Cassandra Truths in Anime & Manga.
- No one at the hospital believes Kurosu from Ana Satsujin when he says his wife is trying to kill him. He nearly died so they assume he's confused or still under the medication.
- The Weirdness Censor in Ayakashi Triangle is strong enough that people tend to ignore evidence of the supernatural even when it its Invisible to Normals. When Suzu and Matsuri tell Lu how Matsuri used to be male, Lu assumes their minds have been "poisoned by radio waves".
- Bleach:
- When Ishida first appeared in Soul Society, Mayuri realised that Soul Society was vulnerable to Quincy attack and, because Yamamoto had failed to kill an old enemy in the past, a Quincy attack is precisely what was going to happen. Yamamoto dismissed Mayuri's advice as paranoia, and that was a fatal mistake.
- Happens to Ichigo when his futile attempts at trying to tell everyone that Tsukishima is a villain, but because of all the Fake Memories they've been implanted with, they're more convinced that Ichigo is the real problem.
- In the epilogue chapters, Hisagi brags that he achieved Bankai, but nobody believes him because they have never seen it. He complains that due to the era of peace they are in, he never needed to use it. He later uses it in the novels.
- In Blue Exorcist, at one point Shura douses everyone in holy water to ward off demons - everyone except Rin, that is. When the others suspiciously question her visible hesitation, she answers that he's allergic to holy water, as ridiculous as that sounds. An episode later, the team is in a sticky situation when Rin unexpectedly announces that he was never good at lying and unleashes the signature blue Hellfire that's supposed to be the trademark of Satan. Another episode later, the kids find out what the audience already knew from episode two: Rin's biological father is none other than Satan himself, making him a half-demon. As Shura put it earlier, pouring holy water onto the poor boy wouldn't have been a pretty sight.
- In Bocchi the Rock!, People get skeptical when Bocchi claims she succeeded in some kind of social endeavor.
- Her bandmates thought she was lying when she said she managed to sell enough tickets to meet her quota.
- Her's parents found it so hard to believe she made friends that they assumed the picture she took with her bandmates was photoshopped, and when they came over, they were asked if they were from a friend rental service.
- "Kid" Conan in the Case Closed series knows about this problem, and solves it using a tranquilizer watch and a voice-changing bowtie to make it seem like someone more trustworthy in the eyes of the police is making all the deductions. Enforced because he can't afford to gain credibility: if his allies caught on to his real identity it endangers them; if his enemies do it endangers him.
- Code Geass:
- One of the most tragic examples comes when Lelouch, having just agreed with Euphie's terms behind the Special Administrative Zone, alludes to his power of Geass, but she doesn't believe him. He persists in giving more insidious possibilities of powers, until he just happens to be looking at her and says the wrong thing the very moment his Power Incontinence hits.
- Also in season 2 episode 18 where Suzaku has a hard time warning Lelouch of the FLEIJA due to Schneizel's manipulations having broken their friendship.
- Light Yagami of Death Note subverts this several times, at one point "admitting" that he might be Kira so he can be locked up in order to prove that he isn't Kira and renounces possession of the Death Note so he can lose his memory, thus playing the role of innocent even more. It is All According to Plan.
- Played straight with L, who figures out surprisingly early on that Light is Kira and Misa is the Second Kira, but the police don't believes= him. Justified, because Light is the police chief's son, and they're all quite fond of him.
- Doctor Slump:
- Senbei creates an anti-gravitational device to help the Tsun family return to China, but it fails because Senbei doesn't realize there's a flaw in said device that causes it to not function for long. He then spends nights fixing the device, before telling Tsuruten the news after the repair is done. Unfortunately, Tsuruten doesn't believe him.note
- Self-enforced on Obotchaman's first day at the high school. When he's initially introduced in the class, he blurts out his Robot Kid existence. Faced with the bewildered expression from Arale's classmates, he rushes to Arale, who whispers to him that no one else knows about the truth of their origin and that it's supposed to be a secret. Obotchaman promptly rushes to the front of the class and claims that the whole thing he said was a joke, which everyone in the class sans Arale accepts without question.
- When a female vampire seduces Senbei in the hope of draining some blood out of him, Midori walks in and spots them (said female vampire is near Senbei's neck and about to sink her teeth into him). She proceeds to declare that she would divorce Senbei, taking Turbo with her in the process and refusing to believe in Senbei. It's only in the following chapter, when Turbo manages to find a copy of Dr. Slump detailing the events of the previous chapter and show it to Midori, that Midori finally believes in Senbei's innocence.
- After Senbei and Arale are transformed into flies due to the morph gun and one of the Gachans eats said morph gun before it can be used to turn them back to normal, Senbei flies to Turbo to request for him to build another one. When Midori spots him, she starts swatting him before Senbei can complete his request, and continues to do so despite Senbei shouting truth at the top of his voice. Luckily for Senbei, Turbo hears him and stops Midori with a shout of his own before she can deliver the fatal blow on Senbei, from where he shows Midori the truth with a magnifying glass.
Senbei: I told you it was me!Midori: I'm sorry, but your voice was so quiet that I could barely hear you. - Doraemon: Occurs in "Soap Bubbles".
- Noby tells Big G he'll get into trouble for putting graffiti on the wall, but Big G doesn't believe him until he sees Mr. Rumbleton.
- Doraemon tells Noby that he shouldn't be trusted with the gadget. In the end, Noby misuses the gadget.
- In Dragon Ball Z: Bardock - The Father of Goku, Bardock is given the power to see the future. However, he sees their planet being destroyed by Freeza. Naturally, no one takes him seriously.
- EDENS ZERO: When Shiki Granbell joins the guild Shooting Starlight, he notices a hologram of the goddess Mother and says he's met her before. Everybody laughs at him as they think Mother is a fictional character. Shiki eventually decides to go on a quest to meet Mother again so he can prove she is real.
- Elfen Lied:
- As is its fashion, Elfen Lied provides a particularly brutal example between Nana and Cute Mute Nyuu: Nana knows that Nyuu has an alternate personality called Lucy who is an Axe-Crazy mass murderer, but no-one else believes her.
- Kouta's little sister Kanae risks her older brother's affections by insisting that she saw a horned girl kill people with arms that came out of her head at the Kamakura summer festival. Within about a minute of her saying this for the umpteenth time, Kouta is horribly made to learn that she wasn't lying.
- Fullmetal Alchemist.
- When Mustang is looking for some allies in the military brass, he mentions a few "strange rumors" to General Raven, including Scar liking cats and Fuhrer Bradley being a homunculus. Raven brushes it off as a bad joke from Mustang. Then immediately subverted when Raven leads Mustang into the meeting with all the top generals and ominously asks him to continue his "joke". Sometimes not being believed is not as bad as being believed by the WRONG people.
- Played straight in the first (non-manga) episode where the renegade Freezing Alchemist is trying to destroy Central City to stop a government conspiracy at the highest levels.
- The creator of Gantz actually reveals the entire story of the Gantz operation to a reporter who confronts him for the truth. He then invokes this trope by saying that he told the entire truth because it's so outrageous that no one would believe anyone who exposed the story.
- Any hero in the .hack franchise can't even get to telling their parents or the authorities; despite mass server failures, clear evidence of a conspiracy or two, people trapped in the game, machine problems everywhere and comas, who would believe that an MMORPG was Serious Business?
- In Hetalia: Axis Powers, England can see magical creatures while only a few other nations can (Norway and Romania). Thus nearly every other nation thinks he's gone insane when they find him talking to the air. In one strip, France, trying to get England for a meeting, walks in and sees a mob of fairies, unicorns and gnomes surrounding a sleeping England, and his reaction is hilarious.
- Poor Rika in Higurashi: When They Cry. She tries to warn Tomitake and Takano, but do they ever listen to her? No; she barely comes up to their bellybuttons. (Actually, at one point Takano does seem to acknowledge Rika's foresight, but that's only because she knows what's going to happen; it's her Evil Plan.)
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Kakyoin is the only one to recognize the Mannish Boy as the Stand-user of Death 13, whose ability only works in dreams, and erases the victim's memory after they wake up. Kakyoin managed to bypass it by carving a message onto his arm, which caused the others to question his sanity.
- Diamond is Unbreakable: When Cheap Trick attaches itself to Rohan's back, he attempts to get Koichi's help. But due to being unable to show Cheap Trick due to the effects of its victims being killed if someone sees it, Koichi dismisses Rohan thinking he's messing with him.
- Golden Wind: Mista's backstory with the circumstances that led to his arrest made it impossible for anyone to believe that he was acting in self-defense. Who would believe that someone acting in self-defense could be missed by eighteen shots fired at near point-blank range, take a gun from one of the shooters, steal ammo then reload the gun while being shot at, then kill three shooters? His fearless charge made it look more like an successful murder than Mista defending himself.
- JoJolion: Josuke and Rai don’t believe Yasuho when she says the Rock Humans don't have the Locacaca branch.
- Kodomo no Kodomo has Haruna confess to her family that she's going to have a baby after having been taught sex-ed in school. They don't believe her, telling her to stop joking, but Haruna has already been pregnant for a few weeks.
- Kotoura-san is a Romantic Comedy that sets in an universe where... psychics actually exist, but muggles don't know about their existence. Psychics, then, are often subjected to this trope.
- Haruka is accused of this with her mind reading abilities, particularly when she was younger, when she was said to be a compulsive liar as she innocently blurt out other people's inner thoughts and secrets. This is not helped by the fact Japanese do have a tradition of lying to conform with social norms, and her case of Power Incontinence makes it hard for her to distinguish between speech and thoughts.
- Yuriko's mother Chizuru was a clairvoyant, but was Driven to Suicide after falsely accused to have faked her powers. Even now, most people see her powers as a fake, with the exception of Yuriko herself and her Childhood Friend Dai'chi.
- One episode of Layton Mystery Detective Agency revolves around the gang trying to catch a Phantom Thief who turns out to be a Child Prodigy who had developed a super-computer that can essentially predict the future. While gathering data for the computer, he had discovered that one of the tunnels beneath London was close to collapse, but when he tried warning Scotland Yard, they refused to listen to him due to his age. His string of robberies had been a last resort: the street above the tunnel was cordoned off as part of the investigation, and when the subsistence happens just as he'd predicted, nobody is hurt.
- In The Love and Creed of Sae Maki, Misao comes up with a plan to publicly expose Sae as the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, Psycho Lesbian, Yandere she is. She and Kokai arrange for hundreds of copies of photos of Sae killing Seiga with a concrete slab to drop on the student body during an assembly. The students are shocked and horrified by the photo evidence of Sae killing a man—until she stages a Wounded Gazelle Gambit complete with Crocodile Tears, claiming it's all a cruel prank. The first students to take her side are the girls but soon everyone is convinced that somebody is playing a sick joke on school's darling.
- In Lucky Star, nobody – not even his daughter Konata – believes that Soujirou is actually a hardworking writer who can write wholesome, non-otaku-related topics, has quite a bit of book smarts, has had a relationship with Kanata that was far beyond paedophilia, so on and so forth.
- Lyrical Nanoha:
- One of the known stories about the legendary lead character is how she became a AAA-Rank mage, solved her first Interdimensional Incident, and destroyed a Weapon of Mass Destruction said to be impossible to destroy at the age of nine. Non-fans like Teana, naturally, dismiss it.Teana: That just sounds like a rumor. What kind of nine-year-old was she?
- Three years later, after Teana being shot down by her instructor Nanoha in a mock battle, Shario shows the Forwards a video documentation of Nanoha's life, showing that the rumor was true, and how Nanoha's high magic power in her young age and her Training from Hell could destroy her body.
- One of the known stories about the legendary lead character is how she became a AAA-Rank mage, solved her first Interdimensional Incident, and destroyed a Weapon of Mass Destruction said to be impossible to destroy at the age of nine. Non-fans like Teana, naturally, dismiss it.
- When Minaha asks for Iris to autograph her game in episode 8 of Magic of Stella, Ayame walks up and signs it. Minaha then tells Ayame off and says not to pretend to be Iris. Iris is Ayame's Pen Name.
- Played for Laughs in Monkey High!. Macharu brings Haruna home, and he introduces her to his mother as his girlfriend. As Macharu is regularly described as looking like a baby monkey, and Haruna is a mature and ladylike Ojou-type, Macharu's mother's response is to give Macharu a Dope Slap and to tell him to stop lying. Haruna then pipes up to tell her that it's true, with Macharu's mother in such shock that she has to run and tell his father - who is so shocked that he digs out a camera to make sure there's photographic evidence of it all, because he can barely believe it even after getting multiple confirmations. Macharu is completely mortified of all of this.
- Monster. Poor, poor Tenma. Try as he might, barely anyone will believe his story of a ten-year-old child committing serial murders.
- Umetaro Nozaki, the eponymous "Nozaki-kun" in Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, is a high school student who also works as a professional Sequential Artist. He doesn't treat his job as a secret, but nobody at school believes he is a professional mangaka. It's even worse with his younger sister, who refuses to believe that he's Sakiko Yumeno, even though he's gone to much length to convince her of that fact — even giving her his autograph (she thinks he's making a good counterfeit) and telling her of his manga's future plot (which she could also predict, because his story is too vanilla).
- My Hero Academia:
- On the first day of school at UA High, Class 1-A is subjected to fitness tests using their Quirks. When Izuku prepares to throw a ball, Bakugo, his former friend turned bully who grew up with him and knows he didn't have a Quirk, dismisses him as a "Quirkless loser" to Iida. The trope goes both ways here: Iida doesn't believe Bakugo's claim because he saw Izuku use his secretly recently-acquired Quirk during the entrance exam, while Bakugo doesn't believe Izuku has a Quirk due to having know him his whole life... until Izuku shows it off by managing to throw the ball farther than Bakugo did.
- After the first combat training class, Bakugo, feeling humiliated, decides to storm out of school because he's angry about the humiliation coming at the hands of Izuku, since he assumes that Izuku was mocking him by hiding his Quirk for their whole lives. Izuku tries to stop him by telling him the truth, that he was recently given his Quirk by someone else. As per this trope, Bakugo doesn't believe it, and thinks Izuku is trying to play him for a fool. Later, it's eventually subverted: the confession and the circumstances surrounding All Might's retirement lead Bakugo to put two and two together and realize both that Izuku was telling the truth and who he got his Quirk from. Bakugo later reveals this to Izuku during the trials for earning provisional hero licences.
- In Natsume's Book of Friends, Natsume was typically regarded as an attention-seeking liar whenever he told people about the spirits and monsters only he could see.
- In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Negi Springfield (though it is admittedly his fault) makes a good attempt at warning the other mage teachers about the existence of a Time Machine which could be used to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Somehow, even full-fledged mages refuses to accept the idea of time travel. Also, nobody believes Chao the first time she tells everybody she's in truth "an alien from Mars." And still... Truth be told, Negi himself had it coming since the other mage teachers tried to convince him that Chao was on the verge of causing serious problems and he didn't listen to them.
- In Nurse Angel Ririka SOS Seiya tries to convince Ririka that the recently revived Kanou is involved with the Big Bad now. Seiya tries to tell his classmates the truth as well but no one believes that Kanou is an alien from another dimension who works with a group of evil psychics.
- Played for Laughs in Ojojojo when Haru called Tsurezure's house and introduced herself as his girlfriend. His older sister thinks it's a prank call and promptly hangs up the phone.
- One Piece:
- Happened during the arc that introduced Usopp. The villain was a highly respected person in Usopp's town. Since Usopp was known to be a liar, everyone blew him off. For what it's worth, the villain in question, a master of planning for every contingency, anticipated Usopp finding out the truth.
- In the Whiskey Peak arc, the Straw Hat Pirates are guests of a town and given food, unaware that the inhabitants plan to rob and kill them while they sleep. Zoro foils them by not falling asleep and beats them up. When Luffy wakes up, he angrily attacks Zoro for harming their hosts. Zoro tries to explain their true nature, but Luffy won't believe him because he thinks anyone who serves delicious food couldn't be evil. It takes Nami slapping and berating Luffy to get him to listen.
- Played for Laughs in the Fishman Island arc when Princess Shirahoshi is "kidnapped" and King Neptune believes Luffy did it. Brook comments he didn't see her leave, only seeing Luffy riding a shark (Megalo). Neptune believes he stuffed Shirahoshi into Megalo's mouth and rode out. The guards all laugh at this idea, but that's exactly what happened.
- After learning some information on Gol D. Roger and Poneglyphs, 8 year old kid Momonosuke comments that he met Roger once. Usopp calls it a lie as Roger died several years before he was even born. Later on, it's revealed that Momonosuke and four of his retainers were sent forward in time 20 years, making it possible for him to have actually met Roger.
- Persona 4: The Animation has Yukiko and Rise telling Naoto all about the world inside the TV and Personae. Naoto doesn't believe them. Though admittedly, they were "drunk" at the time. Later on, Yu tells the police chief the same thing, and once again he isn't believed.
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Homura has been trying to warn others about the dark truth about being a magical girl and various dangers she knows about thanks to having travelled in time, but she's been faced with so much rejection of these truths that by the time of the series, she's convinced nobody will believe her anyway. Which causes her to act aloof and hardly ever explain herself until it's too late and people have seen the bad thing for themselves, which does nothing to help people believe her better when she tries to persuade them to (not) do something.
- In RABUKOMEQUEST, Milia is the Great Witch that the hero Jin must slay. When Milia's familiar appears to her and unwittingly exposes Milia's true identity, Jin does not believe him.
- Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai:
- Nagisa doesn't believe her friend Mokuzu when she tells her that her father killed her dog. Turns out she's not making this up for a change.
- Later on Nagisa's teacher and mom don't believe her when she says Mokuzu's dad killed her. They just think she's playing a prank since Mokuzu is known for lying. Her brother does believe her, however, even leaving the house after years to help her out. Then, they find Mokuzu's corpse...
- Serendipity the Pink Dragon: Without proof of the island's existence, Smudge is reduced to ranting which is promptly ignored by the other humans.
- Comes up twice in Shiki. The first is when Ikumi Itou, the village's shaman, becomes aware that the vampire family that moved into town is nothing but trouble, but everyone dismisses her as a crazy old woman. The second is when a housewife named Motoko Maeda tries to get help for her family as they're slowly killed by vampires, but none of her other family members believe her until they themselves are killed. The former case is a bit complex, though, since at the time Ikumi is trying to rally the villagers, Dr. Toshio Ozaki does know about the vampires but doesn't want the truth getting out, so he pretends not to believe her and tries to discredit her.
- Shimoneta uses the same gag in manga chapter 10/anime episode 9 respectively, though it differs in how it plays out:
- The manga version has Ayame walk-in on Tanukichi and Oboro in the girls' locker-room and finds them in a compromising position. So Ayame jumps to the obvious conclusion and ducks back outside. Tanukichi goes after her to explain what really happened, but she doesn't believe him.
- In the anime, Anna is the one who walks in on them, causing Tanukichi to flee the locker-room to escape her. When he reports back to Ayame to explain why he hadn't caught the underwear thieves, he mentions that he found out Oboro is really a guy. Ayame dismisses it as a lame excuse, saying there's no way that could be true.
- Defied in Summer Time Rendering. Aware that looping back to the past after a clone of Mio killed him twice is an outlandish claim, Shinpei avoids being labeled a crazy person by filming evidence of Shadow Mio and using it to successfully warn Mio and Sou about the existence of the shadows. He decides to leave out the time travel part until later loops when he has Shadow Ushio to back up his claims.
- In episode 46 of Tamagotchi! Yume Kira Dream, Nandetchi thinks Yumemitchi and Kiraritchi are the mysterious Tamagotchis who pop up as girls of different occupations. He's right in that they are, but Mametchi and his friends don't believe him when he says this to them, so he sets off to expose their identities - which is bad news for Yumemitchi and Kiraritchi because the lady who gave them their Yume Kira bags, which is what gives them the power of different jobs in the first place, told them that they must not let anyone know it's really them. When Nandetchi gets stuck inside a giant robot and is saved by the girl duo, he decides to be nice to them and destroys the photos he got of them transforming.
- Invoked in the grand finale of Urusei Yatsura; when Ataru is forced to repeat his game of tag against Lum with her continued presence on Earth and all of their memories of her on the line, she tells him she'll only let him win if he tells her that he loves her. In the very last match, having learned that Lum is dead serious with her threat, Ataru mentally complains that he can't tell her that under these circumstances, because if he does, how will she ever be sure that he said them and meant them as opposed to just telling her what she wanted to hear in order to win?
- Usotsuki Satsuki wa Shi ga Mieru has the titular character. Satsuki can see what she refers to as the "premonition corpse" of anyone who is going to die within the next twenty-four hours. She's unable to convince anyone that she's telling the truth and not just acting out when she tries to warn them, hence her "Usotsuki" nickname. The first time she's actually able to convince someone is when she tells a classmate secretly planning patricide that her dad was going to die from being bludgeoned to death.
- With thanks to the Rabbit of Truth, Alice from The Voynich Hotel can see past glamours and illusions for what they really are. Fortunately, mere mortals need never bother with solving supernatural problems, most of the time.
- Quent in Wolf's Rain repeatedly fails to convince people that wolves are adopting human disguise for sinister purposes. He's right about the disguises, but wrong about the wolves' motivation.
- In World Trigger, Chika knew about the existence of Neighbors since she was a child since they would regularly come after her. Unsurprisingly, no one believed her (save for her eventually kidnapped friend) until several years later, when the first Large Scale Invasion devastated the city and lead to the creation of the Border Defense Agency.
- In the third episode of Yo Kai Watch, Whisper insists that nobody's ever seen a Noko and never will, even when Nate has one right next to him that eventually escalates to a whole bunch of them in his room, because they immediately disappear everytime Whisper turns around. Whisper even grabs one of them instead of his Yo-Kai Pad and still can't see that he did because he closed his eyes.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- During the Synchro dimension arc of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, nobody outside of Jean, who is from the Fusion dimension, and the Executive Council, who have been trying to manipulate him in order to maintain their own security, believes that the inter-dimensional war is real. Attempts to explain it to people have been ignored, even after Jean and the Council admit the truth in front of a handful of Synchro characters, said characters have varying opinions on what's "really" going on.
- The Knights of Hanoi from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS are a Cyberterrorist group willing to kill a race of AI, but nobody heeds their warnings about what the Ignis are really up to. As revealed in the second season, Lightning and Windy are both working together to rule over humanity from a Cyberse World beyond human reach, and Revolver instigating a Duel against Windy only adds fuel to the fire, regardless of the outcome of the Duel.
- Tetsuo from Yuureitou tells Taichi that he was Reiko, a woman who murdered her mother in a gruesome way two years ago and supposedly died. Taichi doesn't believe him because he's a trans man.
