Arbitrary Skepticism - Television Tropes & Idioms

Bleach: Ghosts? Fine, most of the cast can see them. Heartless monsters that eat ghosts? Again, fine, pick up the BFS and let's go kill something. Talking cats? That takes some getting used to. The only cast member who isn't wigged out by Yoruichi on first meeting is Orihime, and that's because she has an overactive imagination.
- In the dub, after Yoruichi reveals her true form and Ichigo says he thought she was a cat, she says "Cats don't talk. Use your head a little, Ichigo," implying that she also thinks it's supposed to be impossible and that she's merely an exception due to not being an actual cat (the nature of her cat transformation is never touched upon).
To Aru Majutsu No Index: Touma sees esper powers on a regular basis (including being blasted by lightning the previous day) but initially dismisses the idea of magic as nonsense. To him, esper powers at least have a scientific basis.
In the two-part Kino No Tabi episode "Coliseum", Hermes tries to tell Kino that a one-off character's dog can talk. Kino's response is "Stop being such a liar." Kino's a traveler. Just on screen, she's seen practically every crazy thing under the sun. Ignoring all that, she's talking to a talking motorcycle.
Jojos Bizarre Adventure: When Jotaro is told about Dio being a vampire, he think's he's being BS'd, until Avdol helpfully points out to him that he just got Psychic Powers a few hours ago.
One second season episode of Hellgirl has a client accept one of Hellgirl's contracts — you pull the red string, and the object of your scorn goes straight to Hell. When Hellgirl explains the price for this service (the one pulling the string also goes to Hell when they die), the client scornfully dismisses the idea that Hell really exists. Did we mention that Hellgirl magically transported him to her crimson field before they started negotiating?
- Bear in mind that the character in question is quite obviously a complete idiot — he's apparently under the impression that being seventeen years old means he's too young to be arrested for anything. In context, it's fairly obvious that the reason no one arrests him for his general thuggishness is because he's working for the Yakuza.
In Mahou Sensei Negima, Negi cannot convince the other Mages that Chao is from the future, despite the fact that he has a working time machine. They reject the idea on the basis that no one's ever been able to do it, ignoring the fact that somebody could have figured it out, in the future. You know, where Chao claims she's from. It's like going to 1900 and saying that airplanes are impossible because no one's ever built one. While having a working airplane.
- And also ignoring that Chao used time-displacement bullets when fighting them...
In the first Megami Sound Stage of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Nanoha attempts to see if Fate will believe in Santa Claus. It fails the moment Fate, one of the many mages who can fly on her own, reads his description.
Fate: Also, according to this picture he rides through the sky on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. I don't recall hearing of such an aviation method for small aerial vehicles.
Nanoha: Um...
Fate: This can't be magic, can it? How can this be?
- Justified in that she's assuming it can't be magic because he's a well-known Earth figure; and Earth doesn't recognize magic. Fate is a logical girl; however she just believes everything that Nanoha tells her. So she's trying to figure out how someone can fly using reindeer without using magic.
Averted in the Death Note manga; when Sidoh picks up the Death Notebook, Mello, who is unable to see Sidoh at the time, wonders why it's flying, and a member of his gang notes that if it can kill people, it wouldn't be a surprise if it were alive.
Justified in One Piece; the crew meets a skeleton who came back to life with a Devil Fruit's power, but since only one person can have a given Devil Fruit's power, Usopp becomes suspicious as to how there could be an island full of zombies and wonders if there's some kind of natural explanation.
- Zoro probably counts as well. In a world where people can slice entire fleets in half with one swing of their sword at a distance, his best friend is made of rubber and he fights people made of sand, Zoro refused to believe that Enel was actually God when first hearing about him. (Of course, it turns out that Enel was just completely out of his gourd but that's neither here nor there.)
Ikuto in Nagasarete Airantou has been on the island long enough to know that the standard rules don't apply to the island, and indeed has gotten to the point that he can talk to the animals of the island, his usual first reaction to a new oddity of the island is to reject any simple fantastic explanation from anyone else (even from the oddity itself) and instead comes up with his own explanation that's usually even more ridiculous (For Example, he thinks that all the ghosts on the island are polar bears)

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DC Universe characters Bruce Wayne (Batman) and the late Ted Knight (Starman) claim to be atheists, and Ted has explicitly stated that he doesn't believe in anything supernatural. This is despite having both of them having had regular interactions with magicians, clairvoyants, angels, demons and Norse gods.
- This could be a question of definition — sure, there are powerful beings with abilities we don't understand, but that doesn't necessarily make them actually supernatural or divine. The current Mr. Terrific actually makes this very argument when justifying his atheism; he points out that the Justice League has encountered a great many nigh-omnipotent beings who haven't claimed to be gods, so he sees no particular reason to believe those who do.
- A particularly arbitrary example is Batman's second post-Crisis encounter with Bat-Mite. In the first encounter, he understandably assumes his momentary glimpse of the being is his imagination. In his second, a Superman team-up, he concludes Bat-Mite is a creation of Mr Mxyzptlk. In other words, it's perfectly acceptable for eccentric, reality-warping, extradimensional imps to exist, just as long as they're Clark's problem and not his.
  - Even worse, in one 3-comic story arc, Robin is contacted by what appears to be a version of Alfred from the near future, complete with futuristic phlebotinum... and Robin is unable to convince Batman that it actually happened, because, quoth the Bat, "Time travel is scientifically impossible." Even though Batman himself works with time travelers in the Justice League and has traveled through time dozens of times himself.... Of course it's made worse by the fact that the "encounter" turns out to have been some sort of "test" that Batman himself had set up to see how clever and/or credulous his new Boy Wonder actually was. Yes, Batman is a prick.
In Ultimate Spider Man, Ben Urich wants to run a story on recent vampire activity in New York and Jameson refuses to publish it. As Urich lampshades, mutants, Spider-Men, frozen people and supersuits are all plausible but Jameson chooses to draw the line at believing in vampires for some reason. (This is made even more amusing by the fact that in the main Marvel continuity, Jameson's son is a werewolf.)
- This may actually be making fun of a Wall Banger moment in the Peter Parker comic series where main universe Spider-Man suddenly draws the line at believing in vampires... despite having fought a massive number of bizarre entities before. And living in the same universe as Blade. And actually having fought vampires before, like Morbius (who isn't technically a supernatural vampire), and Count Dracula (who, well, is).
Asterix and the Magic Carpet boils this trope down to its fundamentals with the following quote.
Owzat: I don't believe in that kind of miracle, o divine master. Flying carpets are one thing, but rain-making is sheer science fiction!
In The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, despite the fact that Allan and Mina live in a world in which basically every work of fiction exists, they'll occasionally decide that the idea of, say, a mindreader or a magician is just too far-fetched.

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Averted and lampshaded in Light And Dark The Adventures Of Dark Yagami: Dark asks Blud if ghosts exist, and Blud says it is impossible. Dark asks if this would mean Blud, as a Shinigami, is impossible, too, and Blud says that shinigami are possible in the Death Note universe. It soon turns out that Blud's wrong about ghosts, though, as L comes back as one with the help of God's Ghost Note.

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, in which Indy encounters, surprisingly enough, magical artifacts, comes before Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Indy, talking with Brody, dismisses all superstition involving the Ark of the Covenant.
- After all he has gone through, you'd think Indiana Jones would at least be a bit more open minded in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Despite previously encountering healing rocks, Nazi-killing golden boxes, and life-saving cups, he still sneers at the prospect of magical telepathic skulls.
In The Last Mimzy, the brother has already found a strange cube that deposited several mysterious items, including a strange crystal that makes noise that only he and his sister can see (adults think it looks like a flat rock), a crystalline conch shell that enhances his hearing and teaches him how to command spiders through sound, and a set of stone "spinners" that his sister can spin to create a strange portal that causes her hand to split harmlessly into a million particles. Yet he still refuses to believe that her stuffed rabbit, which also came through the cube, speaks to her, despite it being the one that taught her how to spin the spinners. It takes the mimzy predicting their father's arrival to convince him.
Eight Legged Freaks. The conspiracy-believing radio host is unwilling to believe the others' tales of giant killer spiders.
Sabrina Down Under: a merman, sitting in a bathtub next to a talking cat, refuses to believe in witches. One spell later:
Sabrina: You know, for a guy with a tail, you're extremely narrow-minded.

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Harry Potter. Carnivorous skeletal winged horses that can only be seen by those who have seen death? Fine. Crumple-Horned Snorkacks? Not a chance.
- By Word Of God, Luna goes on to discover many previously unknown species of magical creatures due to her open mind. Unfortunately, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks aren't one of them.
- Let's not forget the Deathly Hallows themselves. Harry and Hermione live in a world of constant magic. Harry and Hermione, at least, should've by now realised that very many legends and stories contain a grain of truth. But the possibility of these three magical talismans from a fairy tale existing? Preposterous! I mean the Chamber of Secrets was real, I suppose, and the Philosopher's Stone, but, I mean, heck, we've got a spiffy invisible cloak, for cryin' out loud!
- Particularly annoying as Hermione grew up in the Muggle world, then when she was 11 she was told that witches, ghosts, vampires, elves, magic, wizards, goblins, gnomes, fairies, vampires, werewolves etc. all exist. You'd think a blow such as that would shattered her skepticism.
  - On the other hand, she has actual evidence of all those things, as well as very good explanations as to why they were hidden before. She has no more reason to believe in the Hallows than she does to think Lord of the Rings really happened.
This occurs in the Discworld series. Things like gods, wizards, trolls and dragons are perfectly acceptable, but things like Death and talking dogs are so impossible that people just ignore them. Arguably explained in Hogfather, where it's stated there's an upper limit on things people can believe in.
- Let's not forget talking trees. Notice that Rincewind here uses a perfectly fine logical analysis, but it fails because the premises aren't true:
  I can't be talking to a tree. If I was talking to a tree I'd be mad, and I'm not mad, so trees can't talk.
- Witches and wizards in the Discworld can see death (and hear talking dogs). They also interact with gods, oh gods, and demons on a regular basis, but don't believe in them, as this only encourages them.
- Carrot and a few other characters can hear Gaspode, as could anybody he makes an effort in talking to.
- Plus, at several points in the series, there are statements to the effect of "there's not point believing in what already exists" — such as the space turtle on which the world rests.
  - It's like believing in the postman.
  - Excuse me, but some rather old and grumpy man would like to have a little talk with you.
- On the other other hand certain Ephebians, parodying ancient Greek philosophers, claim to be atheists. This is particularly difficult to do when the gods like to throw stones through the windows and lightning bolts at them in the street. Similarly in Soul Music, Susan is raised to be a "sensible" girl, trained in reason and logic and not believe "such nonsense", which is ultimately futile once you realize who her grandfather is.
- A rather dark variant occurs towards the end of Thud! After he's possessed, Vimes kicks the demon out of his mind by sheer force of Lawful Good and black out. When he wakes up, he promptly starts rationalizing what he did as sleep deprivation and his mind playing tricks on him.
- Feet of Clay
  A Priest: But the gods plainly do exist.
  Dorfl: It Is Not Evident.
  [A bolt of lightning hits Dorfl on the helmet. However, being a golem, he is unharmed.]
  Dorfl: I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument.
A variant occurs in The Odyssey, when his men lose faith as they approach the domain of Scylla, Odysseus reminds them of all the monsters and supernatural beings they had faced prior to that point.
Jasper Fforde's Jack Spratt novels feature a reasonable amount of this. This world features aliens, talking bears, giant superhuman gingerbread men and the like. Yet when Jack tells his staff, whose job it is to investigate things like the murder of Humpty Dumpty and Rumpelstiltskin's illegal straw-into-gold operation, that his car heals itself, they think he's gone mad. As does his boss when he reports on exploding cucumbers. And so on.
Used for humor in Robert Asprin's Myth series. During a war, the main character, a wizard in training, recruits a bunch of different helpers from different dimensions to prevent it. One of them is a blue Gremlin. The main character's mentor, a demon, insists that there's no such thing as gremlins, and the little monster in question always remains just out of sight. Until the very end...
In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Caesar accepts superstition regarding the Lupercal festival as fact, and then refuses to believe a soothsayer telling him that March 15th will be a bad day.
Belgarath of The Belgariad.
- Belgarath is seven thousand years old, and he's a powerful sorcerer who routinely deals with magic and the gods. After spending that much time dealing with the weirdest stuff in the world, it's probably tempting to assume that you've seen everything.
Another Belgariad example is the entire nation of Tolnedra, the citizens of which do not believe in the supernatural as a matter of principle. This leads to statements like "I'm pleased to have met you, though I still don't believe in you, naturally. My skepticism, however, is theological, not personal." At one point Polgara mentions that they've also come up with a complicated theory involving successive identical people to explain away her long life.
Contrary to the popular belief this was not a trait of Sherlock Holmes. For example, in The Hound of the Baskervilles he does not outright eliminate the possibility that said hound is supernatural — he merely states that all other options have to be investigated first and if it proves to be so, he is powerless to do anything about it.
- Though he outright scoffs at the very idea of a vampire in The Sussex Vampire.
  - Mostly because he immediately finds bucketloads of clues pointing (*cough* excuse me) to a more lively culprit.
- Unsurprising, given that Holmes was written by an author who literally believed in fairies.
The War Against The Chtorr. The first novel "A Matter For Men" begins with a news report on three volunteers searching for a missing girl being dismissed for claiming they saw the giant Chtorran worms. Most people don't believe in their existence until the worms start moving into towns and eating people. Even then the Fourth World Alliance insists on downplaying the invasion (because they're more concerned about the US re-arming, a danger they are all too familiar with) until a captive Chtorran escapes and starts chomping its way through their delegates.
Tuan from The Wheel Of Time refuses outright to believe in certain vaguely fantastical things the reader has seen to be true through the other characters and scoffs at what shes sees as absurd beliefs, the next second reading signs and portents from a flight of birds as total fact. This is more a case of the Seanchan in general being unspeakingly arrogant even within the standard of the setting, exceeded only by the Aes Sedai (and by contrast the Seanchan are at least usually competent).

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Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Leprechauns are clearly absurd, right? Yeah. By the end, leprechauns were pretty much the only thing that didn't exist in their world.
- In one meta-incident, a preview for a Buffy episode seems to indicate they'd be hunting an alien. Turns out it was just a summoned demon who manifested really high in the sky.
  Xander:I still don't get why we had to come here to get info about a killer snot monster.
  Giles: Because it's a killer snot monster from outer space! ...I did not say that.
- Lampshaded in Inca Mummy Girl.
  Xander: [sarcatically] Hey, maybe he awakened the mummy.
  Willow: Right, and it rose from its tomb.
  Buffy: And attacked him.
  [They start to laugh, then remember where they're living]
  Buffy: One day I'm going to live in a town where evil curses are just generally ruled out, without even saying.
Charmed to a ridiculous extent at some points. Such as when they acted as though situations they had been in before were impossible.
Occurred on Stargate SG-1 from time to time despite all the weirdness they usually had to deal with.
- Lampshaded in the episode Fragile Balance. Jack O'Neill appears to have gone from 45 to 15 years old overnight.
  Daniel: "Stranger things have happened..."
  Teal'c: "Name but one."
  Daniel: "Well, there was the time he got really old, the time he became a caveman, the time we all swapped bodies—"
- Also parodied/referenced in another episode, where Jackson expects this to happen when telling General Hammond about a prophetic dream he had. Instead, Hammond believes him right off the bat, explaining, "The things I've heard sitting in this chair..."
  - Hammond is actually really good at subverting that particular trope. When the team comes back from another world and Jonas Quinn tells him that there's a flying bug monster in the room that only he can see Hammond locks the base down immediately.
- A straight up example has the team hearing that according to legend, the Sangraal is protected by a dragon. They immediately dismiss the possibility of dragons existing, guessing it's either a hologram or a spaceship. Considering all the weird aliens and creatures they've met, it's surprising that they are so willing to dismiss the possibility that an alien planet might have a flying, fire breathing reptilian creature. It turns out they are right, and the dragon is a simulation created by advanced technology, but still.
  - They probably dismiss the idea of a dragon of the kind depicted in the Arthurian legends being real, because such a creature is biologically impossible. A "dragon" in and of itself, okay, dinosaur. A flying dragon, only possible if it's fairly small. A fire-breather? No, just no.
- General Landry subverts this quite early on in his career, when Daniel suggests that there might be a hidden cavern of treasure built by the Ancients underneath Glastonbury Tor in Britain.
  Landry: Well two years ago, I wouldn't have believed we would find a Ancient outpost under a mile of ice in Antarctica!
Heroes often shows people extremely skeptical about Hiro's powers, even if they have powers themselves. The most obvious example is Nathan Petrelli, who flies under his own power to escape a kidnapping — and then treats Hiro like a complete nutcase just minutes later.
- Matt (a psychic) is equally skeptical in the dystopian future of "Five Years Gone":
  Mohinder: Hiro Nakamura can stop time. Teleport by folding space. Theoretically, he can fold time as well.
  Matt: So you're saying he's a time traveler.
  Mohinder: Is that any stranger than being able to read someone's mind?
  (pause)
  Matt: Yeah. It is.
- Early in the series this is partially justified by Hiro's uneven English. Even to those who should know better, somebody who has trouble expressing themselves properly is likely to be more easily judged crazy.
Supernatural is bad about this; despite making a career out of hunting supernatural menaces and retaining enough experience and Genre Savvy to fill an aircraft carrier, Sam and Dean Winchester almost inevitably have an argument over whether or not the Monster Of The Week could be the real thing or not. Even more arbitrarily, which one of them decides to be the skeptic switches every week. One of them will be dead sure that something supernatural is afoot, while the other scoffs at the idea (until people start dying).
- Subverted in a first-season episode where the MOTW turns out to be only an ordinary human serial killer.
- One memorable scene has Dean explaining to Sam why he doesn't believe in angels (their mother said that angels were watching over them, but she was murdered by a demon), despite hunting demons straight out of Hell on a regular basis. When Sam points out that there's more folklore on angels than any other creature they've fought, Dean says that there's a lot of folklore on unicorns as well. Sam's response? "Wait, there's no such thing as unicorns?" In this same scene, Dean says that there's no God. This is an odd belief given that in this series the name of God and holy water are harmful to demons, and Christian exorcism rituals are effective. By the end of the episode, Dean is less certain that no higher power is at work.
- The episode "A Very Supernatural Christmas" featured a series of Christmas-related disappearances (including somebody getting dragged up the chimney). The brothers start to wonder if the monster is some sort of "Anti Claus". They end up doing some research on the concept, investigate Santa's village and even attempt to apprehend the guy playing Father Christmas (who matches the profile of the Anti Claus, but turns out to just be a drunk). After that failure, they consult Bobby who tells them there is no such thing and that Sam and Dean are idiots.
- Then comes another episode where all sort of weird things are happening in a single university campus. The only one Bobby does not accept as even remotely possible is an alien abduction.
In the show Strange, the title character explains at length the presence of demons on earth, but flatly denies the possibility of ghosts.
In Special Unit 2, everything from gargoyles to werewolves are actually real, except for vampires. "Never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life"
The Tenth Doctor, a man who travels through time and space in a dimensionally transcendental police box, and who has come back from the dead by rewriting his biological structure nine times, regularly pronounces things impossible.
- Hell, the tenth Doctor is very mild compared to the William Hartnell Doctor in the very first seasons, who was regularly denouncing most anything his companions told him as ridiculous fantastickery.
  - Ian Chesterton did this to a degree as well, although he stopped short of flat earth atheism most of the time.
- Creatures of Beauty, a Big Finish audio drama, features the Doctor and Nyssa encountering the Veln. They know about aliens, but refuse to believe that there is more than one kind of alien: Even after blood-testing Nyssa they discover she's not Veln and assume she's Koteem. After finding no match with Koteem blood samples, one remarks that it must mean that she's a Koteem with a "different sort of blood".
- In The Daemons the Third Doctor goes to great pains to explain that something that looks and functions exactly like magic is not, in fact, magic. His argument seems to amount to "Because I don't want to call it magic". Also something about Clarke's Third Law.
- Torchwood had the same issue, particularly egregious was the episode "Meat", in which Gwen's fiancé Rhys refuses to believe that her job is "catching aliens", despite having seen one himself not two hours earlier. Although to be fair, he probably thought that was just a regular giant mutant land whale.
  - His response is an incredulous "Aliens? In Cardiff?". London has been invaded, publicly, by various aliens constantly over the last few years. But Cardiff? No f'in way.
- In Torchwood, while Gwen freaked out at first and was in mild denial, she accepted aliens pretty quickly. Fairies, on the other hand, she scoffed continually at, until some did show up and started killing people.
The Sarah Jane Adventures of course, have the same issue, as Sarah Jane does not believe in ghosts or magic. Hey, remember when alien star gods from the previous universe used astrology to take over the world?
- The Eternity Trap had Sarah Jane scoffing at the idea of ghosts, while simultaneously encouraging a ghost hunter to have a more open mind. Because searching for ghosts is inherently more close-minded than searching for aliens. Although she was actually implied to have been wrong about the ghosts.
In Monk, the genius detective Adrian Monk often holds what appear to be implausible beliefs. A seemingly open-and-shut suicide or accident case may be interpreted as a homicide by Monk, or he may accuse a person who has an airtight alibi. The captain, Randy and his assistant are consistently skeptical, despite that he turns out to be right just about every time.
- He actually was wrong on one case, where he accused a nudist of being a murderer because he had a trauma of nude persons because when he was born, he was nude and the doctor slapped him in front of his mother who didn't stop it.
- He also accused someone of murdering his wife, at which point the man turns to said wife and says "Honey, this is Adrian Monk; he's going to tell me how I murdered you." Since it was quite early in the episode, he had time to pull off his normal Holmes gig.
- In one case he is accused by a member of his support group of being responsible for the day's murders and seriously entertains the possibility throughout half the episode.
Same thing takes place in Medium. Spoofed in a Mad TV skit where the protagonist points out that she does this every "Wednesday... 10:00 PM, right after Las Vegas." The chief just sits there going "I don't understand."
In the early seasons of Red Dwarf in particular, Arnold Rimmer sneers at the idea of believing in God, yet remains fanatically devoted to the idea of meeting an Sufficiently Advanced Alien species — particularly those consisting of gorgeous multi-breasted women who will be able to construct for him a new body out of nothing — to the extent that he blames every slightly unusual occurrence, such as using up an entire toilet roll in a day, on aliens despite there being just as much evidence for the existence of either in the Red Dwarf universe (i.e. none, the strange creatures seen on the show are all GELFs — Genetically Engineered Life Forms).
Lampshaded on Firefly: Wash says that River being psychic sounds like "something out of science fiction". His wife points out that they live on a spaceship, to which he glibly replies, 'So?'
- He does have a point though. Even within science fiction the chances are good psychics as a natural abilty (which may or may not be enhanced) would not fit in the setting if it is purely technological in outlook.
- Plus, he shouldn't see a spaceship as unusual, as they've been around all his life. Sure they seem strange to us, five hundred years to his past, but imagine how people five hundred years ago would've felt if they were told about us? To people five centuries ago, cars and airplanes would be even more fantastic than a spaceship is to us.
Happens on multiple occasions in the Highlander TV series. At various times, MacLeod has scoffed at the concept of Methos ("the world's oldest Immortal? He's a legend"), the idea of a Dark Quickening (absorbing the essence of an endless number of evil Immortals would eventually make you evil as well), and the Methuselah Stone (an artifact that makes normal folks immortal). He's eventually proven wrong each and every time he makes such a pronouncement, usually in a fairly dramatic way. These reactions would be a little more believable if MacLeod himself wasn't over four hundred years old and incapable of being killed by anything other than decapitation. He also tends not to listen to those who offer him alternate viewpoints on such matters, despite them being (a) the aforementioned world's oldest living man, with over five thousand years of research and exploration under his belt, and (b) a friendly member of an organization that has been studying such phenomena since before the invention of the written word.
- This is subverted in an episode where it looks like people are being killed by a vampire, an idea that MacLeod scoffs at. Turns out he's right, it was just a regular Immortal pretending to be a vampire.
Lampshaded in Pushing Daisies, in the conversation containing the page quote. Ned states firmly that he doesn't believe in ghosts, witches or the like, saying "this may sound strange coming from a guy who can shoot sparks from his finger, but that's what I believe." This is reasonably justified, as Ned has never before encountered anything paranormal other than his own power. Plus, it's possible that having the ability to resurrect people is why Ned doesn't believe in ghosts, as no one he brings back ever remembers doing anything beyond dying.
- As native inhabitants of a blindingly colorful and relentlessly quirky existence, all the characters in Pushing Daisies surely have suspension of disbelief on a different scale than the audience.
Definitely one of Scully's more infuriating traits on The X Files. Her ability to deny phenomena outside her "present scientific knowledge has all the answers, and if something's outside that set, it doesn't exist" worldview becomes increasingly illogical the longer she's dealing with aliens, vampires, etc. In one great scene, Mulder calls her out on it, notes that his theories are right a healthy majority of the time and demands a little credit.
- Well in fairness, Mulder's alien theory was wrong in that particular episode. Of course, even Mulder had difficulty believing he was going to be eaten by a giant hallucinogenic fungus.
Peter Bishop of Fringe qualifies, as his extensive knowledge of science and physics make him reasonably skeptical about his Father's insane devices or claims of strange projects that are rumored to include reanimation. Despite having actually seen and experienced a few examples of the weirdness by now, he continues to be skeptical whenever an awkward solution presents itself to the case at hand. Though he does seem to be less surprised as time goes by when they work.
In Lost, Jack is the usual skeptic, though Sayid also makes dry comments ("We've been walking for two days, following a compass bearing provided by the carvings on a stick!").
- In the Season Four finale, Jack denies that the island was moved, despite the fact that it spontaneously disappeared while he and everyone else were watching. In all fairness he may have assumed they moved rather than the Island. In season 5 and his experiences trying to acclimate to the off island world he loses his skepticism enirely, his Locke like faith in the Island pretty much the only thing keeping him going during the season as he rejected his past beliefs following his lengthy breakdown.
Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue: In "Trakeena's Revenge", the first person a little girl runs to after seeing her mother abducted by a monster tells her, "Don't be silly; there's no such thing as monsters." Where has this lady been living for the past seven years? Especially in this season, where the Power Rangers are operating without a Masquerade and are well-known public celebrities who fight monsters. Once. A. Week. For. Seven. Years.
- Or how about the...what, four or five times so far the planet had been invaded by aliens. Not just aliens, but alien monsters...with magic. It's easier to just write that chick off as an escaped mental patient who thinks those monster-alien-magic people are giant bunnies only she can see.
- Or earlier in Power Rangers In Space, where Bulk & Skull find work as assistants to the eccentric crank Professor Phenomenus, who is generally held as crazy because he believes in the existence of ALIENS! And he lives in the same town that's been under siege by Evil Space Aliens for the better part of six years. Of course, he IS crazy, so maybe that's just the half-baked excuse he uses for being kicked out of the scientific community. It's worth noting he didn't last particularly long even among the science staff of a gigantic mobile space colony sent to colonize an alien world.
Kids Incorporated: In "Constellation Connie", Connie tries to build a time machine, and accidentally summons an alien instead. The kids don't believe her, and even tease her over it. Admittedly, this was the only episode of the season with a fantastic plot, but still, at this point in the series, two of the older kids have already traveled in time, and one of them has already met an alien.
In the Xena episode "Old Ares Had A Farm" when Xena and Gabriel speculate about the presence of ghosts, Ares mocks them and humans in general for inventing wierd supernatural creatures just to explain any unknown phenomena, ya know, like, gods...
George, Being Human's neurotic werewolf, thinks that the idea of wizards is "ridiculous".
One episode of Star Trek The Next Generation saw Doctor Crusher insisting that there were "no such things as ghosts!" This, in spite of the fact that the Star Trek universe contains many, many instances of humanoids having their consciousnesses de-coporealized and surviving in the absence of their bodies. Of course most of these have hand-wavey Technobabble explanations, but still...
An episode of the Beastmaster had Dar declare there no such things as demons. His sidekick retorts, "You can talk to animals!" but Dar refuses to believe until they encounter one.

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In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream, Duke Theseus, a mythical hero whose claim to fame is having defeated a half-man half-bull demigod, refuses to believe the protagonists' tale of fairy mischief.

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The Legend Of Zelda series takes place in a world with its share of magic, powerful artifacts, and fantastic creatures. So it's rather odd that in Twilight Princess, Link has to go out of his way to ensure that no one knows that he can turn into a wolf. Well, not the humans, at least. The Minish Cap is similar, hiding the existence of the titular magical race from anyone who's not a child.
- What's weirder is that you'd think that turning into a wolf and back in front of them would make things a whole lot easier, because then you wouldn't have to worry about scaring anyone who's seen you do it anymore. But I guess it's like this: Sure, they idolize him now, but if it should get out that he can change like that, why, he'll be considered different, and therefore bad, regardless of the heroic deeds he's done in both forms.
  - In defense of the game, Link's deeds are not known to most people, but the terrible horror they felt when they were in the Dark Realm is, and Link's wolf form is clearly a Dark Creature. People who are more aware of Link's activities, like the Zora, are more accepting of his alternate form.
Snake is extremely skeptical of Vamp's abilities, fervently reaching for every possibly logical explanation for the wall climbing (later proven to be tech-based), his regen ability (again, tech-based), and then Vamp's ability to paralyze people by pinning their shadow (actually a form of hypnosis). What's funny is that Snake has seen a man that could command ravens, a very powerful psychic that can brainwash people, and is himself a clone.
- This gets carried onto his Super Smash Bros Brawl incarnation, the way he grouses about magic.
Travians includes a pig that can talk, two hats possessed by the souls of dead robbers, a physical land of the dead (apparently controlled by the military), and magic spells cast by a good witch and several druids... including a spell that turns a man into a frog for quite some time and some spells to protect houses and people, plus a love spell. Despite all this being pretty common knowledge among the NPC's, one NPC scoffs at his brother believing in a dowsing rod (which works, btw).
Subverted in Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, when Ash travels back in time to the 1700's, meets his colonial-era ancestor, and explains how he's the man's descendant from the future and came back to fight a time-traveling army of demons. His ancestor immediately agrees to help and when Ash skeptically remarks that he seems to be accepting the situation a little too easily, his ancestor responds that after a night of fighting demons from another dimension, he's ready to believe anything.
In the Case Files included with the Collector's Edition of Batman Arkham Asylum, it's noted that Dr. Penelope Young refuses to believe that the Ratcatcher can actually command rats, and believes he just has a bizarre form of Messiah complex. This is a person who treats inmates including Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, The Mad Hatter, the Scarecrow, and Clayface. Being able to talk to rats is downright normal compared to the abilities these guys have.
Persona3 has a Scooby Doo subplot about the high school being haunted. The members of SEES treat the rumor with varying levels of skepticism and fear. That would make sense, if it weren't for the fact that SEES fights dozens of ''shadows'' in the high school several times a week.

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Spoofed on Homestar Runner, in the Strong Bad Email myths & legends, where the cut-out of a Bear Holding a Shark is treated as a Bigfoot-like monster:
Strong Sad: I'm sure it's just a weather balloon or a foreign exchange student. These strange beasts just aren't real!
Strong Bad: ...said the elephant-footed ghost man.

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In This GirlGenius Agatha gets called on exhibiting this trope: the cat objects that she works with mad scientists and should be able to handle a talking cat.
Played with a bit in Scary-Go-Round. After scaring off a ghost with a holograph, The Boy expresses surprise that it would fall for such a trick. Ryan's response: "Ghosts got to be superstitious! Tell them there's a flying top-hat full of yoghurt out to get them...you'll get the benefit of the doubt."
Kat Donlan of Gunnerkrigg Court seems to be mentally distinguishing between magic and science, in a 'verse where that dichotomy may not exist. She has no difficulty accepting the explicitly supernatural: psychopomps, ghosts, fairies, demon-possessed stuffed animals, shadow-men, Physical Gods, and people turning into birds. But when it comes to robots, she's reluctant to consider the possibility of magitek even though her own parents are both science teachers who practice magic, and she outright scoffs at the idea of androids realistic enough to pass for humans.
- Lampshaded by Antimony here.
  Antimony: We have seen stranger. Remember that cursed teapot?
  Kat: Yeahhhhh... But that was... I don't even know what that was about...
Psycho Mantis in the Metal Gear Solid fan webcomic The Last Days Of Foxhound is vehemently opposed to the idea of ghosts existing despite increasing evidence that they do when Big Boss possesses Liquid and being confronted by The Sorrow later on. This despite the fact that he is a psychic. The Sorrow lampshades this.
- Rather ironically, his ghost shows up in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- The comic seems to provide a reasonable explanation for Mantis' scepticism, namely that he might really want there to not be ghosts, since if there are, that means he's going to have to face a lot of pissed off victims of his when he dies.
Sluggy Freelance usually avoids this, at least with its main characters anyway. The bartender Crystal, however, falls pretty squarely into this trope. If she hears the other characters talking about aliens or vampires, she just assumes they're very drunk (which, granted, they usually are around her). She does this despite the fact that she's been to their Halloween parties (where a demon appears each year to devour Torg's soul), and regularly serves alfalfa margaritas to a talking rabbit.
In one Misfile arc Ash refuses to believe that a guy who just challenged her to a race could (a) talk to cars, and (b) be haunted by a dark force. For the record Ash lives with two Angels, has been intermittently stalked by a third, befriended by another racer who was haunted by her dead sister oh, yeah, and she used to be a guy.
Piro (and Erika, and sometimes others) from Megatokyo openly discredits the concept of zombies, and seems to be completely unaware of the existence of Kaiju, Magical Girls and, possibly, ninjas. This is coming from a guy who takes advice from an angel and devil and, oh yes, has a Robot Girl living with him. There's also his gunslinger friends, the odd gadgets Largo creates, and Hawk, but these may be negligible compared to everything else that happens.
- Course, there was a certain amount of vagueness on how much of Largovision was actually real, or at least, in the same universe that Pirovision was seeing.
In Chaos Pet, we have two characters discussing whether dogs can think like humans think. Then, we cut to Sufficiently Advanced Aliens discussing if humans can think or not.
Starscream's Brigade in the Insecticomics has encountered the distilled power of Primus in the Matrix, battled against the priest and servants of a chaos god, and communicated with hyperevolved extradimensional beings. Starscream himself is immortal, has seen the afterlife and simply becomes a ghost when his body is destroyed. And yet their master strategist Thrust is repeatedly mocked for his trust in astrology and tarot cards.
- Not to mention Flat Earth Atheists Skyfire and Dreadmoon.
You'd think Raphael wouldn't be so fast to discount a few oddities in his world, but in Mutant Ninja Turtles Gaiden, he's completely (violently) unwilling to believe that a human could've been turned into a mutant turtle. It's even lampshaded later on.
The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja: The titular doctor is from a family comprised of ninja who never remove their masks for any reason; he lives next to a haunted forest; his hometown has a zombie contingency plan (and yes, it gets used); his mentor was a clone of Benjamin Franklin; and it only gets weirder from there. So what strikes him as unbelievably absurd? 1. A family legend about Irish proto-ninja defending their village by throwing frozen shamrocks, and 2. an ancient South American doomsday device that will go off if no one plays tennis with it.
- For the second one, he doesn't disbelieve it so much as think it's completely ridiculous. Which it is.
Lampshaded in Skin Horse. This from a talking dog and a patchwork zombie, whose office also employs a Steam Punk robot, a swarm of bees, and a helicopter with the brain of a video game nerd.
Sweetheart: Werewolves are storybook monsters, Unity!
Unity: You're telling a zombie? Whaddya think they are?
Sweetheart: I don't know! I thought we were after genetically-engineered talking Canadian super-dogs!
Unity: Yeah, cause that's so much more real.
Sweetheart: Okay, so this job can get weird.
Hijinks Ensue refers to this as "Scullyosis".
Not one, but two webcomics that star animals with some degree of anthropomorphism include early stories in which a human character is telling the useless background characters about said animals. They're immediately dismissed for making such ridiculous claims. The story goes on, and... so far, between the two webcomics, a total of one animal without at least the ability to talk has been introduced. Apparently, anthropomorphic animals are commonplace in these comics... and yet Bernard still can't get anyone to believe his malevolent dog really did eat his homework. (Art, on the other hand, has had his reason for being so completely ignored altered through Ret Con.)

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One of the protagonists in the sci-fi novel John Dies at the End has a healthy amount of skepticism before his mundane life is derailed by a torrent of supernatural horrors, but even after he's accepted the existence of demonic beings that can erase people from history, and hunting ghosts has become a routine freelance job for him, he's still quick to dismiss things that are merely unlikely, such as a claim his friend John makes about birds' feet getting frozen to power lines during particularly cold weather.
Without breaking my gaze with the TV, I said, "To John, something being funny is more important than being true."
- The narrator actually notices birds whose feet have apparently frozen to power lines, and describes it in just enough detail for the audience to realize what happened even if the narrator's oblivious to it.
Jamie from More Tales Of MU has a habit of dismissing as ludicrous rumors that readers know to be true (from MU classic).
Phase in the Whateley Universe has been trying to convince her friends (mainly Fey and Chaka) that the New Olympians are really avatars of the original Greek Gods, and not just teenagers who have a cool theme team. Fey, Chaka, and the rest refuse to believe. Fey herself is the incarnation (or something) of a Faerie Queen who is far, far older than the Greek Gods! And they all know Carmilla, who is the child of the demon Gothmog, who some of them have met. And Fey has faced Mythos-related magics.

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Sokka of Avatar The Last Airbender seems to have trouble with this one from time to time. The second season episode "The Swamp" is one good example, in which he refuses to believe that the swamp called forth spirits. When Katara points out that Aang has contacted spirits regularly (not to mention he was once kidnapped by one and stuck in the spirit world), he dismisses it with "That's Avatar stuff; it doesn't count."
- He later subverts it, though, by thinking up his own insane ideas for what can get in their way (particularly a "giant, exploding Fire Nation spoon" or a city being mysteriously submerged in an ocean of killer shrimp) and admitting "Weird stuff happens to us", just before a drooling and insane-looking man with an ear of corn in his mouth comes by.
The Scooby Doo cartoons invert this trope, where the gang always assume that the monster of the week is real, despite every other one they have ever encountered turning out to be an ordinary person who is simply pretending to be a monster.
- Subverted in one of the movies, when Fred tries to pull the mask off of a subdued zombie and accidentally tears its head off, which keeps moving, causing him to immediately consider animatronics.
- Also subverted in Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase, where the point about the monsters they've just encountered from their rogue's gallery all originally being people in costumes comes up; Shaggy and Scooby try to remove the mask of one of them, and then realise said monsters are real because they're in a video game of their adventures.
  - Also subveryed in a special where the gang ends up in a monster school and have to participate in a car race for some reason (it's been a while). All of the monsters are really monsters.
In one episode of Godzilla The Series, Nick refuses to believe in the Loch Ness Monster. Elsie points out that "We've seen things in the last few months I never would have believed in before." The titular character leaps to mind.
In The Venture Bros, Brock inquires if his boss's policy of "don't harm women and children" applies to female vampires. No, because they're undead, therefore technically not women, the boss replies. "Also? Fictitious." This is a world where ghosts, magic, and resurrections are downright common, and as a matter of fact, a later character is a Blacula hunter. Dr. Venture is especially prone to this: he says the Chupacabra (and Catholicism) are "utter crap" and then later exclaims "No way!" when he's attacked by a Chupacabra.
- One episode shows Brock (and Doctor Venture) explicitly disbelieving in magic, despite it saving their lives several times. They believe it to be an unknown version of science. Of course, at the same time, Doc is currently existing in three different locations, one of them gooey.
Strangely applied in (of all places) the Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends Christmas episode, "A Lost Claus". It's been long established that the series takes place in a universe where everything children can imagine comes to life. Therefore, you'd think there'd be no question at all that Santa Claus is real in this world.
- Imaginary Friends who happen to look and act exactly like Santa have a tendency to show up in droves around Christmas time. So the question is, is there one single "real" Santa?
American Dragon Jake Long: In one episode, Jake scoffs at the idea of ghosts haunting his summer camp, despite being a human/dragon shapeshifter who deals with supernatural creatures all the time. He reassures the campers that, sure, unicorns and leprechauns exist, but ghosts? No way.
The cynic Kevin 11 of Ben 10 Alien Force has this going for him in regards to magic and crop circles, despite being a mutant that battled countless alien species. The sad thing is, he's more or less right both times.
Lampshaded in the South Park episode "Cartman's Incredible Gift" where Kyle voices his skepticism of psychic abilities throughout and tries to convince the police to take a more realistic, scientific approach to the murder investigation. At the very end of the episode it is revealed that Kyle may have psychic powers himself. The series as a whole has many episodes with skeptical themes, despite the fact that supernatural characters and phenomena are commonplace.
- To be fair, any time Catman's involved, it's a fairly safe bet to assume that he's lying until proven otherwise.
- In another episode, he convinces Hollywood and most of the adults in the show his hand is possessed by Jennifer Lopez (or at least someone pretending to be Jennifer Lopez). Kyle strongly believes that Cartman is full of crap. In the end, Kyle's skepticism wavers after Cartman reminds him that they have seen a lot of crazy shit... and then Cartman laughs at him because he really did make the whole thing up.
- Also, how can anyone in the South Park universe possibly be an atheist, considering the fact that Jesus, God, and Satan — just for starters — have all visited the town countless times?
  - Allow me to remind you of the fact that Jesus was a character in Imaginationland, meaning he was actually imaginary. Honestly, I'm confused by the whole thing but prefer not to think about it.
On a similar note, Family Guy has also included Godly miracles, a visit from Jesus, a visit from Death, and countless events of the just plain ludicrous variety, yet Brian remains a staunch atheist.
- Heck, he even seemed to actively believe in God in an early episode. "You want an explanation? "GOD... IS... PISSED!"
In a Crowning Moment Of Funny on Veggie Tales, Laura Carrot and Junior Asparagus are at first suspicious of the talking Rumor Weed, like any schoolkids would be; the Rumor Weed points out, though, that "I'm a talking weed, you're a talking carrot..."
Diana in Martin Mystery refuses to believe that any event The Center investigates is result of paranormal activity, claiming that there would be some logical explanation. Yet she works for an organization that employs aliens and cavemen, and it is a Monster Of The Week show, so the fact that she brought this up so often really messes with the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief.
Played with in an episode of Batman Beyond, where Terry is telling Bruce about a so-called "ghost" his classmates believe to be haunting his high school. Terry expects Bruce to reject the notion out of hand because there's no such thing as ghosts. Bruce then turns to Terry and explains he's met ghosts, wizards, and demons... but he doesn't believe it in this case, because it sounds "too high school."
- Not to mention Klarion, bum-Bum-BUM! THE Witch Boy!
Danny Phantom:
Frostbite: Your central cold reading indicates extreme cold, as if your body is self-generating it. I sensed it within you the last time we met.
Danny: How is that possible?
Frostbite: You become invisible, pass through solid objects, and emit beams of energy from your hands, and you ask "How is this possible?"
The Simpsons episode "Lisa the Skeptic" where Lisa is arguing against the authenticity of an angel skeleton and states that one who believes in angels might as well believe in such things as unicorns and leprechauns, to which Kent Brockman replies "Everybody knows leprechauns are extinct!"
- She's right in the end.
Gargoyles: the titular characters are half a dozen creatures with superhuman strength and wings that turn to stone during the day and that only exist in modern New York after being put to sleep for a thousand years, yet their human friend tends to respond with disbelief every time they encounter new weirdness. She does get better as time goes on, though.
While pinning down an in-universe chronology in Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers is perhaps an exercise in futility, but as far as this trope goes, it really doesn't matter: in the first two volumes, they've seen bona fide aliens, magic lamps, ghosts, mummies who can walk and talk, fortune tellers, leprechauns, banshees, and a weather-predicting tail, and been under the influence of mind-control juice. Yet every time (including some others in which they turn out to be right, and it's all a trick, it seems like someone (or almost everyone) doesn't believe the thing in question exists, and is only willing to check it out when forced to. Viewers who have seen the remaining episodes may be able to point out more cases.
AAAHH!!! Real Monsters has the monsters (who have supernatural powers besides looking scary) being very skeptical of ghosts, which don't exist (or do they?)
Metalocalypse contains the following exchange:
"There's no such thing as trolls!"
"Then how do you explain the dead unicorns?"
In an early episode of Justice League, Green Lantern doesn't believe a story the Flash is telling him about a talking gorilla, before Flash calls him out:
Flash: We both have a Martian on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt here.

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Warhammer: most people in the Empire don't believe in Skaven, or if they do, they think they're just another form of mutant. Wizards? OK. Pegasi? Cool. Goat-headed men? Fine. Ratmen? Yeah, right, pull the other one.
- Ratmen living in all our sewers and preparing for the day when they will swarm out in an unstoppable tide and kill us all? I'd rather not believe, thanks.
- There are plenty of people in the Warhammer world willing to accept the existence of giant ratmen, just not as a distinct species from the accepted concept of Beastmen and mutants. In theory, not all Beastmen are goat-headed either, it just isn't reflected in the models because the forces of Chaos are supposed to be infinitely variable. The idea that giant, hideous ratmen being distinct from Beastmen does seem a bit of a stretch. Foolish man-things.
- To be fair, most people don't believe in the likes of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, despite the fact that plenty of similar things (big primates, large sea creatures) are known to exist. A person in the Warhammer universe probably wouldn't think that Skaven are absurd, fantastical nonsense — rather, they would just not think that Skaven were a real species.
  - The government cover-up that is perfectly willing to silence people no matter what may have something to do with it. Even cities that have been openly invaded by the Skaven in recent memory don't believe in them.
- It's also implied the Skaven are keeping themselves secret - they have an entire clan of assassins to deal with witnesses, and the Grey Seers regularly perform a ritual that may or may not cast a veil of mystic secrecy over the race.
At Animenext we have this game, Are You a Werewolf, which we developed into a deep, complex game by adding more character types, among which is the Skeptic. The person who draws that card must refuse to believe in werewolves until someone adjacent to them is killed by one, no matter how many nights someone is mauled mysteriously in the middle of the night.
The Palladium game Beyond the Supernatural included the Nega-Psychic class, who can spend all night fighting ghosts and evil wizards and still refuse to acknowledge their existence, or at the very least, rationalize away their experiences. Ironically, Nega-Psychics are psychics whose extreme skepticism weakens supernatural powers around them (including their teammates, unfortunately).

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When Marco Polo came back from China, people could believe in evil jinn haunting the desert but not in money made out of paper.
- That's because paper is cheap and worthless. Cheaper than gold anyway.
Some of the things that break people's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief can be quite odd. A monster rampaging through New York? Sure. A guy getting a cell phone signal in a subway station? Yeah, right. People acting illogically in a crisis? No, that's impossible.
- Not to mention all the people nitpicking over camcorder battery life and storage capacity. (And really, with today's camcorders, it's actually quite feasible that you could record 90 minutes on one battery, and capacity is no object if it's SD card or hard drive-based.)
- It's quite reasonable that mundane things would break Willing Suspension Of Disbelief. That's because there's a difference between Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for the sake of a premise and realizing that the filmmakers Did Not Do The Research.
Otherkin are a part of Furry Fandom who actually believe they have the soul of an animal (almost invariably things like unicorns and dragons and tigers, etc.). They're considered odd even by furries, but not as much as "otakukin", who literally believe they're Anime characters. Otherkin think they're crazy. There's also a subgroup called "Therians", who are the same as Otherkin, but they believe they're animals that exist in reality. All three occasionally have debates over which group is more "realistic". So what happens when someone makes a post on Livejournal's main Otherkin community asking if it's possible that they're really a Pikachu? Hilarity ensues.
While not nearly as extreme or silly, there is a line of thinking called "Radical Skepticism," which posits that truth is unknowable. As such, it leads to questioning absolutely everything. Arbitrary Skepticism in its most literal sense.

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