Elephants in the Living Room in Live-Action TV series.
- Not subverted, but occasionally addressed in Battlestar Galactica. While the remains of humanity are on the run after the destruction of their homes, and shower vitriol on the Cylons for it, no one talks about the reasons for the Cylons' hate of humanity. Only Commander Adama points out that, "We deserved what we got for enslaving our creations; we were terrible parents, do we deserve to survive?" (Paraphrased) The question is occasionally brought up to reinforce that humanity is not blameless in the show's Back Story, and needs to atone.
- Adama actually directly asks Athena why the Cylons hate humanity so much in one episode. She replies that during Galactica's decommissioning speech during the pilot episode, Adama asked whether humanity deserved to survive. Then she adds "Maybe you don't."
- In one episode, "The Captain's Hand", Roslin finally addressed an Elephant that had gone ignored for a while- whether or not humanity even could survive with their current rate of deaths vs. births. It turns out that Baltar had run the numbers long ago and knew exactly how long it would take for humans to go extinct (18 years), but apparently no one else was ready to deal with it.
- In Buffy the Vampire Slayer Sunnydale's vampire problem seems to be treated this way, as several episodes make it obvious that the Muggles know what's going on (especially after season three), they just try to ignore it and get on with their lives. This was made especially obvious during the prom episode: when giving out the various class superlatives, Jonathan announces that everyone knows there's something weird about the town but don't know what, only that Buffy is involved with it and seems to help stop it. As a result, the class gives her a special "Class Protector" award.
- Charité at War plays in Nazi Germany, and several dissidents angrily call the passive supporters of the regime out on their willingness to turn a blind eye to the persecution and systematic murders of "undesirables". Protagonist Anni, reproached by her dissident brother Otto, insists that something so horrible would never be lawfully made possible, but later has to face that she knew early on and decided to condone it.
- On The Closer, when Brenda and Fritz are house-hunting, they never, ever, ever come out and directly discuss the possibility of having kids. Fritz approaches the subject obliquely, musing aloud about whether they should consider the quality of schools near a potential home, and Brenda circumspectly points out the advantages of a house that's got a pool and other perks, but only one master bedroom.
- Referenced in an episode of Criminal Minds where the DNA of a dead man was found at a crime scene.Rossi: Do we have parachutes on [the jet]?
Reid: Standard-issue on all federal aircraft.
Rossi: Then let's use one on the elephant in the room, get him out of here. - Nobody in Degrassi talks about the unusually high rate of horrible things that happen to its students. Despite the school shooting, stabbing, rape, attempted rape, STD outbreak, and umpteen teen pregnancies, which in the real world would make Degrassi the most infamous school in all of Canada (oooh!), everyone still thinks that it's a fabulous school and nobody moves away to find a safer one.
- In an early Dexter episode, after an... awkward moment with his girlfriend who had been abused by her ex-husband, and Dexter is also a serial killer and psychopath who has trouble with intimacy because he is unable to have human feelings, he says, "There's an elephant in the room and its name is sex."
- Doctor Who: This trope runs through the series, even from the beginning. A lot of the time, the Doctor's role in a story is to bring up the proverbial elephant that locals won't discuss.
- Susan's behaviour in "An Unearthly Child" is a good example of this — the episode marks the point where Ian and Barbara do something about it.
- "The Idiot's Lantern": The faceless grandmother in the upstairs room. Of course, the Abusive Parent who gets explosively angry whenever anyone tries to talk about her doesn't help.
- "Gridlock": Everyone in the traffic jam from hell knows that they haven't seen anyone from the surface government in decades, but they can't bring themselves to admit it. Turns out there isn't a surface government, thanks to a super-plague that wiped out the rest of the planet.
- "The Unicorn and the Wasp": The Doctor and Donna realize they've arrived in time for Agatha Christie's notable disappearance:The Doctor: She'd just discovered her husband was having an affair.
Donna: You'd never think to look at her. Smiling away.
The Doctor: Wellll, she's British and moneyed. That's what they do. They carry on. - "The Beast Below": Everybody knows that something's off about the ship (It's basically an entire nation compacted into a starship), and are afraid of what happens, but they don't talk about it, ever. (Except for the Doctor, Amy Pond, and the Queen aboard the ship. And even the half-human half-smiler characters talk about it to a limited degree. Though, the general public refuses to talk about it.)
- Amusing reference in "Amy's Choice":The Doctor: There is an elephant in the room.
Amy: I have to be this size, I'm having a baby!
The Doctor: No, not that... Rory... has a ponytail. [turns to Amy] I hold him down, you cut it off! - "The Witchfinders": Everyone in the town of Bilehurst Cragg knows that there's something off about Becka Savage's Witch Hunt, but they also know that they'll be accused of witchcraft next if they say anything about it.
- This is lampshaded on an episode of Dragons' Den, when a couple present a product that is essentially an elephant plushie that is supposed to be used by married couples to give a hint that something difficult needs to be discussed. The problem with this being that a couple could just use an ordinary elephant plushie, or indeed any inanimate object that they own and agree on having this meaning, to do the same thing. The Dragons are not impressed and don't invest in this product.
- Fawlty Towers had Basil attempting to do this with "The Germans" - unfortunately, a concussion left him completely unable to keep from mentioning the war.German Guest: Will you stop talking about the war!
Basil: Me?! You started it!
Guest: We did not start it!
Basil: Yes you did, you invaded Poland! - Game of Thrones:
- Over the 8,000 years since the Long Night, conditions at the Wall have steadily deteriorated, leaving the Night's Watch undermanned and under-equipped to hold the Wall against the wildlings and White Walkers beyond. In addition, the long summer is ending and the War of Five Kings has distracted everyone, even the Starks, from preparations for the coming winter.
- Neither Jon nor Ygritte want to face the question of what will happen when Jon is forced to choose which side he's really on.
- Tyrion calls Joffrey a bastard in front of everyone in "The Laws of Gods and Men", though his entire speech is so venomous it's doubtful anyone read too much into it.
- This trope is referenced by name in one episode of Joan of Arcadia. The elephant in question is the fact that the car accident that put Kevin permanently into a wheelchair was Kevin's fault, and not the fault of the other driver.
- Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital: the source of the near-constant earthquakes; the checkered pasts of the doctors (especially Stegman) and the hospital itself also qualify.
- An episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit was based around the discovery that two teenage daughters of a family on a popular reality show have been raped and become pregnant. The detectives suspect the family's oldest son, who turns out to have a history of sexual assault; rather than get actual psychological help for him, his parents just sent him to a Christian "reform camp" each time. Even when confronted with the possibility that he raped his own sisters, they still don't address the problem and just send him away again. Although in this case, it turns out he actually didn't do it.
- In Lost's fifth season, John Locke mentions this trope by name while talking to Ben Linus. So, what's the elephant? John's death. At Ben's hands.
- The Mad Men episode "The Summer Man" has a Visual Pun on this expression, when Don brings a stuffed elephant as a present to his son's birthday party. (The elephant in question represents... a lot of things.)
- A common Alternative Character Interpretation in Merlin is that Arthur is aware of Merlin's magic, and simply choosing to ignore it. This is sometimes extended to Gwen and Morgana, or even to pretty much the entire castle except, obviously, King Uther.
- Or even to Uther. It's backed up by A Remedy to Cure All Ills, in which Merln uses magic to save Uther while he is unconscious... but Edwin specifically said a few scenes earlier than Uther would be awake and aware while he was dying, suggesting that, maybe, Uther heard everything but is letting Merlin live as a reward for saving him.
- Gaius having once been a former sorcerer. Becomes a Wham Line in one episode when Uther begs Gaius to save Morgana with whatever it takes, even it means using magic! It's implied that Gaius' Undying Loyalty to Uther and his talent as a physician is the only reason that he's still alive.
- Played humorously in Modern Family. Cam and Mitch spend all of Season Three trying to adopt another child, but see their efforts repeatedly frustrated. In the Season Four opener, they remark that it's time to talk about the elephant in the room...as in the literal giant stuffed elephant sitting in the corner that was to be a present for their new baby. Getting rid of it symbolizes their moving on.
- Gets a huge Lampshade Hanging in Outnumbered. The Brockmans have a papier-mache elephant head in their kitchen. Pete calls it "the elephant in the room" and says that they don't talk about it.
- Mark Evanier relates a hilarious story of the time when he worked as head writer for the infamous sketch variety show Pink Lady and Jeff, and was inspired to ask the producers for a live elephant to use as a gag in an infomercial skit. The joke was that the announcer (Jeff Altman) was supposed to deliver the whole commercial without noticing that there was an elephant on the set until the end. When it came time to film, however, the elephant made the skit a lot funnier by doing some, shall we say, unscripted improv on the floor. Read the story here
. - The 2011 revival of Pop Up Video didn't openly discuss Ricky Martin's homosexuality in the treatment for "She Bangs" (he didn't come out of the closet until about a decade after the song), but they did acknowledge that particular elephant in the room, mentioning the trope by name in the process.
- The Punisher (2017): The elephant in the room is Matt Murdock. Despite the fact that it's obvious Karen Page is still mourning his "death" in the climax of The Defenders (2017), he's not so much as mentioned once.
- QI
- The name of the trope is brought up in the E series o, where contestants would receive an "Elephant in the Room Bonus" for spotting the elephant as the answer to one of the questions during the episode.
- Naturally, it was a forfeit in the Germany episode. Sean Lock fell afoul of it five times (including a trick question meant to invoke the forfeit), Alan Davies once, and Jo Brand once (while trying to call out Stephen for the same; she got the war wrong in this case).Stephen: ...the Hollanders were at war with Britain many times...
Jo Brand: You mentioned the war!
Stephen: "At war with", not "the war".
Sean Lock: *pointing at Jo* But you did!
*klaxon sounds*
- In The Resident, star surgeon Dr. Randolph Bell's deteriorating surgical skills and increasingly common medical errors amount to an elephant in the operating room.
- Parodied in Sherlock with a noodle incident involving a case with a literal elephant in a room.
- In a Sci-Fi Stargate SG-1 special, a letter had one viewer asking why all the aliens speak English. The reader, David Hewlett, simply laughed and playfully stated that he couldn't believe the audience caught onto that.
- Although it should be noted that in the film which the show was based on the aliens do not speak English, so the issue of Aliens Speaking English can be incredibly glaring for someone who's seen the film and is now seeing the show for the first time.
- In the Supernatural episode "Hammer of the Gods", this is lampshaded and played straight on two occasions.
- Dean is walking down the hotel's hallway and passes a room with a live elephant toweling itself off. Upon processing this, he doubles back and the room now has a naked fat man toweling himself off, who declares "This ain't no peep show!" and slams the door in Dean's face. Turns out the naked fat man is actually Lord Ganesh, the Hindu Elephant God.
- Later, Loki barges into the gathering of gods and tells them all they need to talk about the elephant in the room (Lucifer). When the fat man immediately protests, Loki retorts "Not you, Ganesh!"
- Averted in Top Gear: When Richard Hammond returned from an accident that left him with a serious brain injury for Series 9, the three presenters took the very first episode to deal with it by thanking the emergency responders on the scene, showing the crash footage, and cracking jokes about Hammond's driving skills, together with an ounce or two of heartwarming. It was a masterful way to take most of the awkwardness out of a potentially painful situation.
- Played straight and literally in the finale of Series 22, cobbled together from the pre-recorded footage that was left unused when the show was unexpectedly cancelled due to Clarkson's firing. Richard and James did some links from an empty studio, during which they didn't mention Jeremy Clarkson, the circumstances under which the show was cancelled, or the life-sized model elephant visible in every shot. Especially in the shot with Hammond right in front of its butt.
- Played for horror in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "It's a Good Life", where the residents of Peaksville, Ohio have to pretend that everything is fine and perfectly normal, to avoid angering the all-powerful mind-reading child who controls their lives. To openly admit the horror of their situation leads to madness and/or a horrible death. That one is parodied in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror II" episode, though it's a dream of Bart. Bart has that power and it goes pretty much like the original, only naturally less horrible. Then Bart gets therapy to get over whatever they called what he was doing (the forcing people to be happy, not the being all-mighty), which he does and develops a sane relationship with Homer. In the end they hug in sign of friendship, and then Bart wakes up, screaming in terror.
- The Wire: One such example happens during Herc's rise to Sergeant. To make a long story short, while working on Mayor Royce's security detail, Herc catches Royce in the act of receiving a blowjob from his secretary. Fearing that he'll be punished for witnessing such a transgression, Herc reaches out to Carver, who puts him in touch with the politically savvy Valchek. Valchek tells Herc he's made Sergeant already thanks to his newly gained leverage, and outlines what he predicts will happen:Valchek: You go back down to the hall. You act like it never happened. You shut up. Say nothing to no one.
Herc: But the mayor, he's gonna-
Valchek: He's gonna watch and see how you carry it. And, kid, you're a fucking rock. When the mayor looks in your face, he knows he can trust you with this. And I'll bet in a couple of weeks, he comes asking, real friendly-like, "What are you looking to do with the department? With your career?" He's interested in you. But he doesn't mention no blow job, and neither do you. Uh-uh, it just lays there like a bad pierogi on the plate, both of you pretending it ain't there.
- Said meeting does happen, and it goes down exactly as Valchek outlines it.
