Earth from Thanos, and the Elementals are actually on the low end of bizarre for the Marvel Universe. And despite what Beck and his collaborators think, the Multiverse is real, and has been ever since Loki.
- In Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Shuri repeatedly denies the existence of things like the goddess Bast or the Ancestral Plane, despite having fought alongside multiple wizards and gods in Avengers: Endgame.
Live-Action TV
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.:
- Skye suspects a target has ESP; everyone else thinks the idea is ridiculous, despite the other established superpowers and weird technology in the verse. Lampshaded by Skye:
Skye: Not long ago I would have dumped ESP in the aliens-and-portals-are-for-crazy-people pile, but now...- In "The Bridge", Coulson once again reaffirms his stance that there is simply no way psychic abilities could possibly be real, even though the plot of the episode involves a Super Serum and a shadowy cadre of villains who clearly have the means to augment the human body.
- A recurring theme on the show is the main characters insisting there are no psychic powers (and being right). The supposed case of telekinesis is actually a portal-hopping Stalker with a Crush. The Clairvoyant does know some incredibly precise and classified information, which makes Coulson realize that he's a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.
- Agent Blake also insists there is no such thing as psychic powers, but does believe in astrology. Agent May is quick to call him on it.
- Mack in the Season 3 mid-season finale scoffs at the idea that there might be an ancient alien god on the other side of the portal. Sadly, no one takes the time to remind him of the ancient alien god who's been running around Earth smacking things with a hammer for the past few years. He's right; what's on the other side is Hive, an extremely powerful Inhuman.
- Season 4 introduces Ghost Rider as the first explicitly magical character in the MCU, beating Doctor Strange by a few weeks. No one has any idea how to react to him.
Jeffrey: Is he Inhuman?
Coulson: Claims he made a Deal with the Devil.
Fitz: Which is nonsense.
Coulson: You know, the rationalist in me wants to agree, but the skull on fire presents a pretty compelling argument for "Hail Satan."- In Season 5, the villain takes Coulson via matter transmitter to meet an alien, then offers to supercharge the team's telekinetic soldier by fusing her body with "gravitonium". But she turns against him because she doesn't believe in time travel.
- Daredevil (2015):
- In "In the Blood", James Wesley visits Anatoly and Vladmir to tell them that the issues they're having with the "Man in the Mask" are interrupting Wilson Fisk's entire operation, and this exchange:
James Wesley: Madame Gao and Mr. Nobu have expressed their disappointment.
Vladimir Ranskahov: We have not heard of this.
James Wesley: Mmm, that's because we've been talking behind your back about how the Russians can't seem to handle one man running around in a mask. I mean, if he had an iron suit or a magic hammer, maybe that would explain why you keep getting your asses handed to you.- Subverted in the very scene after that. Karen Page is at a diner talking with Ben Urich, talking about how she was saved from Rance by a man in a black mask. Ben at first is skeptical, but concedes, "Stranger things, huh?" because a masked vigilante is far from the craziest thing someone in New York City could meet. Which makes sense given that he has framed front-page articles in his office about the Harlem Terror and "The Incident".
- Wilson Fisk even justifies the trope by saying, at one point while taking on Matt, "You really think one man in a silly little costume can make a difference?" Fisk can say this because he gained his foothold in Hell's Kitchen in part because of the fallout from the Incident. From Fisk's perspective, the Avengers might save the world, but they haven't done anything about crime, corruption, greed, poverty, and urban decay.
- In Season 2, Matt is extremely skeptical about mysticism, even when directly confronting the Hand and seeing things that should be impossible like resurrection of the dead, even when the world has faced several alien invasions and Norse Gods walk the streets. Even Claire as a medical professional is more willing to point out the weirdness surrounding the Hand. Stick points out that as a Catholic, Matt shouldn't have a problem with believing resurrection can happen, given that his faith is based on one guy doing that.
- This may be a justified trope since Jesus rising from the dead as well as raising others from the dead was the biggest show of proof that He was God. An evil ninja cult being able to do it actually shakes Matt's faith.
- Jessica Jones (2015): This trope plays heavily into why people don't believe Kilgrave's abilities are real, even post-Incident.
- Even Luke Cage, a man with unbreakable skin, initially scoffs at the idea that a mind-controller could be real. However, it's pointed out that while super-strength, aliens, and shooting lightning are all physical, very tangible and easily-observed events, mind-control can't really be seen, and the only way to truly know its effects are real is to experience being controlled yourself.
- Played with in "AKA It's Called Whiskey". When calling in to Trish Talk to talk about Hope Schlottman's case, Jeri Hogarth gives the impression that she has a hard time believing in mind-control when weirder things like aliens invading Manhattan have taken place, even while she knowingly works with Jessica Jones. Only for Jeri to later reveal that she does believe Kilgrave's powers are real, but wanted Trish to make the argument for her on the air, so she wouldn't come off as the crazy one. The idea of superpowers is still a hard pill for many in the public to swallow.
- During "AKA You're A Winner", Malcolm assures Jessica that Kilgrave's powers can't be magical in nature, defending his comments with "The same way I know that elves don't exist." Malcolm is clearly unaware of the existence of those elves that attacked London.
- In the season 1 finale "AKA Smile", the fact that district attorney Samantha Reyes still refuses to accept the reality of Kilgrave's powers even in the face of the testimony of dozens of regular people and police officers pushes this trope to the fullest. One could assume that Reyes wasn't the same DA who got mind-controlled by Kilgrave into releasing Hope. (Though it's very likely that she was since that was her jurisdiction.) However, Reyes' behavior makes more sense after Season 2 of Daredevil reveals that she is corrupt and intent on persecuting the new vigilante types (Daredevil, Frank Castle, and Jessica) to build a platform for her political ambitions.
- Iron Fist (2017):
- In the months prior to the events of the show, a crew of undead ninjas attacked a hospital in Hell's Kitchen, a sociopath with mind-control terrorized the same neighborhood, a man with bulletproof skin became known for his vigilante activity in Harlem, not to mention the full-on extra-terrestrial invasion of a couple years ago. And despite all this evidence, Ward Meachum has trouble believing Danny Rand, presumed deceased 15 years ago in a plane crash, may actually be who he says he is. Harold is more open to the idea of it being Danny, which is understandable considering the Hand brought him back from the dead when he died of terminal cancer 13 years ago, while Jeri Hogarth believes Danny is who he is within a minute by quizzing him about specific details of her office space, since she's seen stranger things like Kilgrave and Jessica Jones up close.
- In the season 1 finale, Harold walks into Rand Enterprises while Jeri Hogarth is talking with Ward. Jeri has trouble believing that Harold actually died and came back to life, despite, again, personally knowing Jessica Jones and having been victimized by Kilgrave. Her first remark is that Harold is committing fraud of the highest level. Possibly justified in that she seems very disturbed by the entire notion, so she's more unnerved than skeptical.
- A swift aversion is in the asylum shrink studying Danny. At first he's properly skeptical of Danny's claimed identity, but with only a small amount of digging realizes it's really him. He also thinks Danny's statements about K'un-Lun and the power of the Iron Fist are fantasy, because he notes a number of people have come forward since the Incident claiming to have superpowers. But he asks Danny to demonstrate his supposed superpowers, and only when he can't (due to the drugs interfering) concludes Danny's invented them to cope with trauma.
- Claire Temple has seen bullet-proof men, ninjas, and mind-control, and yet even after seeing Danny's Iron Fist in action, and knowing about K'un-L'un, she doesn't believe that he got it from fighting an actual dragon, much less one called "the Undying".
- Luke Cage (2016): Danny calls out Luke on the fact that he has no problem believing that his own skin is bulletproof or that Danny's fist glows, but still refuses to accept that dragons exist.
- This one's particularly strange, given that the final battle in The Defenders literally took place inside a dragon's skeleton.
Luke: So, this dragon you fought, that was metaphorical, right?
Danny: I can't believe you.
Luke: What?
Danny: Okay, you can accept that you're bulletproof, right?
Luke: Sure.
Danny: And you accept that my hand, it... it glows?
Luke: Yeah.
Danny: But you can't believe in a dragon?
Luke: Hell, no. - The Defenders (2017) has Luke and Jessica being utterly baffled by the more mystical things that Danny and Matt deal with as they get involved in the war between The Hand and The Chaste even despite all of the things they've witnessed in their own series (as well as the aforementioned Incident and the world-destroying robot).
