Cassandra Truth / Live-Action TV

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Cassandra Truths in Live-Action TV.

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• The opening of the 2006 Emmys had host Conan O'Brien wandering on to the sets of various TV shows. At the end, he walked into an empty house, only to be confronted by Dateline's Chris Hansen and find himself in the middle of a To Catch a Predator segment (which was hugely popular at the time). At which point his declaration of "It's not what you think", and all other truthful explanations for his presence we're dismissed by Hansen, no doubt because they sounded exactly like what countless other perverts who have been caught have said.

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• 3rd Rock from the Sun:
  • Dick, guilt-ridden, finally decides he must tell Mary everything about himself to have an honest relationship. He tells her who he is, where he's from, why he's on Earth, and who sent him. Being that they are at a Sci-Fi convention at the time, she merely replies that she is, in fact, an alien sex queen.
  • Another 3rd Rock example: when Dick is facing an IRS audit he finally breaks down and confesses to being an alien, to which the tax guy simply mutters, "Sorry folks, I've heard that one before too."
  • And a third example involving Dick, this time while he's sick with a cold and, believing that he's dying, confesses to Mary, who thinks he's just being delirious.
  • Another example by Dick: when Dick dreams for the first time, he thinks he's gone mad and goes to see a psychologist. He ends up confessing his status as an alien to the psychologist, who thinks this is evidence Dick is experiencing major delusions.
• 12 Monkeys: Referenced in Dr. Reilly, whose first name is Cassandra here — no one believed her story that Cole vanished right before her eyes.
• Jack Bauer on 24 repeatedly takes the role of the Cassandra, which is frankly bizarre when you consider his extensive field experience and the fact that he's almost always right. Though, to be fair the high rate of turnover on the show means that about the only person alive at this point who knows him well enough to trust him is the one who does, Chloe O'Brien. A lot of the field agents will believe him as well, it's just the higher ups that never do. There's actually a saying for this: "If everybody did what Jack Bauer told them to do, the show would have to be called 12." In fact, this trope gets played with in the final episodes. When Jack goes off on his own after the Russian masterminds behind the murder of President Hassan, Chloe for once doesn't believe his claim that they're behind it and refuses to work with him, due to recent events including the death of a woman he'd just started to become lovers with, and she feels he's not thinking straight because of it. Unfortunately, in this case, Chloe's also right: Jack isn't thinking straight. He wants to kill them all in revenge rather than just exposing them (well, he does kind of, but rather as just a back-up plan in case he dies in action as some type of final "screw you"). Did I mention said masterminds are also members of the Russian Government and killing them would cause an international crisis?
• In The 4400, Maia had a vision that Jordan Collier was going to be assassinated. Her mother brought it to Collier, but he didn't believe her. Later seasons had a better track record of believing the psychic kid, eventually fully subverted when one of her visions was finally believed, only to be revealed that she was lying about it so that Collier and the rest of the P+ would let her and their other captives go.
• In Al-Rawabi School for Girls, Rania tries to convince Layan not to skip school to meet Laith, as so many bad things have happened to them lately that it could be too dangerous. Unfortunately, Layan brushes Rania's concerns aside and goes to meet Laith anyway, with tragic consequences.
• Wil in Season 2 of The Amazing Race. He never missed an opportunity to tell his ex-wife Tara that helping out fellow racers Chris & Alex was a bad idea, and they should be concentrating on the race instead of helping another team. Though he was ultimately proven right when Chris & Alex passed them up in the finale, he was portrayed as a villain because of this... that and he was a Jerkass.
• American Odyssey has an inversion, when Harrison Walters' dad Randall, a well-established news reporter with connections to the Establishment, comes to believe his son about the "dead" Sergeant Odelle Ballard.
• Arrested Development: Michael and George Michael learn An Aesop about being honest with each other after Michael misinterprets his son's behavior. With his father repeatedly telling him that he can share anything with him, George Michael blurts out that he is in love with his cousin Maeby. The mood becomes deathly silent, until Michael realises it was a "joke" on him.
• In Arrow Season 2, no one believes Laurel that Sebastian Blood is a Villain with Good Publicity, several people aren't even willing to entertain the idea. In fact, their actions just tip him off that she's on to him. He then exposes her addiction problems destroying her credibility, and arranges for one of his followers to take the blame leaving her doubting herself and sending her into a downward spiral. Fortunately, much later, and after she's stopped drinking, she's able to get proof and is believed instantly.
• G'Kar of Babylon 5 has been described as JMS's Cassandra; at various points, he predicts what will happen, but no one believes him, mostly because they don't want to. For example, he tries to warn other races that the Centauri, having conquered the Narn, will turn their attention to others... which they promptly do. It was later revealed that both Delenn and Kosh knew some of his rantings were true but couldn't act in case it showed their hand too early. G'Kar calling Delenn on it when he finally found out was awesome.
• Banjun Drama: In "Dangerous Love," Jun-su won't believe Chang-min's assertions of seeing an unfamiliar person in Hee-bon's house even though she says she lives alone. When Chang-min tells Jun-su at first, he believes Chang-min's jealous of him and Hee-bon being close. Hee-bon does eventually confess to having an additional occupant later on.
• The Barrier:
  • Luis doesn't take warnings that the government has a nefarious plan that might very well include getting rid of Luis himself permanently due to the peole warning him potentially not being in their best mental state (too much to drink, running a fever). He gets the message after a sniper tries to kill a person he's helping while he's in the same room as her.
  • This is zig-zagged for one of the warnings given to Luis, as it's given to him in presence of people who live outside of the elite's enclave and hence know all too well what the government is capable of. This results in the other people present believing the warning before the aforementionned sniper bullet brings Luis to his senses.
  • One of the plotlines involves the government taking children away from their parents under false pretenses. One of the children has a mother who cleans government buildings for a living, and she saw him transiting through a building she was cleaning after he had been declared dead. The mother spends years not being believed by those around her.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003):
  • From an early episode:
    Chief: How did you figure that out?
    Boomer: I'm a Cylon.
    Chief: That's not funny!
  • They later built a Bizarro Episode around this trope, with Helo trying to unravel a conspiracy that's just so stupid and outlandish it can't be true. It turns out to really be true and everyone walks away with egg on their face (even Helo) because of how stupid they all acted during the event. And then Ron Moore said: "Let Us Never Speak of This Again."
• This happens with two of Jimmy's schemes in Better Call Saul. Chuck details to Kim, as well as several people at both HHM and Mesa Verde, exactly what Jimmy did with the Mesa Verde documents. Kim believes him but pretends not to; Howard, Kevin, and Paige don't believe him at all. His breakdown in court later in the season doesn't help his case. It happens *again* when Kim and Jimmy scam Howard Hamlin in season 6. Howard details the scheme with the drugs and staged photos to a t, but Cliff Main–despite the fact that he knows what Jimmy is capable of, given how Jimmy managed to quit Davis & Main with his bonus intact–either doesn't believe Howard or, more likely, knows there's no evidence to back up Howard's story, and understands the damage to the firm's reputation is already done.
• An episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction features a story where a little boy insists that there's a monster in his closet and is tormented mercilessly by his older brother and a pack of bullies because of it. Finally, the boy dares the brother to go stand in the closet with the door closed. The brother does, and, following some terrified screaming, their Mom opens the closet door to find that the brother HAS DISAPPEARED. The really scary thing? The story was listed as "Fact".
• Breaking Bad:
  • In season 3 episode 1, Hank is helping Walt move out. He takes a bag full of money and when he asks Walt what is making the sport bag so heavy, Walt replies: "Half a million in cash." Hank thinks it's a joke and laughs.
  • In season four, Hank stumbles on some evidence that connects Gus Fring to the meth trade. However, no one else believe him, so he investigates on his own.
  • In "Ozymandias", Walt is speaking the truth when he says he didn't kill Hank, he tried to save him; but his family doesn't believe him due to all the lies he told him the past.
  • In Better Call Saul, it's revealed that Mike initially tried to dissuade Saul from taking on Walt as a client after their first meeting, telling him that Walt was in over his head and partnering up with him would end in disaster. Saul doesn't listen and throws his lot in with Walt anyway. The end result is that by the end of Breaking Bad, both Mike and Walt are dead and Saul is forced to go into hiding in Omaha.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer falls victim to this trope more than once.
  • It is usually in the earlier seasons but Giles and her other friends often do not believe the hunches Buffy gets about upcoming evil events and who is responsible for them. The most notorious example may have been in "Living Conditions", when she told her friend that her new college roommate Kathy was not human and held up a bag of her clipped toenails as proof. They actually trapped her in a net, tied her to a chair, and tried to warn Cathy. Turned out she was a demon from another dimension. Although it's later revealed Cathy was slowly stealing Buffy's soul, which was causing her to act in a very bizarre manner. The end of the episode even indicates that Buffy just can't stand having roommates.
  • When Buffy first became the Slayer, she tried to tell her parents, who responded by putting her in a mental institution. She eventually stopped talking about it, and got to go home. Or did she?
  • It is, however, averted when Oz starts to become a regular character. He sees Buffy slay a vampire, and after briefly summarising the whole vampire/demon situation, Willow says "I know this must be hard to believe", only for Oz to respond "Actually this explains a lot."
  • In a pretty direct Shout-Out to the original myth, "Help" features a girl named - that's right - Cassie, who has visions of the future that no one believes. Buffy actively saves Cassie's life twice on the day she predicted she would die, but she ends up falling to the ground dead anyway.
  • In a non-demon related example (well, at least initially), in "Dead Man's Party", the Scooby Gang decide to throw a party to welcome Buffy home after she ran away, and excitedly decide to make it a Wild Teen Party. Giles is the only one to express doubt, arguing that Buffy is likely to be overwhelmed and that something smaller and more intimate would both help her acclimate and help everyone come to terms with the issues between them. The Scoobies sneer at Giles as being out of touch and overrule him — but it quickly becomes clear that the main reason they're hosting a huge get-together is so that they can technically welcome her home while avoiding her (and thus their issues) as much as possible. Needless to say, Giles is proven right, Buffy is overwhelmed by the party and hurt by her friends avoiding her, and things quickly get ugly. And that's before the zombies show up.
• The Cape:
  • No one believes Scales when he says Fleming is Chess.
  • No one believes Vince was framed except his son.
• In Carnivàle, when Libby finally tells her mom the truth about why she and Jonesy were gone all day, that is, that they were kidnapped by some men who tarred and feathered Jonesy and left them in the middle of nowhere, until Ben happened to show up and heal Jonesy, and that Jonesy and Ben went off to find Ben's dad, she doesn't believe a word of it, even though I can't think of any reason why anyone would possibly make that story up.
  • She told her mom the story (which was true) because her mom was relentlessly telling her that Jonesy had run off. To shut her mom up, Libby told her the truth.
  • Another example in season 1, episode 2, when Apollonia breaks away from her paralyzed state for a brief moment, getting out of the trailer by herself to go tell Ben that he's "the one", before fainting again in front of him. When Sofie and the other carnies realize Apollonia's absence, Jonesy outright punches Ben, and nobody (maybe except Ruthie) believes a word he says when he tries to explain the situation. Justified, as even most of the carnies don't know the extent of Apollonia's abilities.
• Charmed (1998)
  • Phoebe tries to tell her sisters about Leo's true identity. Naturally, it's treated as a joke.
  • Paige spent a significant amount of time in season 4 insisting that Phoebe's ex-demon boyfriend Cole was in fact still an evil demon. Everyone else insisted that she simply didn't like him, and no one believed her, until he successfully turned Phoebe to the dark side and became The Source Of All Evil, with Phoebe as his evil queen. Needless to say, Paige earns the right to "I told you so."
• Happens a few times on Chuck.
  • Just about every time Chuck lets someone in on how he's a spy (from best friend Morgan to his sister), they at first refuse to believe him as just some crazy excuse.
  • Chuck had to go through a lot to get anyone to believe him on how Shaw was a double agent.
  • When they realize their wedding planner is a con artist who ripped them off, Chuck and Sarah fake a "flash" to gain access to CIA systems to track her. When they realize Beckman is about to order the full weight of the military tracking her down, they confess to the scam. Right in the middle of Beckman chewing them out, Chuck gets a real flash which tells him the con artist is tied in to a real terrorist group. Naturally, when he tries to tell this, Beckman just scoffs "at least you faked the flash better this time" so Chuck and Sarah have to find the woman on their own.
• In Continuum, Kiera has to tell so many lies that it's obvious to Agent Gardiner that she isn't who she says she is. She eventually gets sick of the facade and tells him she's a time traveler, but he thinks she's messing with him.
  Gardiner: I saw you survive the explosion and fireball, and then vanish.
  Cameron: Yeah that. I'm a stranded time traveler from 2077 using technology that hasn't even been invented yet.
  Gardiner: That's bullshit.
• Control Z:
  • In 2.04, Sofía and Javier try to warn each other about Raúl and Natalia. She is still attracted to Raúl after his previous actions while Javier was completely blind to realizing that he was being used as an escape from Natalia's money issues, although her devastated reaction implies that she did truly love him and this move was out desperation from being to spare her from the drug dealers. Sofía also severed ties with Raúl after finding out about Quintanilla and Susana's affair and that he had kept it a secret as to not be expelled from the school. Lampshaded by both of them in 2.08.
  Javier: Hey, you were right about Natalia.
  Sofía: And you were right about Raúl.
  • In 2.07, Rosita ignores Sofía's concerns for her safety when she tells her that the Avenger intends on targeting her. She defies Sofía by leaving the school premises to hang out with Darío and Ernesto at a restaurant. It isn't until the Avenger tampers with Sofía's pills that Rosita lampshades this in 2.08 after the former is hospitalized, although it is later revealed that Sofía actually didn't take the pills and she had staged her accident.
  Rosita: Your pills were switched. The avenger did this. Sofi, I had no idea.
  Sofía: It's fine. It's not your fault.
  Rosita: No, but...I know it's not my fault, but...I didn't believe you. You said I was in danger after the party and I didn't believe you, and now...we're all screwed.
  Sofía: Really, it's fine.
• According to a CSI: Miami flashback episode, Horatio was this when he first joined the Miami PD, dealing with lethargic cops who wanted to put the wrong man behind bars because he was the right culprit according to their antiquated methods — but not according to Horatio's observation and desire to try new methods.
• Dark Desire: Zoe doesn't believe Alma when she tries to tell her that Esteban can't be trusted.
• Dexter, in the episode "Shrink Wrap". Dexter was already planning to kill his therapist for pushing three of his patients to suicide, so it didn't really matter if the therapist believed him or not.
  Dexter: I'm gonna tell you something that I've never told anyone before.
  Dr. Meridian: Okay.
  Dexter: I'm a serial killer. Oh God, that feels so amazing to say out loud!
  Dr. Meridian: Well, you must be letting go, because I've never heard you make a joke before.
• Doctor Who:
  • In "The Myth Makers", Cassandra herself is a character. No one listens to her.
  • In "The Power of the Daleks", no one in the colony, who have come to use the Daleks as servants, will believe the Doctor's warnings that the Daleks are evil.
    • "Victory of the Daleks" has the same thing.
  • "The Fires of Pompeii": Played for tears when Donna screams at the people of Pompeii to run to the hills, rather than the beach. No one listens.
  • "Planet of the Ood": When the Doctor tells Donna that his last encounter with the Ood involved the Devil himself, Donna thinks he's taking the mick.
  • "The Woman Who Fell to Earth" has it discussed: when rookie cop Yaz wants to tell her superiors about the alien loose in Sheffield, the Doctor points out that they wouldn't believe her even if she could accurately explain what it is she's reporting.
• Drake & Josh:
  • Audrey and Walter are nigh oblivious about Megan's regular torment of her brothers, no matter how hard they try and prove it.
  • "Believe Me, Brother." Drake's girlfriend Susan is continuously hitting on Josh while framing up Josh for hitting on her. It was due to an accidental camera recording on Drake's band project that Drake learned the truth.
  • Same with "Eric Punches Drake." Eric plays along with the rumors that he punched Drake for insulting his sister (instead of just accidentally), elevating him to cool guy status. Feeling abandoned, his Heterosexual Life Partner Craig reveals Eric's weak point for Drake to exploit.
  • In "Honor Council", Drake is accused of stealing Mrs. Hayfer's car and putting it in her classroom, very few people believe Drake is innocent. Even Walter and Audrey don't believe him due to his past shenanigans.
• In Season 5 of Earth: Final Conflict, Renee Palmer uncovers the energy-sucking Atavus, and warns of their danger to the planet. Despite having just dealt with an alien invasion not long ago, the authorities are very dismissive of her, and one of the major plot threads for the first half of the season is Renee trying to get someone to believe her.
• ER: Played for Laughs in the season 2 episode "Baby Shower" - Jerry tries to tell everybody Scottie Pippen has been in the ER, but no one believes him, not even when Pippen returns.
• The Eternal Love: Xiao Tan tells Lian Cheng that she and Tan Er are Sharing a Body. He assumes she's lying.
• One episode of Family Matters had Carl becoming especially angry at Steve Urkel for some reason, and throwing him out of the house. Steve was trying to warn Carl that the lamp he was fixing had a dangerous short circuit in it, and that Carl shouldn't plug it in, but the sneering Carl just ignored him and told him to leave. As Steve heads for the door, Carl plugs in the lamp and is electrocuted, and would likely have died if Steve hadn't come back and given him CPR.
  • In a first-season episode, Carl is providing security for Buddy Goodrich, the star of a super-popular TV show. He soon discovers that Buddy, despite his wholesome image, is a total jerk who thinks his stardom means he can avoid any consequences for his actions. When Carl arrests Buddy for assaulting him after being told to move his car from a handicapped-only space, everyone tells him that the officer must be mistaken, as there's no way that Buddy could possibly do anything wrong (it doesn't help that Goodrich is forcing his assistant to cover for him). Eventually, though, Buddy's true colors are exposed, and Carl is vindicated.
• No matter how hard he tried, Chris the Crafty Cockney in The Fast Show couldn't get people to believe that he was a geezer, he'd nick anything. People would still insist the he look after something for them, whereupon he'd nick it.
• Firefly
  • River really is a seer, but since she's also a paranoid schizophrenic, people generally don't listen to her until late in the series.
  • Inverted in the Big Damn Movie. While the Cassandra of myth went insane because nobody believed her, River, who started out insane, regains her sanity after the crew finally believe her.
  • Debatable example but Jayne's opinions are often disregarded because he is, quite simply, an asshat but he also seems to have a point more often than not (finishing the job for Niska, Tams being trouble, bringing grenades on the bank job).
• This is half the plot of First Wave. Our heroes try to prevent and reveal the first stages of an alien invasion. No one but a small collection of conspiracy nuts believe them.
• In an episode of Frasier Daphne tries to explain that her Greek friend Zena will soon be arriving on her (the friend's) mother's ship, but the other person thinks she's talking about Xena arriving on an alien mothership.
• A French Village:
  • Judith doesn't believe it when Mr. Cohen says the Nazis will kill all the Jews, insisting that they need workers.
  • Hortense is told by a Holocaust survivor that Sarah died in Auschwitz from typhoid just after it was liberated, with her last wish being for Daniel to know she loved him. After her prior paranoid behaviors though Daniel dismisses her muddled account later, believing that it's just another fantasy of hers.
• Full House: Played to offensive levels in the Season Three episode "Just Say No Way", when Uncle Jesse refuses to believe DJ's claim that she tried to stop a couple boys from drinking beer, when in fact, they make it look like SHE tries to manipulate THEM into drinking when they see him enter the room right behind her as she's openly mocking their stupidity, and likewise, they try to get away with putting one over on her. Thankfully, this plan ultimately fails, as they end up getting caught drinking later anyway, and DJ's friend Kevin confirms her innocence to the disbelieving Jesse and Danny thereafter, causing the former to experience extreme guilt for doubting DJ. Bonus points go to Stephanie for believing DJ because of how distressed DJ was when she came home, and even that wasn't enough to convince Danny and Jesse of her innocence.
• On Gilligan's Island, if the castaways manage to make contact with civilization (tapping into a phone cable, a homing pigeon landing on the island, ...), nobody believes that they're stranded on an island.
• Game of Thrones:
  • Beyond the Wall, the White Walkers are returning, but very little is being done about it. Even those concerned by the rumours, like Tyrion and Ned, get distracted by other matters and forget about them. The Walkers' return also drives the wildlings into full-scale war with the Night's Watch, distracting the ancient order founded to stand against them. Stannis Baratheon is the only southern Lord who marches to the Wall to provide assistance.
  • The Stark motto, "Winter is Coming", is meant to be this. While other houses are busy playing power games (as their mottoes reflect), the Starks' first concern must always be the brutal, years-long winter ahead. Unfortunately, the current generation has been swept up in the power games instead.
  • Drogo's bloodrider Qotho was very right about not trusting Mirri Maz Duur.
  • Catelyn's warnings "Never trust a Greyjoy," and " Walder Frey is a dangerous man to cross."
  • Subverted between Davos and Melisandre. Davos is certain Melisandre cannot be trusted and the viewer can sympathize, but as time goes on and her allegiance does not waver, Davos seems to realize she's not treacherous, just a Blue-and-Orange Morality zealot. He still vehemently opposes her morality, but no longer questions her loyalty.
  • In one of the series' most ironic scenes, Joffrey Baratheon (who is normally very short-sighted) is concerned by the very real rumours of Daenerys and her dragons, but Lord Tywin shoots him down with the cold and implacable yet incorrect logic that no one has successfully hatched a dragon in over a hundred years.
  • Correctly predicting a Cavalry Betrayal, Jaime and Varys warned the Mad King not to open the gates to Lord Tywin but were ignored.
  • Varys' repeated warnings are often ignored or forgotten, particularly those concerning the threat Littlefinger poses and the danger Shae is in.
  • Sansa Stark warns Jon that Ramsay will toy with him in the coming battle. Jon brushes it off — his half-sister isn't a warrior, after all. He then falls for every one of Ramsay's misdirections.
  • Margaery urges everyone to flee the Great Sept of Baelor after Cersei fails to appear for her trial, reasoning that she is up to something. She's right, but the Faith Militant won't let anyone leave.
  • Osha keeps saying that the White Walkers are coming, and that Winterfell's army should go North, not South. She also correctly interprets the comet in the skies over Westeros as heralding the return of the Dragons.
• General and I: He Xia insists that the King of Yan is conspiring against him with Chu Bei Jie. He's right, but no one believes him.
• In season 2 of The Gifted (2017), Thunderbird is held hostage by the anti-mutant Purifiers. John explains that the Mutant Underground is trying to help humans while the secret Inner Circle are the ones carrying out more brutal terrorist attacks. Given he's up against anti-mutant bigots, it's little wonder his words aren't believed (member Tom openly scoffs at the idea of mutants caring about humans). Turner seems ready to believe John as it would explain the wildly divergent operations. However, when members of the Circle join the Underground in attacking the Purifier camp, Turner thinks John was just playing with him and thus dismisses the idea of this division and convinced all mutants are dangerous.
• From her first appearance on Gossip Girl, Ivy lies about her name (posing as cousin Charlie) and various schemes to get rich and/or enhance her fame. In the final season, Ivy is dating Rufus but actually sleeping with William. After Rufus and Lily break up, Ivy comes to Lilly and William, happy to finally reveal she and William are a couple. To her shock, William acts like he's never met Ivy before. When Ivy tries to show text messages from William and even photos of them together on her phone, Lilly snorts that she's "fallen for that trick before." After she leaves, William reveals he was just using Ivy all along to break up Rufus and Lilly so he could get Lilly to himself. Too late, Ivy realizes thanks to her well-earned reputation for cons, no one is going to buy her and William ever being together.
• Gotham Knights (2023): In "Night of the Owls", naturally the cops are incredulous at hearing the Gotham Knights' stories that the Court of Owls has an immortality-inducing material and immortal assassins due to this. Until said assassins come for them, killing many cops while doing so.
• At the start of season 2 of Hannibal, Will now knows that Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper, but no one believes him. Of course it doesn't help that Hannibal has framed Will for his murders.
• Kelly in Harper's Island sees John Wakefield, the Axe-Crazy Big Bad, alive. No one else does and they all believe that she's insane. Turns out he's alive and dangerous. It's likely she's one of his first victims because she knows the truth. Kelly does have a habit of insisting that You Have to Believe Me! though.
• "Headshot", an episode of The Haunting Hour, does an interesting twist on this trope, in that the villain is the one who tells the truth but isn't believed. The plot sees a girl named Gracie approached by a photographer named—surprise, surprise—Cassandra, who offers to take her photo and enter her in a contest to be the new "face" of Teen Teen Magazine. Though Gracie seems nice at first, she soon begins to go to extreme lengths to win, including spiking another contestant's (who's also one of her best friends) smoothie with an allergen and framing another member of her friend group for cheating on a test so she can avoid the consequences. Gracie's friend Lexi is sure that Cassandra has hypnotized her by taking her photo (especially because it's extremely clear that Cassandra is literally a Devil in Plain Sight), and goes to the photographer demanding that she undo the spell. But Cassandra explains that she hasn't done anything but encourage Gracie's true colors to show—if she was truly a good person, she would have deleted the photo that serves as her link to Cassandra immediately. Lexi refuses to believe this and decides to delete the photo herself... but Cassandra was speaking the truth: Gracie was the one who had to make the choice to save her character and soul over fame and beauty, and because she didn't, she's been permanently transformed into a hideous monster.
• Heroes
  • In the first episode, Claire announces at the dinner table, "I walked through fire today, and I didn't get burned." However, her mother thinks she's just being metaphorical and profound. Although to be fair, her brother was fairly suspicious and her mother isn't the sharpest anymore since the Haitian has been repeatedly wiping her memory which has resulted in the equivalent of punching her brain.
  • Angela Petrelli explicitly references the Trope Namer when she talks about her ability in the episode "Into Asylum". She also states that trying to work around this skepticism is what turned her into the Manipulative Bitch that we all know and love today.
• Himmelsdalen: Helena finds herself locked in a secure mental institution where everyone believes that she's her dangerous twin. No one believes Helena is who she says, instead of her twin Siri. Those who do entertain it don't for long, since things always point the other way. Until the last few episodes, but then those with interests in doing so cover it up.
• House, M.D.:
  • In the Season 5 finale, House believes that he's begun a relationship with Cuddy, but it turns out to be a hallucination. When he actually gets together with Cuddy a season later, Wilson is understandably reluctant to believe it, first worrying that House is hallucinating again, and then believing that House is just messing with him. It takes Cuddy confirming it before Wilson accepts that it's true.
• House of Anubis:
  • Nobody listened to Patricia in her claims that Joy was in danger. Justified, because at the time she had been taking it too far and also erroneously believed Nina was involved. When she starts getting actual proof and cools down from her hatred of Nina, people start to actually listen.
  • When KT is framed for being a sinner who is working for Team Evil against Sibuna, no-one believes her when she states the truth, that she's innocent. Once Patricia reveals to her that she is really the Sinner, it just gets worse as the team would rather believe Patricia. This one is more idiotic on Sibuna's side, as Patricia was acting really out-of-character, which should have been a sign of something being wrong.
• iCarly
  • The focus of "iTwins". Freddie doesn't believe that Sam really has a twin sister after being pranked twice and not having seen Sam and Melanie at the same time. Also, Carly doesn't believe Spencer's accusations of the multitudes of abuse he got from Chuck.
  • In "iSpace Out", a little girl finds her way into the apartment, but when Spencer tried to show her to a police officer, she'd hidden somewhere. Subverted in that even the audience is left to wonder if the girl was even real in the first place.
• I Didn't Do It: In the episode "Dance Fever", nobody believes Lindy as she repeatedly insists that Sherri is out to get her. They dismiss her frantic claims with the assumption that her (physical) fever is making her delirious, as Sherri is supposedly the nicest girl in school. But Lindy has already become wise to her true colors.
• A staple of I Dream of Jeannie, where any character who tries to report Jeannie's magic is considered crazy by the authority receiving the report. For example, whenever Dr. Bellows convinces the general to come see the latest curiosity related to Tony, Jeannie has removed all traces of it by the time the general arrives.
• Into the Dark: In "Blood Moon" the police chief doesn't believe Esme when she insists Luna is dangerous and must be locked up in a cell while they're inside the police station, thinking she's a depraved abusive mother. As the moon turns full, Luna (a werewolf) turns into a wolf and slaughters all of the police.
• This was the plot to The Invaders (1967). David Vincent discovers a secret invasion by aliens disguised as humans, but is unable to prove it to anyone and has to fight them alone. Eventually Subverted when he starts getting help from a group of "believers" who have also had alien encounters.
• During an episode of The Invisible Man, Darien's ex-mentor shows up at his place to catch up and offer him a stake in her heist.
  Liz: You went up for life on a third strike rap, it was in all the papers. How'd you get out?
  Darien: Well... if you must know, I was pardoned by a secret intelligence agency who surgically implanted a gland into my brain to turn me into a super-agent.
  Liz: ... You don't wanna talk about it. That's cool.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Played for Laughs in Kamen Rider Blade as Hajime Aikawa tells Amane Kurihara he is monster, but does so while trying to scare her and she doesn't have any reason to think he is not playing with her. She gets to know it was the truth much later. Hajime is the Joker Undead, the destroyer of all life.
  • Yuri Aso in Kamen Rider Kiva is always being told Cassandra Truths ("I'm 105 years old.", "Your love interest is actually a homicidal monster who wants to use you to repopulate his race.") but never believes them. You would think a professional monster hunter would be less skeptical. Within the series, it's assumed that any monstery things other than the Fangire are extinct because of the Fangire. Why would a professional vampire hunter think that one of her suitors is a werewolf seeking to use her as a baby factory, that his friends the little shoe shine boy and the tall silent masseuse are a fishman and Frankenstein's Monster respectively?
  • In Kamen Rider Decade, self-proclaimed prophet Narutaki spends most of the series claiming that the title character is the Destroyer of Worlds and must be stopped. It looks like this trope because Tsukasa/Decade is doing his best to save parallel worlds and is actually connecting them. This isn't helped by the fact that even people like Kazuma Kenzaki say the same thing. It turns out Narutaki was right and wrong — Decade is supposed to destroy the Rider multiverse, but by connecting the worlds beforehand Tsukasa not only created a way to bring them back, but ensured that they would continue to exist forever.
    • What really makes this a Mind Screw: It's never clear what Narutaki's motive even is. In a couple of movies he's taken on the identities of past Kamen Rider villains, implying that he's Decade's Evil Counterpart and wants the Riders out of the way so he can take over, but in others he helps out the Riders (and the Rangers) seemingly without any kind of ulterior motive. Reportedly the creators of Decade do have a full backstory set up for him that would explain everything, but going on ten years since the show ended it seems unlikely that the story will ever be told.
  • Lampshaded in Kamen Rider Gaim, where Kaito Kumon is fully aware that Mitsuzane "Micchy" Kureshima is a traitor who wants to kill Kouta Kazuraba, but doesn't bother telling him because he knows this trope will be in play. Kaito even makes a demonstration of it, suggesting that there's Mole in their midst while the traitor is in the room but Kouta brushes it off, and Kaito tells the traitor (who's shooting him a Death Glare) "See? He wouldn't believe me even if I told him." Later on, Yoko Minato joins the good guys and tells Kouta to his face "Mitsuzane Kureshima has been deceiving you all along". Again, he doesn't believe it — and of course, this is the episode where Mitsuzane finally abandons all pretense and just attacks Kouta openly.
  • Like Blade, Kamen Rider Ghost also uses this as a joke. Grandma Fumi doesn't believe when the weird new kid who turned up at her takoyaki stand says he is three times older than she is (in her seventies). She didn't know that the kid is Alain, the 160 years old Ganma prince.
• In one episode of Kyle XY, Lori, Amanda, Hillary, and Declan go to a college bar to try and get a DJ for the prom, and Declan starts a brawl. Later in the episode, when her parents ask her what she did that day, she tells them the truth, only to have it laughed off. Josh also says something along the lines of, "If you wanted it to be believable, you should've left Amanda out of it."
• Leverage: Many episodes end with the bad guy babbling hysterically to the authorities about how they've been set up, throwing around wild (and of course absolutely true) accusations about how the protagonists are not what they seem and have been conspiring against him. Framing the Guilty Party is optional but often involved, such as in "The Bank Shot Job" where they successfully frame a corrupt small-town judge for a bank robbery and have him dragged out of the bank in handcuffs screaming about how the whole thing is a conspiracy to destroy him.
• In The Listener, Toby has a terrible time getting anyone to listen to the information he learns, mainly because he can't source it without revealing his secret. He had to put up with it so much in the first season that when he met Michelle in the second, he just came out and told her, using his powers to read her every thought and answer her verbally until Michelle realized he was for real.
• In an episode of Lois & Clark, the recurring villain Tempus (a bored time-traveler from the idyllic future) travels to a parallel world, followed by the titular characters. After beating him, he has a press conference where he publicly outs Superman's identity... Cue Lois and Clark appearing in the crowd with Superman (from this 'verse) standing near Tempus. Naturally, no one notices the uncanny resemblance, as Tempus is taken to an insane asylum.
• Lost:
  • In "Raised by Another", Claire tells everyone that someone is attacking her in her sleep and trying to inject something into her pregnant belly. They all dismiss this as vivid dreams of a pregnant woman, only to feel suitably guilty when Ethan (who has indeed been giving her injections) kidnaps Claire and almost kills Charlie.
  • Another episode had Sayid traveling back in time to the 1970's along with some other characters. He is forcefed a pill forcing him to tell the truth. He does, and everyone thinks there must be something wrong with the pill.
  • Yet another episode had Hurley finally coming clean to Charlie that he was a multi-millionaire lottery winner. Charlie thinks Hurley's just messing with him.
• Lucifer (2016):
  • Lucifer is totally up front on how he's the Devil come to Earth, and annoyed people like cop Chloe don't believe him.
    Chloe: I'm going to figure out your secret.
    Lucifer: It's not a secret when I'm telling you!
  • Therapist Linda spends the first season and a half assuming Lucifer's constant talk on God, Heaven, Hell and angels is all some grand metaphor for his life. It takes seeing Lucifer with his demonic face for Linda to finally accept the truth.
  • Played with in season three when Lucifer discovers Pierce is Cain, the world's first murderer, condemned to walk the Earth ever since. When Lucifer threatens to tell everyone who Pierce is, Pierce scoffs to go right ahead as "no one even believes you're the Devil."
  • Sure enough, when Lucifer tells Chloe, she doesn't believe him (Lucifer being wild after staying awake for a week doesn't help). In the season finale, Lucifer relates how Pierce told him that he was really helping the Sinnerman serial killer. When a shocked Chloe asks whey Lucifer didn't tell her this, he matter-of-factly states he did tell her clear off and she didn't believe him.
  • Likewise, Lucifer's bartender, Maze, makes no secret of how she's a demon yet Chloe, Ella, Dan and others assume she's just a rough human.
  • Maze shows her true demonic face to Chloe's daughter, Trixie...but because it's Halloween, Trixie assumes it's just a really cool disguise.
  • In season 4, Lucifer point-blank lays it all out to Ella on how he's the Devil and everything and she thinks it's some sort of "character role play."
    • This is brought up again in season 6 after Ella figures out the truth at her own. When Lucifer insists he never lied to her about being the devil, she angrily disagrees pointing out he willingly let her believe he's an actor instead of going further into the matter.
  • Later in the season, Chloe presses Lucifer to bring Ella and Dan into the loop. Lucifer basically points out that he's been completely honest to them on who he is and that they don't believe him. It would take seeing his "demon face" to buy it and, as he knows from experience, normal humans don't handle that well.
  • Season 5 has Dan finally discovering the truth and when he yells at Lucifer tricking everyone, Lucifer scoffs that he has never once hidden who he is from Dan or the others.
• MA Dtv, in a parody of Medium. Allison repeatedly tries to warn the District Attorney of an impending homicide.
  Allison: A man named Martin Grier is going to kill a woman named Susan Monroe at 466 South 27th street.
  DA: I don't understand... Who is Susan Monroe?
  Allison: She came to me in a dream last night.
  DA: I don't understand... a dream?
  Allison: ... Yeah... a dream. Every week I have a dream that helps you solve a crime... Every week.
  DA: I don't understand. Allison, just because you had a dream doesn't mean I can send my men on a wild goose chase.
  Allison: ... Well, you could send them to 466 South 27th street...
  • Oddly enough, it's averted in Medium a lot.
• Malcolm in the Middle episode "Tutoring Reese" has problem child Reese complaining that his teacher, Mr. Woodward, is sabotaging his grades and is out to get him, but Lois counters that he's been using that excuse since kindergarten. When the much smarter Malcolm agrees to test his theory by doing a homework assignment for him, Reese gets an F again and Malcolm (and Lois when she finds out) confirm that Mr. Woodward really is out to get him.
• This Trope was lampooned in an episode of Married... with Children, where aliens were coming into the house and stealing Al's socks. His attempts to tell anyone was met by both disbelief and sarcasm. (Marcie quipped, "Why do UFOs always visit idiots?") Eventually Al gave up trying to convince them and started trying to photograph them, hoping to sell the photos.
• Merlin (2008):
  • Done hilariously when he runs into the throne room, claiming he is a wizard, to protect Gwen who is about to be executed. Arthur (who doesn't know about Merlin being a wizard) comes to his rescue, by saying he is in love with Gwen and claiming that there's no way an idiot like Merlin could possibly be a wizard.
  • Merlin does this on an amusingly regular basis. When he's under Morgana's influence and Leon asks him why he needs a crossbow, Merlin cheerfully admits that he's going to kill Arthur. Leon laughs it off.
  • Merlin also regularly stumbles upon a Cassandra Truth. He either has no evidence or the evidence disappears.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Sauce for the Goose", both Scott and Joyce tell Barnaby that Helen Plummer could well be the murderer several times. She is.
• In The Millionaire, each episode features somebody anonymously receiving a check for one million dollars from an Eccentric Millionaire. Some of the recipients — which include a twelve year old boy, a man with a reputation for spinning tall tales, and a man who was traumatized by the collapse of his business and has had delusions of sudden windfalls before — have trouble persuading their friends and family that their new fortune is real.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: In episode 54, Pipin sees Bambang and Melani walking together while holding hands and deduces that they are secretly in relationship. When she tells the others, Juna, Prima and Mami Bibir find the idea ridiculous and assume Pipin just missaw something. Alan also finds it hard to believe, but gives Pipin the benefit of the doubt and manages to find a proof to show to everyone.
• This happened nearly every week in the early episodes of Monk; the implausibility of Monk's theory about the crime would be met with disbelief by Captain Stottlemeyer, and usually everyone else. The show wisely eventually dropped this, with Stottlemeyer beginning to accept Monk's explanations because he always turns out to be right, even (reluctantly) defending Monk against each week's stand-in skeptic.
• Used for comedy in this early Monty Python's Flying Circus episode, where John Cleese's Customs officer refuses to believe that Michael Palin's character is a smuggler, despite the fact that he's loaded with contraband.
• Virtually everything the immortal John says to his coworkers in New Amsterdam (2008). He barely makes any secret about being 400 years old as he knows no one is going to believe it and just write him off as eccentric.
  • Eva asks how John knows sign language and reading lips. When he replies that he "lost my hearing for a few months from a mortar shell at Normandy", she just rolls her eyes.
• Nirvana in Fire: Mei Changsu admits he's a member of Prince Qi's household to Xia Jiang partly so that he will sound even crazier and discredit himself when he reports it to the emperor. Mei Changsu even explains away Xia Jiang's claim to Jingyan by saying he lied about his identity for this very effect.
• No Tomorrow: Almost everyone thinks Xavier's a bit eccentric at least for thinking there's an asteroid headed to Earth, the professional astronomers included. Then his theory turns out to be right.
• Odd Squad:
  • Throughout "The Jackies", Octavia keeps running into Oprah's office with various fruits, attempting to explain that they've all been afflicted with oddness. Every time she does, however, Oprah brushes her off because she believes that fruit on its own isn't odd. Eventually, Octavia ends up being right on the money, and the five fruits she brings in is what gives Precinct 13579 a final push into winning the Jackie Awards for the first time since Odd Squad became a thing back in cavemen times.
  • Subverted in "Disorder in the Court" when Olive is arrested by Owen and two other Security agents on the (false) accusation that she shrunk the town museum. She tries to tell Oprah that the accusation placed on her is false, and Oprah believes her, calling a trial of Odd Squad Court to determine whether Olive is guilty or innocent.
  • In "Oscar Strikes Back", when President Obbs uses Mass Hypnosis to control nearly all the Scientists at Lab-Con, Oscar — who is not under his influence — runs out of the conference room in a panic and manages to run into Oprah, sitting outside and reading a magazine. However, she believes that he's trying to sneak out and refuses to listen to his pleas that she and him have to make a run for it, claiming that he's just making up excuses and stopping him whenever he tries to run. It isn't until she sees the mind-controlled Scientists for herself that she believes him fully.
  • This is a crucial part of the plot for the Season 3 premiere "Odd Beginnings". Opal, Oswald and Orla are the only agents who know that the 44-leaf clover, an Odd Squad Artifact of Power, is real — everyone else believes that it's nothing more than a legend, up to and including the Big O. At the beginning of the episode, Omar is brought into the loop on the clover's existence by Opal, and he too believes that it's real, journeying with Opal and teaming up with Oswald and Orla in order to find the clover and retrieve it.
• On The Office (US), Jim hid Andy's cell phone in the ceiling and started calling it so Andy would hear his phone ringing but have no idea where it was. Eventually, Jim said "Maybe it's in the ceiling," to which Andy replied, "Maybe you're in the ceiling!" and continued looking.
• Once Upon a Time: Sure, kiddo. Everyone in this small town is a fairy-tale character with amnesia. Your (adopted) mom hauled you into a shrink and you end up calling the shrink Jiminy Cricket. You're a little messed up in the head... hey, wait. What's your mom doing with those shards of glass coffin and that secret door in the graveyard...? Justified in that most of the town is cursed not to notice anything strange (such as Henry being the only child who gets older each year) and of the three characters who aren't, two are already in on the secret and the third is a hardcore skeptic who lacks Henry's experience with the town's weirdness.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • Subverted in "Living Hell". A guy is caught after he warned the cops about the actions of a Serial Killer who he's been telepathically linked to for the last several weeks. The cops initially believe that he's the killer, but after he provides proof of the neural device implanted in his brain, they believe him.
  • In "Promised Land", Rebecca warns the other humans that plants and fruits were poisoned by the Tsal-Khan, but many eat them anyway. Most of them die as a result.
  • In "Ripper", Dr. Jack York's efforts to convince his fiancée Lady Ellen and Inspector Harold Langford that Jack the Ripper is an alien creature that jumps from body to body fall on deaf ears. They instead believe that he is the Ripper and he is arrested and committed to an asylum. Lady Ellen visits him in the asylum and tells him that she is going to America as she needs time away from England. Immediately afterwards, Inspector Langford tells him that he is retiring from the police force and that he will be Lady Ellen's escort in America, which he describes as "the land of opportunity." He then coughs up green bile, indicating that he has been possessed by the creature. As he leaves, Langford assures Jack that Lady Ellen will "hardly feel a thing."
  • Discussed in "Final Appeal, Part One". In 2076, the time traveler Dr. Theresa Givens has been sentenced to death for possessing and promoting the use of advanced technology. She compares herself to the prophetess Cassandra given that she has travelled further into the future and has seen that humanity will be wiped out by a devastating plague in 2105. The scientists of that time will be unable to combat it due to the anti-technology laws.
  • In "A New Life", Daniel follows Father, the leader of the religious community where he has lived for the last two years, into the woods and sees him transform into an alien and vanish in a flash of light. Later that night, Daniel, his wife Beth and their newborn son William leave the village but, after walking about ten miles, they are confronted by Some Kind of Force Field which blocks their path. They find Jacob, a former member of the community who left more than a year earlier, living rough in the forest. After bringing them to his cave, Jacob tells Daniel and Beth that the barrier covers an area of 20 square miles and extends into the sky. The next morning, Daniel awakens to find that Jacob has been killed and Beth has been attacked. Before he can even process this, he is found by Father and other community members and brought back to the village. His efforts to persuade the others that Father is an alien who has framed him are unsuccessful and he is sentenced to burn at the stake. Beth was brain damaged in the attack and therefore cannot corroborate his story.
• Painkiller Jane: The neuro in Episode 4 ("Catch Me If You Can") sees the future, but like Cassandra no one ever believed him when he tried to warn people about coming disasters.
• Person of Interest:
  • Root's Start of Darkness came when she witnessed her best friend get kidnapped (and was later murdered and secretly buried) and nobody believed her when she reported what she saw to the police.
  • The superintendent of an apartment building keeps telling everyone how he used to own night clubs in Miami and had a mansion where he kept a pet tiger. Everyone thinks he is just a harmless old coot but it is all true and the man sacrificed all his wealth to testify against the Mob. He is also planning to kill a stalker who is targeting a young women living in the building.
  • Played for Laughs when Finch infiltrates a mental institution used by Samaritan as a front for their operations. He manages to get himself admitted as a paranoid schizophrenic by claiming that multiple gangs, as well as an all-seeing artificial intelligence, are out to get him, and that he goes by many aliases, all inspired by the names of birds, as a way to evade them. He clinches it by saying that is isn't paranoia if they're really after you.
  • Finch tried the same tactic by revealing there's an evil AI to get himself disqualified from jury duty. However, he had to backtrack when he realized the Machine wanted him on the jury to keep track of a number.
  • A radio show host discovers that what people assume is just incidental static emitted by various electronic gadgets, is actually a bunch of coded transmissions. Finch and Root quickly realize that the man has stumbled on Samaritan's secret communication network. The radio host tries to expose the truth on his show but his show caters to conspiracy theorists so he has no credibility with the general public. Even the conspiracy theorists do not believe him.
• Power Rangers:
  • In the Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue episodes where the current Rangers team up with the previous group, the plot starts with a young girl discovering that aliens are secretly kidnapping people in the building her father works at. When trying to tell the genial old secretary on the first floor about it, the woman kindly informs her that monsters don't exist. Despite the fact that they live in an area currently infested by demons that attack weekly in an effort to completely wipe their city off the map so they can recreate their ancient society, and the Earth had been menaced for years before that by the villains of previous seasons very publicly, including a full-on Alien Invasion by the United Alliance of Evil during Power Rangers in Space.
  • Power Rangers Zeo had a recursive Cassandra Truth, one time when Those Two Guys Bulk and Skull got caught up in an adventure and helped rescue some aliens. None of their friends believed them when they told the story - except the ones that were secretly the Rangers, but when they said so Bulk and Skull assumed they were just humoring them.
  • In one episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, the Monster of the Week has the power to induce complete and total amnesia in people, and manages to wipe the minds of all of the Rangers. Thankfully, Bulk and Skull are on hand to witness the monster's second attack and hear his declaration that the Rangers are now lost forever. Though they're obsessed with finding out the identities of the Power Rangers, Bulk and Skull realize that it's more important to save the heroes and have no one know about it rather than be right. They call the monster out and use mirrors to reflect his memory-wiping energy; though they end up losing their own memories of who the Rangers are, they do manage to reverse his effects on the team and allow them to defeat the creature. Bulk and Skull are left with a vague sense that they did something important, but doubt it; again, only the true Rangers know what really happened, and their telling the two they believe them convinces them they aren't crazy.
  • In Power Rangers Mystic Force Chip explained to the rest of the Rangers that Vida had been turned into a vampire. They immediately write this off as impossible despite the Rangers being magicians and fighting monsters every week.
    • The above falls more into Arbitrary Skepticism, but there's some scenes in later episodes where the Rangers tell Toby that they're Rangers. The first one is a Sarcastic Confession from Chip, but the second is them genuinely admitting it, which Toby still doesn't believe because they tried it on him before.
  • Power Rangers Time Force: While delivering a pizza, Trip the Green Ranger is attacked by a Black Knight monster. The other Rangers dismiss this as a lie despite existing in a universe with far stranger things in it. It isn't until the other Rangers see the knight in person that they realize Trip is telling the truth.
• Proven Innocent: Bellows tells Maddie Adele really was guilty, saying they had DNA evidence against her that got suppressed on a technicality. She doesn't believe it, but he turns out to be right.
• Psych:
  • In the pilot episode, Shawn tells the cops exactly how he solves crimes—he notices the relevant details on the TV news. It's only when the cops refuse to accept this and claim that he must be involved himself that he comes up with a lie that they will believe.
  • In "Truer Lies", Shawn has to prove the truth of a witness testimony given by a compulsive liar with a history of sending the police department on wild goose chases. It is heavily implied that Shawn is motivated to help him because he sees a lot of himself in the guy.
• Pushing Daisies:
  Olive: Why'd you fake your death? Is this an insurance scam? Are you and the pie maker in some kind of cahoots together?
  Chuck: I died. And he brought me back to life. Cahoots enough for you?
  Olive: If you don't want to tell me, just say so.
• Radio Enfer: As part of Dominique's social experiment, Germain lies to Carl and Maria, claiming that he won $1 million. At the end of the episode, he finally comes clean and admits that he's not a millionaire. Maria thinks he's suffering from amnesia and hits him with a frying pan, but he explains that he lied so he could get their support in order to become the president of the International Frog Collector Association, resulting in Maria wrongly believing he still has amnesia and repeatedly hitting him in the head with the frying pan.
• A Red Dwarf episode features a computer called Cassandra who can predict the future. However, her predictions aren't always as clear-cut as they seem and she tries to manipulate people by giving false predictions. In an interesting variant, though, she had been abandoned not because no one believed her predictions, but because no one wanted to hear them (because accurate truths about the future were often uncomfortable). She's not a perfect example of a Cassandra however, because her veracity was never really in doubt. However, Rimmer was so determined to believe that the 1st prediction of his death had some kind of Prophecy Twist that he actually managed to cause the twist and have another crewmember die whilst wearing Rimmer's name tagged jacket. He changed his tune, however, when the 2nd prediction of his death involved him having sex with Kochanski. Also, all her manipulations of the Red Dwarf crew came about because she was trying to alter her future and prevent her own death, which the end of the episode showed was impossible: she died due to Lister accidentally causing a chain reaction started by a piece of chewing gum.
• Resident Alien:
  • An alien is impersonating Dr. Harry Vanderspiegle. Young Max Hawthorne can see through "Harry"'s disguise, but can't convince anyone that "Harry" is really an alien. Despite this, Harry is still out to silence Max to keep his secret.
    • Eventually, the pair come to a truce with Max realizing accusing Harry of being an alien with no proof will just make his parents think he's crazy while Harry realizes that if anything happens to Max, it'll suddenly look suspicious.
  • At one point, the Harry alien actually outright tells the bartender D'Arcy that he tried to kill someone (Max) after drinking the local whiskey. She assumes he's being facetious and tells him that if he's going to try to kill someone again, he should Make It Look Like an Accident.
• In the late third season of Revenge (2011), Victoria begins to suspect, and ultimately confirms, that Emily is Amanda Clarke. However, Emily sets things up so that Victoria's knowledge comes across as madness.
• The Rising: Tom tries to tell Maria that their daughter Neve isn't gone, but still around (she has become a ghost). As he's The Alcoholic Maria doesn't believe this and gets angry with him in her grief, thinking he's making this up or hallucinated as a result of his drinking.
• In the season 2 finale of The Rookie (2018), Nolan suspects that Armstrong is a corrupt cop. He tracks down twisted serial killer Rosiland (who Armstrong arrested years ago) who relates she once broke into his house to discover evidence of Armstrong's corruption but kept quiet. As Rosiland herself sums up, who would take the word of a known serial killer over a respected police detective?
• Lately, Hank of Royal Pains. No one believes that his father, Eddie R., is as toxic as he claims. Not even Evan. Especially not Evan.
• Shark:
  • In the first season finale, Stark is able to finally convict serial killer Wayne Callison (who had walked on an obvious murder case before) of the murder of a young girl with Stark's team assuming Wayne's claims of innocence are just his usual game. At the end, Wayne is convicted and Stark shows up at his cell to reveal that he knows Wayne is innocent... because the girl committed suicide and Stark got an M.E., a female cop and the girl's mother to all agree to make it look like Wayne killed her as a massive frame job with his own team having no idea. Wayne smirks that Stark has just given him perfect grounds for an appeal, but Sebastian laughs at the idea he'd be telling all this if there was even a shred of evidence to prove it. There are no records, the body was cremated so it can't be tested for suicide and the only people who know will never talk. Thus, the only other person who knows the truth is an imprisoned psychopath, and who's going to believe him?
  • The second season (and series) finale has Collier returning to argue in court what Stark confessed. Sure enough, no one believes him as even Stark's team (who know the shady moves he's pulled) can't believe even he'd go that far (and, more importantly, that his ego wouldn't have him bragging about it). As it happens, Collier knows he won't be believed but is using the court appearance to escape.
• In an episode of Seinfeld, George is truthfully attempting to explain away a very strange series of coincidences to an old childhood friend, who is convinced that George is going insane and doesn't believe his (admittedly odd-sounding) explanations.
• Siren (2018): Ben naturally doesn't believe it at first after Xander tells him that a mermaid came up in their catch, before seeing one for himself. The same goes for Maddie and other people later.
• Done in Sister, Sister: Tamera promises her dad she'll tell the truth for the day, then sees his girlfriend with another man at a movie theater. When she tells him, he's so disappointed that she broke her promise... until he catches the girlfriend with the other guy when they go out to dinner.
• Played heartbreakingly straight in Skins, where Emily's coming out to her parents is assumed to be a sarcastic confession but is actually dead serious.
  Emily: I've been making love to a girl... Her name's Naomi. She's rather beautiful. So I was nailing her.
  [beat]
  Rob: OK, OK, I get it. Nice one, had me going there! [continues to bust up laughing]
• Smallville:
  • Government agents capture Lex who has trashed them effortlessly when possessed by Zod. He admits that an alien warlord has inhibited him and granted him with godlike powers, but naturally they don't believe him.
  • "Descent", when Lionel tries to warn Chloe about something. Admittedly, it is hard for her to believe him when he just kidnapped and tortured her best friend just last week...
  • Actually, whenever someone talks about "little green men" from space. Pete "reveals" Clark's secret twice, once to Chloe and the second time to a random crowd, this way.
• An episode of Space: Above and Beyond has Nathan as apparently the sole survivor of the 58th Squadron. His attempts to convince his superiors that the rest of his squadron is still alive are treated as symptoms of PTSD until almost the end of the episode.
• Stargate SG-1:
  • Throughout "Point of No Return", Martin Lloyd (who's portrayed as a strawman believer in conspiracy theories) tries to convince O'Neill that he's an alien with suppressed memory, and succeeds only after they discover the escape pod in which he landed. In "Wormhole X-Treme!", the situation is reversed: now it's O'Neill trying to convince Martin that he's an alien and subconsciously based the Show Within a Show on the real Stargate program. Martin thinks it's a practical joke and writes down O'Neill's explanations as plot ideas for his show.
  • However, most of the time, the show doesn't succumb to this trope. It's not unusual for a character to experience something highly unusual, like seeing the future, and have everyone believe them. When you've seen as much weird stuff as the SGC has, you become more willing to believe in the unusual. In fact, on several occasions, one character has told the others about a crazy theory/experience... and is met with short-lived skepticism. Short-lived, because it becomes an excuse to list off the other crazy things they've been through. Averting this makes sense considering the SGC is a military organization; being a little paranoid is right in its wheelhouse, and they figure it's better to investigate a crazy possibility than dismiss it out of hand and potentially have it bite them in the ass later.
  • Although one of the earlier instances of this was in "There But For the Grace of God", when Daniel Jackson goes into an alternate universe and sees the Goa'uld attack Earth. He claims that he has the coordinates of where the Goa'uld will attack from, but no one takes him seriously until later on.
    Samantha Carter: Daniel, it's not that we don't believe you.
    Daniel Jackson: So you do?
    Jack O'Neill: No. It's just that... we don't believe you.
  • Subverted later, after enough weird experiences result in people being more accepting. This usually results in whichever general is in command immediately believing the person without checking first, such as when Jonas claims to be seeing strange insect-like creatures throughout the base, which no one else can see. General Hammond orders an immediate lockdown.
    General Hammond: The things I've heard sitting in this chair.
• Played with in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "In the Cards".
  • Jake and Nog's Chain of Deals has attracted the attention of the bad guys, who refuse to believe they're going to all that effort to get a baseball card for Jake's dad. Jake therefore decides to take Refuge in Audacity, and instead claims they need the card for a secret Starfleet mission; Willie Mays is a time traveller, and they have to find out what he was doing in the past. After a moment of uncertainty, Weyoun accepts they were telling the truth the first time around.
  • In the same episode, Jake and Nog's attempts to tell station personnel that something weird is going on (without mentioning the card) consistently fail when they get to Dr. Elias Giger and his "cellular regeneration and entertainment device" (understandably, since the implication of the episode is that this is Technobabble by Star Trek standards). Weyoun turns out to believe that as well.
• Star Trek: Enterprise:
  • The Xindi story arc features a few of these. Most notably, Daniels has to bring Archer to the future to see the truth of the Xindi's misguided attempts to destroy humanity. When Archer tried to explain to the Xindi that not only was humanity not going to attack them, they were actually going to join forces at some point in the future and defeat a common foe, the Xindi council almost has him executed for his "blasphemy". Admittedly the Xindi did see this foe as gods/angels at the time and they had a different story of future events.
  • In the follow-up episode to the events of Star Trek: First Contact, Archer remembers that Zefram Cochrane related a simplified version of the events of the film. At the time, people had dismissed it as one of his drunken flights of fancy. He gives it more attention now that he's actually dealing with the Borg.
• In season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, when the team time travels to 2024, Rios is arrested by ICE for being an undocumented Hispanic in LA. When an ICE officer comes to ask for his name, Rios tells him his name, then explains that he's a captain of a starship who has time traveled to prevent the creation of an alternate timeline. He says it in such a way as to make it clear that he doesn't expect anyone to believe him. The officer just shakes his head and leaves, although he later sarcastically calls Rios "Captain".
• Interestingly, this is often subverted in Star Trek: The Next Generation. As Picard openly points out, he and the Enterprise crew have seen so many wild and unusual events that they're open to the idea of something even if it seems impossible.
  • In "Remember Me", people are disappearing left and right, but Dr. Crusher is the only one who notices; as soon as they disappear, nobody has ever heard of them. Nevertheless, although the remaining crew members don't know what to make of Dr. Crusher's increasingly frantic assertions about people they have no memory of (ultimately, it's just her and Picard, and he believes firmly that just the two of them have always been the entire crew), none of them ever simply dismiss her concerns.
  • In "Realm of Fear", Barclay, an officer known for extreme nervousness and bad relations with others, insists he saw some sort of alien creature while inside a transporter beam. Picard gives him a long look... then orders the transporters taken off-line and Geordi and Data to go over every inch of the systems. Picard knows Barclay is fully aware of his already-fragile reputation and wouldn't be making a claim like this unless he truly believed it...and as it turns out, he's right.
• Stranger Things:
  • Even when Will's "body" is found in the ravine, Joyce insists that her son is not dead, and that he communicates to her through the lights in her house. Understandably, everyone else in town just thinks she's going mad with denial and grief, especially as she has a history with mental instability. Except she's right.
  • Defied in season 2, when Nancy and Jonathan want to reveal that the Hawkings Labs opened a portal to the Upside-Down, which got Nancy's friend Barbara killed. Murray Bauman tells them that he believes them, but that the press won't. He encourages them to instead spin a false but believable story (Barbara was killed by a gas leak from the labs) to bait more credible sources into investigating the labs and find the actual truth.
• Played for laughs in Supergirl (2015). A waitress asks Kara how she can eat sticky buns and stay so thin. Kara replies, "I'm an alien", with a completely straight face, and the waitress laughs and walks off.
• Supernatural:
  • Gordon Walker in finds out about how children like Sam are supposed to be part of a demon army and tries repeatedly to convince Dean that Sam is evil and must be killed. And then in the beginning of Season 5 — oops! — it's revealed that Sam is, and has always been destined to be, the vessel for Lucifer. But then in the season 5 finale it's subverted, because, as Bobby had pointed out in the previous episode, if anyone could overcome the effects of Satanic possession, Sam can. Which, thanks in part to both The Power of (Brotherly) Love and to Dean's heroic stubbornness/suicidal co-dependency, Sam does.
  • Sam and Dean invoke this in "Sam, Interrupted" when they need to con their way into a mental institution for a hunt: They tell the psychiatrist in charge all about their Demon Slaying, knowing that no lie they can make up will ever sound crazier than that.
• Survivor: In her first two seasons, Sandra Diaz-Twine just couldn't seem to convince anyone that her Arch-Enemy from each season (Johnny Fairplay in Pearl Islands and Russel Hantz in Heroes vs Villains) shouldn't be trusted until it was pretty much too late to vote them out. Interestingly, she actually made this work to her favor as, once she got to final tribal council, the main argument she used for why she deserved the money was the fact that she was able to do the one thing no one else could and see right through the Big Bad.
• Taken: Due to the aliens' psychic powers, people in close proximity to them suffer serious health problems and often die as a result. The first sign is typically a Psychic Nosebleed. In "Beyond the Sky", Sally Clarke develops one after spending only a few minutes in John's presence. It eventually becomes apparent that the aliens are so interested in the Keys family, continually abducting Russell, Jesse and Charlie over the course of almost 50 years, because they are immune to the harmful effects that typically come with prolonged exposure. In "Beyond the Sky", Russell is the only one of the ten men aboard the B-17 bomber who were abducted on August 1, 1944 to survive more than three years after being exposed. The immunity of the Keys family is crucial to the aliens' attempts to create a viable hybrid.
• In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, practically everything Ellison says is dismissed by the FBI but is completely true.
• In the 1986 Jim Henson TV special The Tale of the Bunny Picnic, Bean (Steve Whitmire) tries to convince his older brother Lugsy (the late Richard Hunt) that he saw a dog (Jim Henson himself) in the lettuce patch, but Lugsy keeps telling him that there is no dog. It isn't until the dog attacks the bunnies' community that Lugsy finally believes him...
• Touched by an Angel:
  • A few episodes have Monica up front on being an angel and naturally not believed.
  • When she's arrested as part of a drug bust, Monica has no choice under oath but to tell the court who she is. Naturally, her public defender insists she put into a psychiatric hospital for observation and the judge agrees (which ends up working out as Monica had to find a former angel who'd suffered a breakdown).
• In a Tracker (2001) episode, a fugitive kills someone inside the bar after Mel lets people in during a snowstorm. Cole tells Vic about his being an alien searching for alien fugitives, and Vic naturally thinks he's crazy.
• One Tru Calling storyline involved a journalist investigating why Tru was present at so many crime scenes. In the end, an exasperated Tru told her about how she relived days... to which the journalist scoffed and promised to unearth the real truth.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • In "The Time Element", Peter Jenson attempts to warn the authorities about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. However, they do not believe him and come to the conclusion that he is delusional. Jenson does not help his case when he is asked to identify the President of the United States and he initially says Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  • In "And When the Sky Was Opened", Colonel Clegg Forbes frantically attempts to convince everyone that Colonel Ed Harrington has disappeared and they have all forgotten that he ever existed but to no avail. Major William Gart finally realizes that he was telling the truth when Forbes disappears and he is the only one to remember him.
  • In "Back There", Peter Corrigan is arrested for disturbing the peace on April 14, 1865 when he goes to Ford's Theatre and starts banging on the stage door and yelling that Abraham Lincoln is going to be assassinated during the performance of Our American Cousin that night. The police believe that he is either drunk or a Union soldier who is emotionally disturbed.
  • In "Person or Persons Unknown", David Gurney awakes one morning to discover that no one recognizes him or has even heard of him. He desperately tries to convince everyone that he meets of his identity and, in most cases, that they know him very well but without success.
  • In "The Dummy", Jerry Etherson desperately tries to convince his agent Frank that his dummy Willie really is alive. At Frank's insistence, he has gone to see numerous psychiatrists and tried to convince them of the same thing but they all diagnosed this belief as a symptom of schizophrenia.
  • In "No Time Like the Past", Paul Driscoll attempts to warn a Hiroshima police captain about the impending atomic bombing on August 6, 1945 and the captain of the RMS Lusitania about its impending sinking by the U-20 on May 7, 1915 but both of them believe that he is insane.
  • In "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", Bob Wilson frantically attempts to convince everyone that there is a gremlin on the wing of the plane but no one believes him. His credibility is severely suspect since he has just been released from a sanatarium after having a nervous breakdown on a plane six months earlier. However, Rod Serling says in his closing narration that the damage to the plane's engine will be discovered and Bob will be vindicated.
  • In "The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms", Sgt. William Connors and Private Michael McCluskey, both of whom are extremely knowledgeable about the Battle of Little Bighorn, believe that they have gone back in time to June 25, 1876. Corporal Richard Langsford thinks that it is nothing more than an illusion but he eventually realizes the truth of the situation. When they return to base camp, Captain Dennet does not believe them either but he is later convinced when he sees the three soldiers' names on the Custer Battlefield National Memorial.
  • In "Black Leather Jackets", Scott tells Ellen Tillman that he is an alien whose race intends to exterminate humanity by poisoning their water supply with deadly bacteria. She does not believe his story and tells her parents Stuart and Martha. Stuart then calls the police to report that Scott is mentally disturbed and needs help. Deputy Sheriff Harper turns out to be an alien and Scott is taken away, presumably to be killed.
  • In "Caesar and Me", Jonathan West attempts to prove to his landlady Agnes Cudahy and the police that his ventriloquist's dummy Caesar is alive and convinced him to rob both the delicatessen and the nightclub. However, Caesar refuses to speak in front of them and Jonathan, who is presumed to be insane, is arrested.
  • In "Come Wander With Me", Mary Rachel is unable to convince Floyd Burney that they have experienced the events surrounding the death of Billy Rayford many times before.
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In "The Burning Man", Doug and Aunt Neva pick up a dirty, disheveled man while driving through Kansas. He immediately begins ranting and raving about people who are born evil, telling Doug and Aunt Neva that they should be wary of genetic evil. He compares such people to seventeen year locusts and warns that they eat people "fried, cooked, boiled and parboiled." Aunt Neva has finally had enough of his wild stories and throws him out of her car. That night, the two of them pick up a strange boy in a white suit who claims to have been left behind after a town picnic. After making the car stop, the boy asks Doug and Aunt Neva, "Have you ever wondered if there was such a thing as genetic evil in the world?" The headlights of the car then go out, implying that he is going to kill Doug and Aunt Neva.
  • In "The Little People of Killany Woods", no one in Kelly's pub believes Liam O'Shaughnessy when he says that he has seen Leprechauns under a giant toadstool in Killany Woods. When he follows Liam to the woods in the hope of getting more gold, Mike Mulvaney discovers that the little people are actually aliens and that the toadstool is their spaceship. He returns to Kelly's to tell the townspeople what he saw but none of them believe him.
  • In "The Once and Future King", Gary Pitkin is an Elvis Impersonator from 1986 who assumed the identity of Elvis Presley after accidentally killing him on July 4, 1954. In the 1970s, he tries to convince Sandra, who will be his manager by 1986, that he is simply pretending to be the real King. However, Sandra doesn't believe him. She later comes to think that it was merely another example of Elvis' often strange and eccentric behavior towards the end of his life.
  • In "The Convict's Piano", Ricky Frost tells the prison doctor Puckett that he was transported back in time to 1899 and 1917 after playing songs from those years on the old piano in the reception hall. Puckett clearly does not believe a word that he is saying. The next day, Ricky tells Eddie O'Hara that he can come with him to 1928 and get his revenge on his old nemesis Mickey Shaughnessy if he touches the piano while he is playing "Someone to Watch Over Me". Eddie retorts that he has been in prison too long to believe in magic. However, he realizes that Ricky is telling the truth when he disappears in front of his eyes. He receives further proof when Shaughnessy is sent forward in time after playing the piano himself.
  • In "The Card", Linda Wolfe is unable to convince her husband Brian that the family had a cat named Boris and a dog named Scooby who have disappeared and whom only she can remember. Brian thinks that she should see a psychiatrist because of these delusions about non-existent pets. The situation becomes even more serious when their children Matt, Evan and B.J. disappear, having been acquired by the card company. Brian explains to Linda that they never had any children and tries in vain to calm her down. He is even more convinced than before that she is having a breakdown.
  • In "Private Channel", an obnoxious teenage boy named Keith Barnes gains the ability to read minds using his Walkman after his flight is struck by lightning. He soon discovers that one of the passengers intends to blow up the plane. Keith tries to warn the stewardess Gloria but she thinks that he is making a sick joke and tells him that he could be arrested for doing so. She is also not inclined to believe him because they had an earlier run-in when he rudely refused to turn off his Walkman.
  • In "Voices in the Earth", Professor Donald Knowles attempts to convince his friend, commanding officer and former student Jacinda Carlyle that the ghosts of the dead Earth appeared to him while he was exploring the ruins of a library. However, they refuse his requests to make an appearance in Jacinda's presence. Jacinda is concerned that he may be going insane.
  • In "The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon", the psychiatrist Dr. Jeremy Sinclair does not believe the title character's claims that his contraption made from discarded odds and ends is vital to keeping the world in balance and preventing major catastrophes. He comes to the conclusion that Edgar is suffering from delusions of grandeur. However, Dr. Sinclair realizes that Edgar was telling the truth when he learns that the tiny South Pacific island of Tatoa was destroyed by a tidal wave at 3:17 pm local time, which is exactly what Edgar said would happen when his contraption was disturbed. Sinclair then rushes to Edgar's apartment to stop his landlady Mrs. Milligan from destroying it.
  • In "Something in the Walls", Sharon Miles, who voluntarily committed herself to Crest Ridge Sanitarium, tells her new psychologist Dr. Mallory Craig that there are creatures living in the walls and elsewhere that can only be seen if you look for long enough. She believes that the creatures are attempting to kill her and refuses to have anything with patterns in her presence as they can travel through these patterns. Dr. Craig believes that they are merely hallucinations and attempts to treat Sharon on that basis. Sharon is later absorbed into the wall and replaced by one of the creatures that has taken her form. However, Dr. Craig notices a crack in Sharon's room and becomes concerned that her fears may have been justified.
• The 1989 mini-series Twist of Fate has SS officer Helmut von Schreader hitting on the wild plan to have himself surgically altered to pass as Jewish prisoner Benjamin Grossman. Circumstances eventually lead to Grossman becoming a respected Israeli general and happy with his new life. A pair of his former cohorts track him down and threaten to reveal his identity if he doesn't supply them with uranium. Grossman, however, isn't too concerned, dryly asking which of these two wanted Nazi war criminals is going to fly to Israel to testify against him.
  Grossman: It'd be your word against mine. Two notorious war criminals against a concentration camp survivor now considered something of a hero in his adopted country.
• The Ultra Series uses this trope a lot, since the main protagonist is an Ultraman in human form or sharing his life force with a human host, allowing them to sense kaiju or alien activity before it happens... only for the defense team or civilians to scoff at their claims.
  • It becomes rather egregious in Return of Ultraman; even when the show is more than 12 episodes in, and Hideki Go (Ultraman Jack's human host) is proven right repeatedly about his claims of kaiju attacks, the MAT defense teams and civilians still refuse to believe him whenever he attempts to warn them of kaiju activity!
  • Ultraman Ace flips this around with the other human characters being the Cassandra trying to convince Hokuto (Ace's human host) there are monsters out there, which Hokuto doesn't believe initially. Notably, one episode has a child trying to convince his classmates that his father is turning into a monster after seeing eyes growing on his father's hands, which turns out to be a result of possession from the parasitic monster Brocken, and another instance where the monster from a boy's nightmares starts materializing in the real world in a lake, later turning out to be true with the monster in question being the dream-residing Dreamgillas.
  • Somewhat justified in the pilot episode of Ultraman 80, considering there have not been any kaiju activity for the past 5 years In-Universe. When Takeshi (Ultraman 80 in human form, who works as a schoolteacher) tries warning the school about an impending kaiju attack and for the school board to evacuate, the principal promptly asks if he's been reading too much manga. Cue kaiju suddenly materializing in the middle of the city.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019):
  • Klaus constantly claims to have contacted the "ghost" of the family's long-dead member Ben but they assume h's just high. It takes seeing Ben helping in the season 1 finale to believe it.
  • Vanya refuses to listen to Allison's warnings on Leonard which leads to more tragedy.
  • Season 2 has the siblings falling through time into the early 1960s. Naturally, their mentions of future events aren't believed by others. Allison is laughed at for the suggestion that not only will "Negroes" be given equal rights but a Black President will be elected. And that's from her fellow black activist workers.
  • Diego's attempts to warn that some random nutcase is going to kill President John F. Kennedy lands him in an insane asylum.
• Used somewhat originally in V (1983); the aliens announce their presence and are apparently very upfront about why they are visiting Earth. It's revealed that this is just a fallacy, and the actual reason is much worse. However, they bring cures to diseases we still haven't found among other helpful things and most are reluctant to listen to any who speak out against them. Things get worse once they start recruiting young people as eyes and ears to report on any who might oppose them.
• Victorious:
  • Cat tells Robbie she can't go to Prom with him because she has a date, who happens to be from another school. Robbie doesn't believe her, but it turns out he does indeed exist.
  • "Crazy Ponnie" is about Tori trying to convince the others that Ponnie, a girl she met while in the bathroom, is a real person (and later, that she is trying to sabotage her) but they all believe Tori is losing her mind. Tori was telling the truth.
• Voyagers!: Jeffrey, anguished about all the loss of life that's going to occur, tries to warn people that the Titanic is going to hit an iceberg. History continues on course because he can't get anyone to believe him.
• More than one episode of The Wild Wild West ends with West and Gordon in the unenviable position of explaining some mad scientist's seemingly impossible inventions/schemes to their superiors.
  • Subverted at the end of "The Night of The Lord of Limbo" as the pair are dragged back in time by a mad magician who wants to help the Confederacy win the Civil War. Upon returning to the present, Gordon wants to tell the entire story, thinking it's important such a fantastic adventure took place. One look at the stern boss and Arte realizes there's no way he'll sound like anything but a complete lunatic and amends his tale.
• War and Peace (1972): French Minister Joseph Fouche tries to persuade Napoleon not to invade Russia...in vain. Winter hits Napoleon's forces and they beat a hasty retreat.
• Wicked Science has average students Toby and Elizabeth hit by a device that turns them into super-geniuses. Toby's friends, Russ and Dina, believe him when he manages to clone a dinosaur in his room. But given Toby had been a C-level student, his teachers naturally refuse to accept he could suddenly score a perfect 100 on a test. Elizabeth (who wants to use her new gift for her own gain) frames Toby for cheating which his teacher accepts as more believable. Toby tries to prove his smarts by creating a hover mower but Elizabeth sabotages it so it looks like a lame prank and the entire school literally laughs at Toby's claims he and Elizabeth are super-geniuses. Toby's first instinct is to invent something else but Dina and Russ point out if people know about him, he could become a lab rat and Elizabeth has free reign over the school. Thus, no matter how bad things get with Elizabeth, Toby and his friends have to handle it themselves, knowing adults won't believe there's a war of super-scientists going on under their noses.
• On Wizards of Waverly Place, at first, Alex didn't believe Justin when he said that their Aunt Megan was just like her, but after Megan says that she doesn't like hard work, Alex comments, "Oh my gosh, she is just like me". Subverted later in the episode, when Justin rescinds his statement and points out the difference between the two of them: Megan never learned how to apologize or even admit that she was wrong.
• In Wolfblood, Shannon spends a large part of the first season trying to convince people that there's a monster on the moors. At one point, she becomes convinced that Maddy is the beast... which is of course true. Unfortunately for her, everyone else just thinks that Maddy is dating Rhydian and that's why they keep sneaking off.
• On Wonderfalls, inanimate objects with faces talk to Jaye Tyler. When her best friend, Mahandra, asks Jaye what's wrong, Jaye tells her the truth, which prompts Mahandra to tell Jaye that Mahandra is there to listen to Jaye when Jaye wants to tell her what's actually wrong. She also makes some references to the objects when talking to Eric, but he seems to assume that she's just a very strange person using odd metaphors.
• The X-Files:
  • Cassandra Spender, with her stories of alien abduction and alien intentions that were deluded and then real.
  • Amy Cassandra, who believed herself to be an abductee, appeared to have been executed along with her husband by Mulder, since Mulder's gun had been used to shoot them and he had their blood on his shirt. The truth here was not (necessarily) Amy's abduction, but that she and her husband died in a murder/suicide triggered by a radical psychiatric therapy that Amy, Mulder, and a local cop were receiving.
  • For that matter, Mulder, with his stories of aliens and government conspiracies.
  • The Lone Gunmen, with their government conspiracies that both rivaled and fueled Mulder's, were occasionally proven to be at least close to the truth.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Tummy Ache and a Whale of a Metaphor", Sheldon complains to everyone about abdominal pain, but no one takes him seriously, due to him being a massive hypochondriac. However, his illness was actually serious this time.
• In the Zoey 101 episode "Son of a Dean", Zoey didn't believe her roommates when they suspiciously told her that her boyfriend rigged a raffle because he's the son of the Dean of their school. However, after he openly admits of doing it, Zoey realized that her roommates were right about him rigging the raffle and apologized to them for not believing them.

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