Those who have been Conditioned to Accept Horror in Fan Works.
- In Aeon Entelechy Evangelion Asuka was desensitized to sanity losing situations Acquired Poison Immunity-style as a part of her pilot training.
- In And If That Don't Work? Asuka is subjected to operant conditioning to keep her functional after being burned by acid down to a "screaming potato" and then rebuilt as a cybernetic human-Evangelion hybrid. She happily notes that she doesn't get nightmares about it, ever. The alternative was admittedly a lot worse, however.
- The Butcher Bird (One Piece & Tokyo Ghoul): Six is so completely broken by his experiences as a member of the Necromonger Pirates that he barely reacts to even the most horrific situations.
- Child of the Storm:
- Harry Thorson's one of the more prominent examples, with all his traumatic experiences combining to leave him with a degree of Dissonant Serenity that startles even his 5000 plus year old grandfather, a veteran of cosmic warfare. All things told, it takes a lot to faze him. However, this is balanced by a metric fuckton of PTSD.
- More tragically, Maddie was conditioned all her life to accept treatment as inhuman Living Weapon and experiment, because that's what she was raised to believe she was made for. Gambit spends a long time coaxing her to accept the idea that she is allowed to be a person, though it takes a while to sink in. In fact, for added bitter irony, not only is she really Jean Grey's stolen-at-birth twin sister, but he's actually an artificially aged clone of Scott Summers who escaped Sinister's lab when he was physically seven. Neither of them either of these things. It is not pretty when she finds out the truth, and her capacity to be utterly indifferent in the face of grand-scale horror, but utterly daunted and tearfully baffled at the mere concept of people being kind to her, is very much Played for Drama.
- Dante mentions he is pushing sixty in Dante's Night at Freddy's, and that a lifetime of killing demons and losing family members has made him extremely jaded to the likes of the Freddy Fazbear characters.
- Dig Two Graves, a crossover between The Untamed and Catch Your Breath (a Naruto fanfic) has the following examples:
- Demonic cultivators regularly work with undead soldiers, which tends to make them inured to the horrors of death.
- Wei Wuxian is noted for being the most accomplished demonic cultivator, who treats most of the ghosts and other undead under his command like his friends. The sole exceptions are former enemies whom he raised from death to fight their own kin.
- Tomoe's Dark and Troubled Past helps her shrug off the existence of the undead. Helps that her katana radiates enough resentful energy to help mask her presence from them. She also disdains the use of excessive cruelty or torture for information, partly because she's a Living Lie Detector and considers such things a waste of time and effort.
- An unusually high number of soldiers at Stargate Command in I Still Say it Looks Like a Nail
are from Sunnydale as surviving on the Hellmouth has left them mentally flexible enough to deal with aliens and potential world ending situations with more ease than anyone else. - Most loopers in The Infinite Loops become this as, in between being caught in a never ending time loop, death not being able to stick and all the insanity that comes with different variant loops, things slowly stop phasing them to the point where something actually managing to phase them is considered to be O.O.C. Is Serious Business.
- Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: Chloe Cerise has been bullied so much, and has had little to no adult presence in her life, that she's not surprised that Asher is so terrified about her putting a demonic seal on a scabbard — said demonic seal is that of Marchosias, a fire-breathing wolf demon who Chloe states is her favorite demon but Asher is more freaked out because he's afraid of fire — and just tells him to get it over with. Give her every single insult he can spew out. Asher himself, who is basically a shadow from the TV World Car is disturbed at this.
- The Last Seidr: By the end of his second year at Hogwarts, Harry Potter had survived a Killing Curse, faced a mountain troll, smuggled a dragon out of the school, faced a three-headed dog, survived Voldemort's agent twice in the same month, flew a car across the country (and into a tree), disguised himself with Polyjuice, fought a forest of Acromantula, and defeated one of the deadliest monsters known to Wizard kind. By the time he gets to the MCU (right before the Chitauri invasion), he's basically this trope.
- Light's Song: Being a member of the Winchester clan in this AU, Luz has been through a lot, and gotten used to it. Just for starters, she's died dozens of times if the time loop is counted, and at Palisman adoption day she admits that she stopped having long-term goals years ago because she accepted it as a given that she wouldn't survive to adulthood.
- A Loud Among Demons deconstructs this; Lincoln becomes fearful that his growing desensitization to the depravity and madness that is Hell itself is a sign that he's losing touch with his humanity.
- In The New Age of Monsters, the Japanese have accepted the regularly occuring kaiju attacks on their country as part of everyday life.
- The Night Unfurls: In a war-torn region like the Kuroinu 'verse, this is bound to happen for people who manage to see things through.
- Enduring the nightmarish hell of Yharnam, together with presumably experiencing countless deaths, has made the Good Hunter desensitised to death, violence or any sort of harsh environment or anything one would certainly find unsettling.
- Sanakan and Hugh have bore many scars during their harsh lives as orphaned pickpockets. From how she confides to her mentor Kyril that they "didn't care about anything until the Black Dogs came", and that they didn't care if they survived or not, it is strongly implied that the two kids have developed shades of this trope, perfectly aware of the possibility of death, starvation or enslavement. This becomes more apparent throughout their tenures as hunters along with Lily and Soren, to any of those who are wondering just why they have not gone through some sort of Heroic BSoD or Sanity Slippage in the battlefield, especially after the ordeals in Rad (aka Yarha'Gul 2.0) and the Malys Estate.
- Lily reflects on this trope as she watches Chloe interrogating a thug affiliated with the Black Dogs via torture. A former nun, she would normally have been appalled by the usage of Cold-Blooded Torture, even towards unsavoury people. Ever since she had been taken hostage, tied to a post, and raped by the Black Dogs, she admits that it is hard to sympathize with them now, including the thug who is currently being tortured in front of her. To demonsrate this, she steps forward to stop Chloe from continuing... only to suggest putting the thug under isolation, deprived of sound for a day (aka. solitary confinement).
- Depictions of battlefields aside, this fanfic uses a considerable amount of effort to show the everyday conditions of the healers and clerics, how they feel about patching up the wounded soldiers and citizenry. Notable examples include Lily's P.O.V in Chapter 15, and Celestine's P.O.V in Chapter 24. Needless to say, playing this trope straight is pretty much essential if you are a healer. Apart from being accompanied with images of gore and lamentation from the injured all the time, both of which would give a lesser one nausea and constant headaches, they also have to cope with the all too often scenario where patients eventually succumb to their wounds despite their efforts. Gruelling work, indeed.
- The narration that describes Shamuhaza overseeing the Neverborn experiments reveals that he was once an acolyte easily nauseated by Black Magic. He got used to it eventually, now unfazed by even the most debauched of spells.
- In A Ninja's Guide to Gotham, Jason is stunned by what information Hayate offers about his life thus far, and is sure that the society he came from is a League of Assassins-tier abomination. Every time Hayate easily accepts Jason’s violent tactics, it makes him more and more uncomfortable.
- Light in NoHoper. His mother was killed gruesomely in a vampyre attack right in front of him when he was very young and then this is reinforced at the testing facility with the staff's casual attitude when most of the test subjects die.
- The Silver Raven: Luz's time on the Boiling Isles and surviving the nightmares that inhabit it has led to her not having much reaction to whatever new horror she has to deal with. For instance, when a Rogue openly desires to decapitate her and use her head like a bowling ball, the most it gets out of her is a monotone stare. While traversing the inside of the Leviathan, she muses she'd be a lot more disgusted if it wasn't her first time being eaten by a demon.
- Twenty Years Late: When interviewed by the Resistance, Adam the Thin Man is oblivious to their horror when she mentions that the Ethereals keep the Vipers under reproductive restrictions, as the Vipers have essentially deified the Ethereals for uplifting them into a sapient, star-faring race.Dr. Vahlen: This parthenogenesis, is it forced?
Adam: We cannot control our baser natures without the Elder's input. We require a leash until we can master ourselves.
What little color Barney could see in Dr. Vahlen's cheeks fled. The vortigaunt paused typing for a moment.
Dr. Vahlen: I see.
Adam: We serve the Elder Ones loyally, in hopes of achieving enlightenment. We were base beasts once, crawling through the dirt on our bellies. Now we travel through the stars in ships of light and crystal. I hope you will know this as well, one day. - The Vampire of Steel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Supergirl): Buffy and Supergirl find two dead demons looking for a Kryptonian vampire. Kara is sickened but Buffy goes about investigating the bodies in a calm, professional manner, and is even able to make jokes. The Slayer explains this is how she stays sane.Buffy took a deep breath as the Maid of Might flew them in for a swift landing. They touched ground by the doughnuted demons. The sight didn’t agree with Kara. She noticed that Buffy took it in a more businesslike manner.
“Sorry,” said Buffy. “In my line of work, you see this stuff more often.”
“I’m glad I don’t have your line of work,” said Supergirl. “Most of the time, that is.” - XSGCOM: XCOM's personnel tend to end up like this after a few months, understandably so given that it's considered a good mission result if they only lose two or three squad members out of ten, and when the story starts the alien invasion has escalated to the point where they're deploying practically every day. Anyone not running on some level of Heroic Safe Mode (for a certain definition of 'heroic') has left the organisation, one way or another.
- A variation of this features in The Cutting Edge, as Laurel Lance is revealed to be in deep denial over the fact that Quentin is abusive. When Oracle directly asks how she can work with her "abuser" after overhearing a conversation between Quentin and Black Canary, Laurel shrugs off his harsh comments about her vigilante persona as he couldn't know he was cursing his own daughter's name, and even if he did know he has said worse to her face before.
- In The Stalking Zuko Series, Yugoda, Katara's healing mentor from the Northern Water Tribe, is all too used to the Water Tribes' patriarchal attitudes, and doesn't believe that they will change in Katara's lifetime. As such, she believes that the best thing Katara can do is marry a good husband.
- A lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer stories have the Scoobies, or even just normal Sunnydale residents, prove to be far more accepting of stressful situations than normal people.
- Xander in Storage Space lives in an evil/possessed hotel where each floor causes worse existential dread than the one below it, with Kylie commenting that she couldn't even make it up the stairs to the fifth floor, commenting that it was like standing at the gates of hell. Xander only has mild trouble sleeping on the fifth floor and has traveled all the way to the twentieth floor without being terribly bothered.
- A Certain Droll Hivemind:
- Misaka-11111 casually references the Sisters' many brutal death against Accelerator about once a chapter. She also mentions that they have constant nightmares on the topic, but doesn't seem to care besides musing that it might be nice to dream about something else. Not to mention that as a product of some of the worst of the city's infamous Dark Side, there is very little that can phase her. During a hostage situation, she notes that she's relatively safe since hostages aren't killed immediately—unlike the Level 6 Shift experiment, where most of the Sisters died within minutes of each experiment's start.
- Notably, during the hostage situation, 11111's flatmates are not calm, and she doesn't understand why they're crying, stuttering, and overall behaving in an illogical manner. Abe Eiko manages to convince them to hide, after which she and 11111 attack the assailants on their own. After everything is resolved, 11111 asks why they were acting so strangely, and has to be told that "normies" (children who haven't had their minds messed with to turn them into killers and then hired for black-ops work) are not used to dangerous situations.
- Blackened Skies:
- When Kaede wakes up in her room on the ship for the first time, she's momentarily disoriented before recalling that "Oh, right, I'm in a killing game." She immediately hates how normal that thought sounds to her.
- While exploring 'Slayer Souvenirs', Kaede notices a pair of plush dolls resembling her and Ibuki that are hanging from the ceiling. She notes that she only feels mildly annoyed by the mocking display.
- Danganronpa: Memento Mori: As the Ultimate Private Investigator, Kaiji Kudo has naturally investigated several gruesome deaths even before the Killing Game. One of his Free-Time Events has him discuss the murder of two girls via being dressed up as scarecrows and subsequently pecked to death by crows, alongside that of a man drowned in cement at an old construction site, as if it was normal to him.
- Danganronpa: Paradise Lost: Kenji Shima worked as an interrogator for Fenrir, and is clearly undisturbed by both what he witnessed, such as a rookie strangling himself with his own parachute by accident, and the Killing Game he has found himself in.
- Downplayed in let's go out with a bang!. When violence breaks out at the convention center, Himiko naturally panics, before reflecting that this kind of horror is all too familiar.
- In Never Had a Friend Like Me, this is the reason why Amanda doesn't have fairies. She has long accepted her parents' words that she is a waste of time and money and thus believes she doesn't deserve to be miserable about it. The fact that Norm, a being without sympathy toward humans, is genuinely disturbed and angered by this, speaks volumes.
- Passing Days for Fate/Grand Order showcases just how much of a toll saving all of Humanity takes on the last Master, because in the chapter dedicated to Berserker!Musashi in Summer 4, Vy takes a bullet to her hair and barely flinches at the motion, reacting to the scratch on her cheek with a quiet "Oh." The other Servants and the Chaldea staff formed the Family of Choice in response to this implied behavior, just to give Vy a semblance of happiness when her blood-related family isn't around to give it to her.
- Raised by Jägers: Played for Laughs with the skeletal decor of Mechanicsburg's grade school.Footnote: The seneschal Gyula von Mekkhan had had some peculiar views on children, also shared by his brother, who served as the first Schoolmaster. They were both convinced that children found skeletons extremely jolly, and had thus decided to cover every surface of the school in them. While in any other town, this would have revealed itself to be a horrendously bad decision leading to countless traumatized children, the children of Mechanicsburg were usually quite inured to the aesthetics of their home town by the time they reached school age, and if they felt anything at all about the school's choice of decoration, it was merely a mild puzzlement about why it was so overdone.
- Wish Carefully: Nobody in Voldemort's Wizarding Britain is particularly bothered by the sight of somebody dropping to the ground, clutching their arm and screaming. They've learned to accept it as a natural consequence of their Dark Lord being bored, entertaining himself by torturing random followers simply because he can. However, this has naturally made it practically impossible to get anyone to immigrate to their country, since outsiders are very much not inured to such horrors.
- In Okuyasu Trauma Dumps on Josuke, Okuyasu casually compares a meal at Tonio's to the times his older brother Keicho took him out to sweets after their father beat him for not doing the dishes right. When Josuke expresses concern and points out that isn't normal, Okuyasu casually comments that his life is pretty weird, then goes to pay for his food.
- In The Legend of Link: Lucky Number 13, Link claims to have had the fear beaten out of him by his horrific lifestyle. He also admits that while such "mundane" things as pitch black pits and waves of blood don't scare him, the thought of losing his loved ones most certainly does.
- He invokes this effect by basically torturing a small group of knights into fearing nothing but him, to make sure they wouldn't give up or freak out in a life or death situation.
- The goddesses themselves also invoke this trope by putting Link's mind through the Ocarina of Time adventure 98,000 times during his four seven-year sleep. It's borderline And I Must Scream, in a way.
- Alya and the Harem Reality: Kagami is shown to be far too normalized to the Training from Hell her mother Tomoe puts her through to really notice that it is not normal or okay. She often has to deal with attack robots breaking into her locker room for surprise training and treats the idea casually, and doesn't notice Rena Rouge's horrified expression at the visible bullet scars on her legs. Part of the reason Kagami treats her life as normal stems from how Kagami's mother went through similar trials in both her childhood and in the present; In fact, it is even implied that Tomoe's training was worse, so from Kagami's perspective she has it easy.
- Feralnette AU: As far as the students at Francoise Dupont are concerned, Adults Are Useless; the school staff have done absolutely nothing to try and lower the chances of Hawkmoth targeting their charges, so akuma attacks have become a regular occurence.
- Forged: Chloe's mother is a horrible, emotionally abusive woman who can largely be blamed with literally everything wrong with her daughter. Chloe sees nothing wrong with her mother's behavior (which is part of the problem, as she tries to emulate her), and her classmates only begin to realize how screwed up their relationship is when Chloe mentions that her mother remembered her name twice in the past month as if this is a huge stride forward.
- Personal Space:
- During work event parties, Adrien has been told by his father that he has to keep the other guests "entertained". This usually means letting others touch and grab him, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. Adrien mistook this for 'flirting', not recognizing what he's been subjected to as sexual assault until Ladybug identifies it as such; unfortunately, one of his father's female clients had already exploited this to rape him.
- Since he thought his abusers were 'just flirting', Adrien emulated their behavior as Chat Noir. After Ladybug explains just why what happened to him was wrong, he's horrified to realize just how inappropriate his own behavior was. Ladybug reluctantly admits that he made her uncomfortable, especially since he refused to take "no" for an answer. However, since he clearly feels remorse and swears to work on his behavior, she's willing to forgive him and help him work through his issues.
- Scarlet Lady: By the time of "Despair Bear", Marinette and Adrien have become thoroughly used to the fact that they have to deal with akuma battles by themselves thanks to the titular heroine's incompetence...so used to it, in fact, that they completely miss that their classmates are shocked after seeing said behavior up close.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder: Marinette's Guilt Complex stems from her constantly being blamed for practically everything that goes wrong to the point that she's internalized it. After Alya and her Girl Posse casually ignore her right to privacy, barging into her room and declaring that "Friends don't hide anything from each other!", she blames herself for snapping back at them and decides that the best way to solve the problem is to stop being Ladybug, giving up her Guardianship and her memories so that she won't have anything left to hide from them.
- Fortunately, she's not so far gone that she isn't horrified by Future!Alix's casual acceptance of how Shadow Moth will eventually get his hands on the Miracle Box. Future!Alix also plays with this, as their acceptance of such horrors is rooted in self-interest: she wants to preserve HER timeline, the one where she eventually becomes Bunnyx, seeing all the suffering that happens as just how "things are meant to be".
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): There are hints that the human race overall is becoming this following the Titans' re-emergence and other humbling events that were depicted in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Titans causing costly property damage when forced to enter human-populated areas to deal with threats on their power level, and the idea that such things as the Many can even come into being, are things which notably don't shock people as much as they once would've. Ren Serizawa at one point inwardly muses that perhaps one day people will view Titan incursions the same way people view traffic accidents.
- Twice in Bloodstained Heroes of Humanity:
- Downplayed but after a childhood of Izuku snacking on the blood of his cuts and scratches, Katsuki finds Izuku feeding on him calming and nostalgic.
- Played straight with Izuku as growing up with Kurogiri and Shiragaki blinded him to the villainous parts of their personalities and dismissed them as personality quirks until their differing ideologies lead to cause Izuku great trauma.
- Cheat Code: Support Strategist: Both Shouto and Shigaraki are used to being abused by the men aiming to groom them into becoming their ideal 'successors'. The latter is even surprised when viewers of his stream react with horror to some of the things he casually mentions, or to being told that such things aren't normal.
- In Death Need Not Apply, anyone who spent enough time in The Zone has zero fear of death along with an insane pain tolerance, as The Zone is an area where no one can die and all injuries eventually heal (including severed limbs and destroyed organs). While the rest of the class is horrified by Izuku, Bakugou, and Todoroki (who grew up in The Zone) casually dealing lethal injuries to their classmates, Izuku needs some time to understand what the problem is. During their first exercise, Izuku helpfully dispenses advice while killing his classmates, such as impaling Shoji while warning him about how painful stomach injuries are.
- After the Sports Festival in Deku? I think he's some pro..., Izuku is told flat-out by some heartless civilians that he doesn't deserve his place in U.A. because he's Quirkless, and that they hope he dies so his position can be taken by somebody who deserves it. When he casually mentions this later at school, he's honestly surprised by his classmates' horrified reactions.
- Erased Potential: Izuku and Mei are stunned upon realizing that Denki doesn't think anything of the fact that his Quirk is capable of short-circuiting his brain. That's just a thing that happens sometimes; there's no way of preventing it... right? Naturally, Mei immediately declares that finding a way to prevent that is her new pet project.
- Heroes Never Die: Izuku's blasé attitude becomes extremely disturbing once the full context of his "Groundhog Day" Loop Quirk becomes apparent. After the USJ attack, he casually tells All Might that he died at least a thousand times, which even with the short loops means he was trapped for approximately three days.All Might: A thousand!? And this has been happening since your quirk manifested, at four?
Izuku: You get used to it. You can get used to just about anything, given enough time. - Hysterical: Izuku's Quirk gives him Resurrective Immortality and causes him to Feel No Pain. Inko spent countless nights crying herself to sleep over killing Izuku to heal his injuries but eventually reached the point of just being mildly annoyed by the glitter his Quirk produces.
- Inko in The Worm That Dorks is introduced being sacrificed by cultists and thinking to herself that she's glad they're professional cultists this time, who don't use dirty sacrificial daggers or stutter while speaking Black Speech. After they successfully summon a baby Eldritch Abomination, Inko adopts it as her son and names it Izuku. When Principal Nezu visits, he notices dozens of photos of Pro Heroes posing with Inko, said photos implied to be taken shortly after she was rescued again. While all the heroes look uncomfortable to some degree Inko smiles cheerfully.
- Yesterday Upon The Stair:
- Downplayed; while Izuku has become used to seeing ghosts in their Jacob Marley Apparel, it still upsets him to think about what left them in such conditions.
- Sir Nighteye incorrectly assumes that Izuku's Quirk has fully inured him to the horrors of death, and despises him for this. When Izuku finally learns that this is a huge part of why Nighteye has been so standoffish and cruel with him, he's deeply Disappointed by the Motive, demanding to know if Nighteye truly believes he's that callous.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Paradise: Back when Celestia and Luna were just foals, Earth ponies learned to accept that it was only natural for prey animals like themselves to regularly witness the deaths of their loved ones.
- Dreaming of Sunshine: Shikako sees this as one of the goals of the Academy: desensitizing their students to the various horrors of war and the shinobi lifestyle.
- Obito-Sensei: What the Shinobi system does to people. Naruto is particularly horrified to hear that his mother doesn't really feel betrayed when she learns that Mikoto Uchiha, her best friend, had conspired to turn her into a brainwashed puppet for the Uchiha clan - Jinchuriki have always been treated as weapons and commodities, after all, so why should Mikoto be any different?
- Three's A Crowd: By the point of his Plot-Triggering Death at just ten years old, Naruto is already well accustomed to being shunned and mistreated by most of the residents of Konoha. When Sakura worries about Stealing the Credit for any of his ideas, Naruto reassures her that he never would've gotten praised for them anyway.
- Despite having been murdered and finding himself reduced to a voice inside Sakura's head, Naruto's biggest fear is that if their condition is discovered, Sakura might start getting treated as poorly as he was simply due to their connection. Both Sakura and Inner Sakura are furious at the notion that he was so mentally beaten down that he believes they'd suffer by association.
- Your Heart a Haven of Thorns:
- Naruto's used to the way most of the adults in Konoha treat him like crap, as well as all of the isolation and scorn he's endured. That said, he's still heartbroken to learn that the Sandaime was a False Friend all along, and briefly shuts down when Jiraiya reveals he's his godfather.
- Sakura is so accustomed to her parents dismissing her feelings as unimportant that she's actually confused when Kikyō apologizes for scoffing at her worrying so much about Team Seven's upcoming sleepover. She even thinks that her parents had both been much harsher when blowing off her feelings, but attributes it to them wanting to "raise her well".
- your move, instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue) has this as a Running Theme:
- The members of Team 14 have been forced to fight in the ongoing Third Shinobi War as Child Soldiers, having been separated from their 'less expendable' peers and put through express training that rushed them out onto the battlefield at the tender ages of five and six. Zig-Zagged in that while their experiences have conditioned them to some extent, they don't completely lose sight of how unfair their circumstances are. Sakura particularly proves to be a thorn in Danzo's side with her brutally honest observations about how his warmongering isn't bringing peace to anyone.
- Further Zig-Zagged with many of the adult shinobi, who have been worn down by the ongoing war to the point that they are resigned to the various atrocities Konoha commits in the name of trying to put an end to it. Team 14 ends up acting as a reminder to many of them of just what they are sacrificing, which leads to several adults like the old Ino-Shika-Chou supporting Minato's bid to overthrow the Sandaime.
- Played straighter by most citizens of Konoha, thanks to Danzo's heavy propaganda efforts to promote Kushina and other strong shinobi as heroes fighting against the evil forces of all the other hidden villages. Then Sai escapes ROOT and starts producing new posters encouraging them to question authority, promoting Minato as a strong candidate for Yondaime. Team 14's continued survival also helps loosen the blinders.
- In Neon Metathesis Evangelion as in canon, Rei sees no problem whatsoever with how she's treated by NERV. Rei I's influence changes this after the reintegration of her soul; she will lash out violently if sufficiently provoked.
- Orchestrating the Silence: After fighting alien horrors, getting mind-raped, killed off... Asuka has does not feel particularly horrified or even surprised when she hears the red streak across the sky is made of souls which came spraying out of Rei's neck."Hey," I begin, nodding up at the sky. "What's that red thing?"
He takes another swallow of water from his bottle, following my gaze. Then he makes a sad face. "Souls," he answers quietly. "Human souls. They... uh, came spraying out of Rei's neck during Instrumentality."
I nod silently. It seems like this should shock or horrify me, but now that just kind of seems... par for the course.
- Adventures in the Human Realm: Hunter suffered so much at the hands of Belos and Kikimorra that he expects his food to contain poison.
- In To Lead The Way, Serena is consistently raped by her father, and believes his actions to be acceptable because, quite frankly, she hasn't had the chance to learn otherwise.
- In The Speck, Wyatt has lived in Townsville for so long (especially during the "The Tag Incident" and "Day of the Monkies") that he just made it a habit of getting around the city and learning to avoid and/or defend himself from the various villains and monsters.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: In Act V chapter 23, the other members of the group are left dumbfounded that in the aftermath of Tsukune's bloodlust-fueled rampage through Yokai Academy's festival, which has left the school grounds covered with corpses, Rin's only concern is that the fireworks show has been cancelled. In response, Ran explains that she, Rin, and Ren have seen so many horrible things while enslaved to Babylon that the recent events don't even faze them.
- Shaggy in Scooby Doo and the House of Monsters has spent four years as the gym teacher at the Ghoul School and grown so used to monsters that he barely blinks at things that freak out Velma, who spent the same time looking for the supernatural all over the world.
- This is used as a sad gag in Solarhood when Sonic gets spooked by a scary video game. When he questions why Elise isn't frightened, she happily says that she's become immune to all emotions that involve tears.
- This is pretty much every clones' attitude toward in Commander Fox Is Completely Fine, but Fox especially. One scene has him explain to Senator Chuchi that the Clone Troopers are essentially {Child Soldier}}s, and when she's horrified by this, he "reassures" her by explaining that they're pumped full of growth hormones by the Kaminoans so they rapidly age into adulthood. He's then utterly bewildered when this horrifies her more.
- In The Hobbit fanfic Girls just want to have fun, the female protagonist casually asks if the guy she went home with raped her while she was passed out from drinking too much alcohol. It is quite subtle and easy to miss as she uses the word "sex" and he just confusedly repeats that she passed out before they could do anything of the sort.
- From Gensokyo 20XX, we have this with an age-regressed Reimu and she is a downplayed and played with example, in that, while she is mentally conditioned, she's conditioned herself to accept something a child wouldn't otherwise be able to as something may not be changed, i.e, mental illness, declining health, and the death from the result thereof Note. Along with the aforementioned and if some of her other behavior and willingness to accept cruelty is to go by, it would be a safe assumption that cruelty is half of what she knows. Of course, seeing their kind of setting and what she's been exposed to since age-regression, she probably doesn't have any other choice, except to be. Needless to say, it does cause her misery, something she had learned to endure.
- Messages for Dad: Rosie, the three-year-old daughter of Fulgrim and Rhea, has absolutely no reaction to her parents having an absolutely vicious screaming match at a family dinner, citing the event as "normal," which horrifies Fuglrim's father and brothers. Of course, in the 40k timeline she's followed her father into becoming a Slaaneshi Daemon, so at that point she's less "conditioned to accept" and more "has a demented fetish for."
- In Blood! Rusty AU, most city cats understand that death always follows them and that they could die any moment of any day. They quickly get used this way of life. They also become used to killing other cats.
- This is how Clan cats are in Warriors Redux. Cats die all the time, so they quickly learn to accept tragedy. Almost all of Firepaw's similarly-aged peers are orphans, despite not even being year olds. It takes a while for the former-kittypet to learn how to deal with death. Spottedleaf's sudden drowning (later confirmed to be a murder) stuns him and sends him into grief (and he barely knew her).
- In the Affectionate Parody Silly Hat Productions, Battler notes early on that he's gotten used to Beatrice's games. He then goes on to claim they're not as effective anymore. His laid-back approach to the games bites him in the ass when Lambdadelta decides that he needs more motivation to take things seriously.
- In Lost Causes, it's shown that Jessica was "born" into a terrible life and realized from a young age that her life wasn't important because she's a Toon. She spent all of her life dealing with abuse until Roger saved her.It was one week into the show business before the girl knew anything more than flickering lights, body aches and pleasures, and the hand that led her home; two weeks before she began to string coherent sentences together beyond her script, moans, and the occasional murmuring of some other person's name; three weeks before she noticed the difference in texture between the people filming her and the people filming with her; four weeks before she realized that was a problem; and five weeks before she understood that she was a Toon, created simply for entertainment, and had no choice in the matter.
