I Just Want To Be Normal - Television Tropes & Idioms

I wish I could sleep like normal people.

— Joseph Carey Merrick, better known as The Elephant Man

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

— Albert Camus

Dean: Why... Why can't I just have a normal life!

Dr. Venture: I had that dream once too.

—The Venture Bros

They didn't want these powers, this magic, this curse, or whatever it is that was foisted upon them. The responsibility to save the world? Forget it! All those exciting adventures and the ability to potentially do anything? Take it away. They want nothing to do with it.

Needing to be normal often comes in waves. Often, it hits critical levels, and the character threatens to quit, or even does so temporarily.

While this is all well and good, most writers conveniently forget that after such an exciting and exceptional existence, everything else will seem dull and meaningless to most people. Not only are special abilities usually given up, but sometimes also cherished friends. Some people psychologically will be unable to adjust, and most will acquire deep-seated mental issues about the whole process.

This can also include situations where overt powers or the like are not involved, wherein the characters are involved in an exceptional situation. It can also occur when characters, for no particular reason other than that the show is ending or that they're leaving it, have a sudden and usually implausible epiphany that they really want to live a "normal" life. Somehow this almost invariably includes them cutting ties with the entirety of the rest of the characters and locations.

One common subversion is Can't Stay Normal where the character finally becomes normal, but is not able to adjust to it, and longs for their old life back. Or just as they achieve their normality, something happens where they NEED their abilities back, particularly to save the Love Interest. Either may be a Ten Minute Retirement, the former may be a Sequel Hook. If someone is constantly being forced by the plot to do heroic things, when really they want to be left alone, they're Heroic Neutral.

See also Cursed With Awesome, Who Wants To Live Forever, and Refusal Of The Call. Contrast Jumped At The Call, where wanting to be normal never even occurs to the hero. Naturally, the opposite of this trope is I Just Want To Be Special. Also see Blessed With Suck, when the hero has every reason to want to be normal.

Examples

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Anime

Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Part 4 Big Bad Kira Yoshikage's main motivation was to live a normal and uneventful life. When you consider what his main hobby is it makes his goal kind of contradictory.
- One could argue that it was less the motivation to have a normal life and more the motivation to do whatever the hell he wanted, considering at the end of the series he has a good chance to take his normal life, but doesn't in favor of continuing his...activities.
Most Magical Girls, especially Usagi of Sailor Moon, who spent all of the first arc of Sailor Moon R saying this and got two separate chances at it via reincarnation-induced amnesia - once before the show started, once at the end of the first series.
- Exception: Nanoha, from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and Yui, from Corrector Yui, both of whom jump into the weirdness with both feet. Yui does this because she is a Genre Savvy Magical Girl Otaku, Nanoha because she is looking for a true calling. Shugo Chara is somewhere between the two extremes. The powers didn't seem to bother Amu,it's the charas that annoyed her.
- And now the justified version: Sailor Nothing. Oh, Sailor Nothing.
  - Usagi is pretty justified too, what with the whole "having powers will kill you and your friends" angle. She even cried when she does get her powers back in Sailor Moon R because getting them back also means she remembers watching her friends and her lover all die in battle right in front of her.
- Parodied with Pretty Sammy, whose whole motivation for not wanting to keep her powers is because her outfit is lame and being a skimpily clad superhero is really embarrassing.
Ichigo of Tokyo Mew Mew wanted to be normal out of fear that her crush Masaya would reject her if he found out — fighting aliens is really not a big deal compared to this.
Pretear, on the other hand, is a strange case. By the time Himeno receives the Call To Adventure, she already doesn't consider her life to be "normal", since she is all of a sudden a member of a rich family and feels ridiculously out of place there. Turns out that something even weirder — namely, being a Magical Girl — actually fits her better. To the point when she almost gets a Heroic BSOD upon being Brought Down To Normal for one episode.
Chisame Hasegawa in Mahou Sensei Negima was fed-up with her strange classmates even before she got a Cute Shotaro Boy for a teacher. Naturally, things go downhill from there.
- She eventually just gives up entirely after traveling to the Magic World with Ala Alba.
- Another of the less blatantly eccentric ones, Asuna, turns out to only be normal because she succeeded at this, with the help of some Laser Guided Amnesia. When the aformentioned Cute Shotaro Boy appears, she goes back to paranormal of her own will not as a deliberate choice, but because she doesn't remember choosing to become normal in the first place, much less being abnormal. Remember, always analyze what you would do if you didn't know what you know if you plan on getting rid of that knowledge.
- It's brought up again subtly with Evangeline; she admits that the reason she hates Asuna because Asuna was actually successful at becoming normal, but gave it up anyway. Eva is pissed because the person who got what she most desired wasted the chance, while Eva never got a chance to be normal to begin with.
Kahlua from Galaxy Angel Rune and Galaxy Angel II, as a child, had tried to save a friend with her magic, but said friend was less than grateful, instead scared away by her strength. The result was a fear of not being normal, and she mentally sealed away a large percentage of her own power by choice. This created her Superpowered Evil Side, Tequila.
A Little Snow Fairy Sugar rather poorly handles this in its resolution.
Haunted Junction, in its two-part finale, shows very clearly that a life of "normalcy" is in fact nothing to enjoy and criticizes the trend.
It is fairly common in Real Robot series for the main character to wish for a return to their regular life, usually due to the fact that their unique situation is brought on by warfare.
It takes several episodes of Bleach for main character Ichigo Kurosaki to accept the responsibility of his borrowed Shinigami powers.
A variant of this occurs in Hayate The Combat Butler. After finding out Hayate wants a normal girl and normal life, Nagi finds Ayumu Nishizawa, essentially the most normal person in the cast. (The narrator pointed this out.) and follows her all day, learning how to be "normal". In the end, she realizes that normal is "an extremely scaled down version of what I normally do."
We're still not sure what the hell's going on in Suzumiya Haruhi, especially in relation to Kyon. He continually mentions how he wishes Haruhi would just settle down and be a normal, well-adjusted schoolgirl (Hell, it's even in his Image Song), but the fact that he's an Unreliable Narrator (in regards to his feelings, anyway) and that he was once stuck in a universe where everything was normal and he still attempted to revert it to its very Haruhi, abnormal state may prove otherwise...
- And how can we forget Yuki Nagato, starting in Disappearance, which essentially makes her The Woobie.
In Guyver, Sho doesn't want to have the powers. When he technically has the opportunity to get rid of them (when the Guyver Remover is found), he still keeps them because he needs to protect his friends. The new anime adds a nice twist to this, with Tetsuro picking up the G-Unit first and then passing it to Sho only when it started sprouting tentacles.
In Ranma 1/2, most of the characters just want to be rid of their curses. Granted, most would be pretty damn weird even without their curses.
- The characters of Ranma 1/2 fit this trope only tenatively. They have absolutely no complaints with their abnormal lives or their superhuman abilities, and most would probably hate being forced into normality in that fashion; the sole element of their lives they want gone are their Jusenkyo curses, which all but one character finds at the least annoying and at worst actively harmful to their lives. The one exception grew up with his curse... and also happens to go from cruel, egotistic Bishonen to a giant monster that the best martial artists of his generation have serious trouble defeating.
Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion really, REALLY doesn't want to pilot a giant mech and save the world. Subverted when he runs away and realizes that without the Eva, he has (and is) nothing.
- Rei Ayanami in the Alternate Continuity spinoff Angelic Days takes up this role. She transfers schools so often that she just can't find any time to adapt to her surrroundings and make any stable friendships.
Tsuna Sawada from Katekyo Hitman Reborn. Of course he's not a mafia boss, really.
In Naruto, unlike virtually everyone else in a cast of thousands who are either trying to become heads of state, living legends, outright immortals, gain the acceptance of their persecutors, avenge horrific wrongs, or various combinations thereof- Shikamaru Nara's driving goal in life has ever been to achieve a basic level of competence as a ninja, meet a decent girl, get married, have two kids, and stay alive until retirement. Poor bastard never had a chance.
- He's not technically even a Bookworm despite being a genius. He's that damn lazy. He really doesn't want to fight, but he will kick your ass when pressed.
- Given his Character Development in Shippuden, it would appear that his goals have become somewhat more lofty.
Nagisa spends almost all of the two Iczelion OVAs whining and crying about being chosen to bond with the Iczel.
Simon of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is both an example and an aversion. It was a constant of the first few episodes that he would plead with Kamina to return home once the Ganmen Of The Week started pulverising them, but Kamina's Manly Spirit (TM) forced him to repeatedly change his tune, eventually reaching the point where his obligatory Heroic BSOD is completely shattered and the trope abandoned in favour of Simon delivering a never-ending stream of Crowning Moments Of Awesome.
- In the first page of the spin off manga, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Guren Gakuenhen, Simon prays to his dead parents "Please, Please! Let me have an extremely normal life". In the second page, Kamina kicks down his window in an attempt to be Moe Moe.
In Fate/stay night this was Saber's entire motivation to win the Holy Grail, though with the intent of remaining normal so the country she led would have a better ruler.
- Additionally, Shirou, for a good bit of the initial stages of the war, wanted to — and tried to — withdraw from the war. Didn't get far on that one. (You get the option in the game, but if you do quit, Ilya and Berserker eat you.)
  - Shirou did not wanted to be normal. He'd be a lot cheerier about the whole thing if Kotomine didn't poke a giant hole in his fun by pointing out that superheroes need tragedies to happen in order to fix them.
- Shiki from Tsukihime had a similar problem. To be fair, his power was truly lethal, even to himself and people around him.
"I JUST WANT TO BE A CHEF, GODDAMMIT!"
In One Piece, at the end of his fight with Zoro, Kaku expressed regret that he never got to lead a normal life, having been raised to be an assassin. In the manga, him and the rest of CP9 take a stab at this with the World Government hot on their tails.
In Strawberry Panic, Amane doesn't want to be Etoile and didn't ask for her legions of fangirls — she just wants to ride her horse in peace. Her rival, Kaname, finally makes the point to her that only she can win the Etoile election for Spica; the whole school has placed its hopes with Amane, and like it or not, that gives her a responsibility. It's strange how this particular Aesop feels more Broken with a normal human being than with a superhero, Slayer, or whatever.
Sakaki in Azumanga Daioh is a deeply shy girl who's cursed with being Tall Dark And Bishoujo. Other girls mistake her silence for coldness, and this has made her an idol — which embarrasses her, but she's too shy to say that either. Sakaki would much rather be small and cute like Chiyo-chan... who would much rather be big and tall like Sakaki.
Zelgadis in The Slayers is a prime example. Cursed With Awesome in the form of being merged with a stone golem and a demon, in the anime his quest can actually make him seem motivated by vanity, due to the fact his warped body isn't unattractive in an exotic sort of way (almost a Cute Monster Guy), he doesn't really care about people anyway (which makes their being afraid of him when they see him have less impact), and most importantly his body gives him super powers. It boosts his energy reserves, allowing him to cast more spells than either of his companions, allows him to go for ages without food or water, gives him superhuman strength, speed, hearing and stamina, and makes him Nigh Invulnerable to all practical purposes (only incredibly powerful attacks can hurt him- Demon Lords, the Sword of Light, etcetera).
Night Wizard's Renji is one of the most powerful Wizards around and can easily save the world with very little work. Except he wants to stop going on missions and actually get a chance to finish school, which is all but impossible with the number of times Anzelotte keeps calling him away.
Oboro from Basilisk would just love to marry her fiancé Gennosuke and live Happily Ever After. However, they're both the heirs and leaders of warring Ninja clans...
- There's also Genki Boy Yashamaru, who views the clan truce as his chance to get married to his beloved fiancée and fellow Iga Ninja Hotarubi. They both get bloodily killed off. Sniff.
Kenichi is usually pretty happy with the changes in his life due to meeting Miu (i.e., Miu herself), Training From Hell aside. However, he's less than happy with the fights that he's forced into as a result. It's best illustrated here as he sneaks into the cruise ship of a worldwide criminal organization led by some of the most dangerous martial artists in the world, whose disciples want to kill Kenichi to prove their Badassitude.
Kenichi: Where did I go wrong in life?
The main character of Nurarihyon no Mago starts this way, wanting to just live a normal life as a human despite being the heir to a huge clan of youkai and a quarter-youkai himself. But it's averted early on in the first real story arc, when he begins to fully understand his youkai nature and learns of the impact his attitude is having on others firsthand. He decides that while he does want to live a peaceful life, protecting the people close to him and leading his clan is far more important.
In a rare non-supernatural example, Mio. She chose bass instead of guitar because she doesn't like to be the center of attention. Wildly subverted in the anime; Mio's forced to take the lead singer's place in the 3 lives the girls perform.
Judai in Yu-Gi-Oh GX becomes notably less cheerful when suddenly the only thing stopping all his friends from dying and the world ending is the card game he loved so much. And up until this point he was the only one who really did seem to treat it as a card game. Eventually the stress becomes so bad that he surrenders to his super powered evil side and starts taking over the duel monsters world, requiring two heroic sacrifices to get him back to efficiency. He doesn't start enjoying dueling again until a decent bit into the next season... at which point the next big bad starts trying to implement instrumentality. Sucks, huh?
Averted with Onpu the grade-school idol in Ojamajo Doremi. Even though some of the negative aspects of it are there (her mom's too busy to be with her on Christmas) she loves the attention she gets and the work itself.
The entire plot of Card Captor Sakura was this from Clow Reed, even the very existence of the titular heroine. He was so damn powerful he couldn't control his own powers, mostly seeing the future, which took away all the pleasures of life. So he created a more powerful witch (Sakura) who could divide his power between his two reincarnation-like versions, one of them being Sakura's father Fujitaka.
- Only in the manga, though. In the anime, Clow just died so everything else happens equally, except the Sakura's dad being half of Clow and the dividing power thing.
- Sequel series xxxHoLic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle go into more detail about why he wanted to divide his power so badly- just by wishing someone ( his girlfriend Yuuko) wasn't dying, he turned her into an immortal zombie, eternal unliving as everyone around her ages and dies. He took this even harder than she did, somehow.
The Miko Kikyou wanted to be a normal girl, turn her half-demon boyfriend Inu Yasha into a human and then marry him. It Got Worse.
Coyote Starrk from Bleach, despite being one of the strongest hollows in the Bleach universe, wanted nothing more than to be able to live among a group of Nakama without killing them simply by existing in their general area, to the point of wishing he were weak. Aizen recruits him into his army, and indirectly gives him what he wants, but then his comrades are all killed by shinigami, anyway. If the poor guy wasn't such a power house, he'd be a shoe-in for villainous Woobie.
Alphonse wants his normal body back, and wants Ed to get his limbs back.
Rocket Girls: After becoming an astronaut and going into space once, and getting international attention for it, Yukari Morita admits she just wants to be a normal high school student. (Like that's going to happen.)

Comic Books

Peter Parker has attempted to give up the Super Hero life several times, only to come back when someone is in need. Such an attempt was the foundation of the second movie's plot.
This is also common for mutants in the Marvel Universe, who tend to become social pariahs if their status becomes public.
The Teen Titans comic inverted this, with Beast Boy losing his powers in a particular Story Arc. Everyone assumes that he'll be happy about being normal again, until he states that he never wanted to be normal.
- While Teen Titans the animated series plays it painfully straight...
  Beast Boy: Why can't things just go back to the way they were? You were so happy then.
  "The Schoolgirl": Things were never the way you remember. Now just leave me alone.
- The Titans comic also played it as straight as can be with Beast Boy's best friend Cyborg. Half-human half-machine Vic Stone has struggled with I Just Want To Be Normal for decades.
- Titans supporting character Frances Kane has tried very hard to be normal over the years; unfortunately, a combination of Superpowered Evil Side and the writers' desire for a Chew Toy tends to get in the way.
Used in a rather awesome way in the third Blue Beetle comic series, when the villainous Eclipso grants the Blue Beetle all his deepest, most secret desires. Turns out he wants to be a dentist.
Runaways character Karolina Dean would rather be a normal, Hollywood teenager, rather than the lesbian child of two alien criminals.
- Only when things go awkward, as when she tried to kiss Nico and turned out she wasn't interested. At the end of the first series she was the first one who ran out of her foster house and contacted everyone, as she wanted to "fly again".
Ben Grimm, The Thing, is the poster boy for this trope. Despite his complaints about being an orange rock monster, every time he's be "cured", he finds a reason to become The Thing, again. He actually enjoys being the FF's strong man and "The Idol of Millions", but just wishes he could walk down the street without being stared at.
- Which by this point is probably more because of the whole "Idol of Millions" thing than because of his appearance, so he's got nothing to complain about.
  - Apart from having non-reinforced floors give way under him.
In The Bulleteer, both Alix and her "archnemesis" Sally Sonic wish they were normal people; It was this intense desire to live a normal life that led Sally to provoke Alix's husband to killing himself, because she so wanted to be in her place and be genuinely loved by a normal man.
- Alix also can't stop meeting up with people who are the opposite, especially the uber-pathetic Mind Grabber Man.
Subverted with Man-Thing. A scientist who was transformed into a walking, empathic compost heap should be all over this trope, but most of the time he doesn't simply because his transformation cost him his mind- he's little more than, well, a big plant, and any human memories are gone.

Film

Literature

In her first appearance in the Discworld novels, Susan Sto Helit refused to believe she was Death's granddaughter. In later appearances she still attempts to maintain a "normal" life, and insists on being sensible and using logic, often denying her own abilities. Ironically, because she lives on the Discworld, what she thinks of as the "normal world" is actually just as illogical and fantastic as the underlying world of her grandfather.
- By Thief of Time, she seems to have accepted her powers, even if she's still irritated at being occasionally tapped by her grandfather for help. As a teacher she uses them to make her students' lessons more...interesting, such as taking them to view ancient battles firsthand. She also, at the end of Thief of Time, takes them to see Nanny Ogg, which, as she says to herself, is the equivalent of two lessons.
- There's also Rincewind, an unremarkable wizard who has a bad habit of getting into adventure. He's even quite aware of it, but still insists that he wants to go home. When people try to say that he must enjoy it, he retorts that he rather likes being bored, as it generally means no one's trying to harm him.
- And Carrot, a Hidden Heir who's quite happy to stay hidden.
  - Calling Carrot normal is a bit of a stretch, though, and he doesn't seem to have any problem with that.
Two of JRR Tolkien's books, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings use and subvert this trope. In The Hobbit, Bilbo gets swept up into an adventure that hobbits usually despise in favor of a quiet life; at the end, he returns to that quiet life and enjoys it, but later on in LOTR Bilbo expresses interest in going on an adventure again. Frodo has a talk with Gandalf expressing this trope, and is almost ready to go back to living a normal hobbit life after reaching Rivendell (which is only the beginning of his journey).
- The end of the third book explores this more — probably somewhat due to Tolkien's own war experiences. The Hobbits return to the Shire, but in the end, Frodo cannot stay due to his lingering injury and his exposure to the One Ring. Samwise, too, aged and widowed, also follows Frodo and Goes West with the Elves. Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took, on the other hand, never having been Ringbearers, live out their days in the Shire.
Subverted in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, where the protagonist spends most of the book (or series) trying to get back to his normal life, and when he finally succeeds, realizes he doesn't want that any more, and returns to London Below.
Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files repeatedly mentions he'd have liked to live a normal life and especially not know about all the supernatural nasties out to get/eat humans. He makes a similar note about The Archive, a little girl who has all of humanity's accumulated knowledge and thus never really had a childhood. She also all has all the memories of her maternal ancestors, including her mother who committed suicide to avoid bearing the burden of being The Archive while being jealous that her daughter would otherwise avoid it all her life. Thus the girl carries the memories of her mother's hatred towards her.
Here's some fun: try counting the number of times Harry Potter says or thinks this.
- Especially as the normal he wants includes magic and a godfather who can turn into a dog.
- In fairness to Harry, the normal he wants basically translates to "I'm okay with learning that there's a secret magical world and I'm a part of it, but can I not be the part that draws all the Big Bads and plot points trying to kill me every fucking year, please?" He emphatically would not like to go back to living life Dursley-style. He'd just rather not be The Chosen One.
In the Andalite Chronicles, a spin-off set of books from the Animorphs series, Elfangor, the Andalite prince who gave the Animorphs their powers in the first place, gives up his life as a war leader to live on Earth with a human woman, until the Ellimist shows up and makes him give it all up. It's later revealed that he had a son on Earth, who 'became' one of the Animorphs.
- Any of the Animorphs would rather not have their powers and just have a normal life, at least until they're personally affected by the Yeerks.
At the end of Good Omens, Adam Young has decided not to use his reality-warping powers in any form for good or evil and to continue his life as a normal human. Which is fortunate for the world and all we know of it, as he was originally created to bring about the Apocalypse with his powers.
- Although, from the ending, it seems he lied. "Human incarnate", as Crowley puts it.
In Lisa Shearin's Magic Lost, Trouble Found and sequel Armed and Magical, main character Raine Benares is an average magic user who specializes in finding lost items. Then she forms a psychic link with the Saghred, an ancient stone with apocalyptic power that eats souls for breakfast. The books focus on her trying to break the link with the Saghred while being pursued by villains who want to harness the Saghred's power.
The titular character in the Alex Rider series has an I Just Want To Be Normal moment at least once in every book he's been in...and he's been in seven.
Hugo Danner, the world's first superhero, suffered from this. Philip Wylie wrote the novel Gladiator in 1930, featuring Hugo who was super-strong, fast, and with skin too tough to be pierced by a machine gun. Naturally he mopes about it for 332 pages before being struck by lightning and reduced to ash. On the bright side, two Jewish kids from Cleveland read the novel and came up with a more cheerful version.
Flinx, the major protagonist of Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth universe, frequently has occasion to wish he did not have empathic powers as the result of a genetics experiment by a group of Evilutionary Biologists. Especially when the Bad Ass allies, Cool Starship, and the whole exploring the galaxy thing get overshadowed by being told he's The Chosen One fated to confront an Ultimate Evil; being pursued by people who want to variously "fix" him, imprison him, or kill him for being The Chosen One; and possibly his brain exploding from his evolving powers. Wangst, thy name is Flinx.
Nudge in Maximum Ride. In fact, in Max, she so desperately wants to go to a "normal" school, that she's willing to cut her own wings off. She doesn't, though, because Max lets her go. After a while, she comes back, wings and all.
Garion in The Belgariad. The phrase "Why me?" becomes a running joke over the series.
Arthur Penhaligon in The Keys to the Kingdom spends five whole books of a seven-book series wishing for a normal life, ultimately making things much harder on himself to avoid becoming immortal. At one point he even re-breaks his own leg to stay normal. By the sixth book, he realizes that if he hadn't become the Rightful Heir, he'd be dead, so best suck it up and get on with things. Of course, by this point he was already irreversibly immortal, so perhaps this was merely his way of dealing with it.
In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Encarmine, Arkio says he wishes he were — well, not normal normal, but Space Marine normal. Sachiel persuades him that that is impossible. Alas. At the end of Deus Sanguinius, Rafen disclaims being anything special, saying the Spear of Telesto used him as its instrument, and declining a Field Promotion to captain that he didn't think he was ready for or had earned.

Live Action TV

Buffy The Vampire Slayer often had bouts of wanting to be normal.
Buffy: I just want to be alone and quiet in a room with a chair and a fireplace and a tea cozy. I don't even know what a tea cozy is, but I want one.
- In a season 3 episode Buffy is unknowingly weakened to prepare her for an upcoming test. As she lives her life without her powers, she realizes that she can't be her old LA cheerleader days self anymore, both because she can't ignore the monsters who are out there and because she can't stop standing up for herself and other students.
- In Season 7, Buffy and Faith had a discussion about how being Slayers have screwed up thier lives, but concluded that being hot chicks with super powers helped take the sting off.
- Technically subverted in the series finale when Buffy becomes "normal" by making thousands of other girls Slayers as well thus ending her uniqueness but preserving her powers.
So did the witches from Charmed
- That is an understatement. It is the plot for every other episode.
- Phoebe seems to like being a witch, though. In spite of having the lamest power of all of them.
- This trope is practically Piper's mantra.
Claire Bennet from Heroes. Conversely, Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli both desperately want to have powers, even and especially when there's very little evidence to suggest that they do. (As does Sylar. Heh, heh.)
- In season two, Claire becomes the classic inversion — now that she's in hiding and being forced to act as normal and unexceptional as possible, she's discontented and wants to do great things. She follows through on this new desire in Season Three, sacrificing the chance for a normal life (including not being hunted by the government) to help other fugitives.
- In Volume Four, former villain Doyle decides that he wants to go back to his old life as a puppeteer. With the government rounding up people with abilities, he is forced to turn to Claire for assistance. This is doubly ironic - not only did Claire use to want a normal life, but the last time they met, Doyle held Claire and both her mothers captive for hours.
- And now, in Volume Five, Matt has been trying to give up his powers out of the feeling that they're controlling his life, and Sylar is trying to suppress his powers in an attempt to be more human.
In the classic series of Doctor Who, several companions left to resume "normal" lives, after having adventured through time and space. Big examples are companions like Ian and Barbara, although Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, proves to be a curious and conspicuous addition, especially given that she was not human.
- Exceptions: In The Sarah Jane Adventures and several Expanded Universe works, several ex-companions are revealed to have had trouble adjusting to normalcy after leaving. In the new series, Rose explicitly references this.
- In the new series two-parter "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", The Doctor himself becomes John Smith, a normal human living a normal life, but has to give it all up again to save the world.
  - In the novel the episode was adapted from, he did it specifically to find out what being a normal human was like.
- The new series in particular has often made the point about how the Doctor, while capable of so much, is incapable of living the simple, normal life taken for granted by mere humans. He's occasionally expressed envy about this, but he's never really shown a desire to actually be normal (outside the abovementioned Human Nature example).
Similarly, in Star Trek Voyager, some of the crew expressed uncertainty as to how they would adjust to life on Earth if they ever reached it.
The entire premise of Forever Knight revolves around the main character wanting to be normal.
Ditto Angel, who took some comfort in a prophecy that said he would one day become human... though not till after the apocalypse.
- In an early first season episode, Angel actually becomes human. However, once he realizes that this would mean he couldn't fight the baddies, as his superhuman strength would be gone, he goes to the extreme of undoing the change. He still likes the idea of becoming human, just not while there are bad guys to fight.
- In the series finale, Angel is confronted with a choice — he can either abandon all hope of ever fulfilling the prophecy, or abandon his campaign to stop the Big Bad. He chooses the former without hesitation (as he had to, or his cover would be broken), but we see him upset about it later.
- In the canon comic follow up, Angel is currently a human. However, the powers responsible for it have less than benevolent reasons for changing him.
A recurring theme in Highlander The Series was main character Duncan MacLeod bemoaning his immortal status.
Bewitched and I Dream Of Jeannie are undoubtedly amongst the oddest examples of this trope. Not so much Samantha or Jeannie - that is a fairly clear case of Love Makes You Dumb. Darrin Stephens and Tony Nelson, on the other hand, are men so heroically attuned to dullness and normalcy that their response to the beautiful, supernaturally powered women who are in love with them is to ignore and reject the supernatural bits. Major Nelson is particularly bizarre in this regard since he doesn't have to deal with a mother-in-law like Endora who might sour him on magic and he has an exciting job (astronaut)!
- An episode of Bewitched actually played with what would happen if this trope was ever subverted and Darren was happy and even encouraging Samantha to use her powers for their own benefit. In the end, Samantha herself was unhappy because she really just wanted to be a normal housewife and use her powers relatively sensibly instead of rewriting reality to bend to her will and she and Darren agreed to hit the Reset Button and revert things to normal.
  - Really, Samantha could be seen as an inversion, since bending reality on a whim is normal for her and her people. Major Nelson, on the other hand, plays this trope straight, almost to the point of Insane Troll Logic.
River Tam of Firefly actually has a rather heartbreaking speech in the episode "Objects in Space" where she says that she just wants to be accepted by the crew and be a normal person. The heartbreaking part is this is a farewell speech she says as she surrenders to a bounty hunter so her friends can be safe and not hunted by the government anymore.
- Though it turns out this is just a Xanatos Gambit to get him outside the ship and lead him into an ambush.
The main character in the 2000 The Invisible Man series spends a great deal of time trying to get rid of the implanted gland that gives him his invisibility powers, though more because of the side effects than because he objects to the invisibility itself.
The main character of New Amsterdam is immortal until he meets his true love. You'd think he'd want to avoid doing this, but he can't wait to meet her/get rid of the immortality so he can stop outliving his girlfriends, wives, and children.
Sam from Quantum Leap wanted to return to his life in the future, but when the opportunity arose, he had to leap back in to save Al from being killed, thus returning to the cycle and forgetting much about his past/future.
Sam from Reaper. In early episodes, he was even trying to run away from/hide the vessels he was to use to capture the escaped souls. They followed him. However, in later episodes, he's wised up, even telling the Devil to "just cut to the chase," so to speak.
In Smallville, Clark has said numerous times that his goal is to live like and be an ordinary human. Somehow, many viewers doubt this will be the case.
- In one episode, he lost his powers, but still managed to beat the snot out of three superpowered bad guys, and believed he didn't need his powers anymore. Unfortunately, in the next episode, a nuclear missile gets launched at the town, leaving him with no choice but to regain his powers to save the day.
Both Supernatural boys have gone through this phase at some point. Sam ran away to college and spent the first season wanting to go back after they defeat the big bad. And as for Dean, he spent most of Season Two either wanting to jump off a bridge or at least take a break from hunting.
- Looks like they got this from their mother who was a hunter before John proposed.
- However, subverted in the Season 5 Episode "Swap Meat":
Sam: I'm telling you, kid. I wish I had your life.
Gary: You do? ...Thanks.
Sam: Get on out of here. <Gary leaves>
Dean: That was a nice thing to say.
Sam: Totally lied. Kid's life sucked ass. All that apple-pie family crap, it's stressful, believe me. We didn't miss a damn thing.
In Young Dracula, Vlad wants nothing more than to be a normal boy with a normal family. Jonathan definitely does not want to grow up to be a vampire hunter like his father.
Ace Lightning's Mark Hollander regularly just wanted to be normal, rather than the elected sidekick of a hero from a videogame.
In a more mundane example, House has had moments of just wanting to be normal. The most notable example would be a Season Three episode where he wants to harvest the patient's (a girl who can't feel pain) spinal nerves and replace his damaged thigh muscle. He doesn't go through with it, thanks to an attack of conscience/Wilson, but it's still rather pathetic.
- One of his recent patients was a genius who had been taking cough syrup and vodka to lower his IQ because his wife was 91 points lower than him "she's closer to a gibbon than to me. Sex with her would be an act of beastiality."
Another mundane example would be Jen on The IT Crowd who at one point screams that the geeks she works with have turned her into one of them.
The Big Bang Theory's Leonard Hofstadter, the genius who wishes he wasn't.
Ned in Pushing Daisies is actually pretty good about avoiding this, despite being very much Blessed With Suck. He's had a few moments of it in the show proper, and almost certainly felt this way all the time as a kid. Chuck, on the other hand, while not actually having powers, seems to want a normal life, or at least a more normal one.
Played with a lot in Misfits, where the superpowered characters aren't remotely bothered about saving the world and are just trying to get on with their lives. Although the show is mercifully free of Wangst, you get the constant impression that the protagonists don't like their powers much. Alisha in particular really hates her ability (a form of pheromone manipulation which causes anyone who touches her to be overcome with such violent lust that they try to rape her) but then she is well and truly Blessed With Suck. And Kelly mentions a couple of times that she would block her Telepathy if she knew how, as she hates hearing what people think about her.
- The only protagonist who does whine about the situation is Nathan, who seemingly doesn't have a power.

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Western Animation

Several episodes of My Life As A Teenage Robot deal with Jenny's quirky attempts to achieve normality.
In the Legion Of Super Heroes cartoon episode "Legacy," Alexis dismisses her trillionaire heiress Lonely Rich Kid / Rich Bitch lifestyle with "I Just Want To Be Normal." As her first real friend apparently ever, she tries to hold on to her relationship with Superman, and thus normality, by scheming and manipulating and eventually going completely off the deep end into supervillainy, Luthor-style, giving up on normality in favor of Revenge.
Aang in Avatar The Last Airbender, in regards to being the Chosen One. Even after being forced to accept the call, he still holds some desire to be a normal kid. In the third season, he goes as far as to take the huge risk of enrolling in a Fire Nation school just to experience what it's like being a normal kid, despite his friends' protests.
Aang: You don't know what it's like, Sokka — you get to be normal all the time.
- The funny things is that "normal" for Aang still involves Elemental Powers, just not being the Avatar.
A main plot point of the 80's Dungeons And Dragons cartoon was the kids wanting to leave their new sword-and-sorcery life behind and return to the normal world.
In The Spectacular Spider Man Peter Parker suffers a brief bout of this. When Peter is caught having taken pictures of his alter-ego's battle with mutated geneticist the Lizard, after claiming he was going home, his friends and superiors at the ESU labs distrust him, and fire him from his internship. Stealing a gene cleanser from the lab, Peter briefly considers taking it before remembering his credo. He does, however, keep it hidden under his desk.
- A desire for normalcy is also the motivation for Supervillain Electro's descent into insanity. Granted uncontrollable electrical powers in a Freak Lab Accident, he's unable to cope, and holds the lab's staff hostage to get them to develop a cure.
In Transformers Animated, Blackarachnia is obsessed with removing her organic side and becoming fully robotic again despite being both Cursed With Awesome and tremendously physically attractive to about half the cast.
Used and subverted in Disney's Hercules. Because Hercules' strength often causes accidents, Hercules is shunned by the community, even though he just wants to fit in. This desire fades after he becomes a hero and puts his strength to good use. Late in the movie, Hades forces him to give up his powers to save the life of his love interest. After being drained, Hades pins Herc to the ground by throwing a barbell at him and stands over him taunting, "Now you know how it feels to be like everyone else. Isn't it just...peachy?"
Despite the page quote, Zim is not an example of this trope - he just tries to pretend he is normal.
In the season two finale of The Venture Brothers, Dean ends up admitting this during a fit of delusion.
In South Park, Craig is shown to be The Chosen One who will defeat the giant Guinea Creatures as foretold by an Incan prophecy, though he states throughout the episodes that he doesn't want to get involved in any weird adventures and just wants to stay away from the main characters (whose every schemes always ends up in Hilarity Ensuing). Subverted in that his attempts at refusing the call ends up leading him to fulfill his destiny and defeat the Guinea Pirate, with him noting that life is unexpected in the end (though he still learns to never trust the gang with anything).
Heathens! Don't you recall ... the most famous reindeer of all?
In Danny Phantom, Danny tries to split his ghost and human halves to have some plain fun...with mixed results. Similarly, in the finale, Danny permanently gets rid of his ghost half so he can be normal, even if he does eventually get his powers back.
- Not to mention in the pilot episode, he expresses the desire to be fully human again early on ("If my dad can invent something that accidentally made me half-ghost, why can't he invent something that turns me back to normal?!")
In Jackie Chan Adventures Jackie would love nothing more than to go back to his life as a quiet and unassuming archaelogist rather than his current life as a secret agent who routinely defends the world from demons and what not.
In one of the more recent My Little Pony animated specials, Lily Lightly is the only unicorn whose horn glows when she's excited or really happy, so she tries to hide it from everyone else. She even has an I Want Song about it.
Nightcrawler of X-Men Evolution was like this, but you couldn't really blame him given that he looked like a furry blue demon. Unlike the other mutants, who were actually fairly good about being exposed as mutants, Nightcrawler was really reluctant to let go of the illusion that he wasn't a mutant, but eventually did, and never let go of the human appearance given to him by his image inducer (can't really blame him, again).