Mundane Object Amazement

Behold, this miracle from the gods: glass!

"You do realize that if I wasn't six years old, this wouldn't interest me in the slightest?"

— Calvin, Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, "Camping Trip Part 1"

A character that is oblivious to the world around him has acquired or encountered a normal, everyday object. These objects can range from umbrellas, elevators, computers, doors, kitchen sinks, mirrors... anything that could be considered mundane and common to the culture that it comes from. This is usually followed by the character exploiting or praising the particular object while being amazed by its usefulness. This can also be the Running Gag for the series.

These characters are usually one of the following:

• From Magical Land, therefore everyday objects (especially the technological ones) can amaze them.
• Aliens, because some of Earth's objects just don't exist in outer space.
• Still a child, who will come to know the object as mundane with time.
• Sentient non-human animals, who generally understand the lives of humans, but might not be acquainted with their technology beyond cursory observations, thus making everything human seem fascinating to them.
• From a Dystopian future, so that Mundane Luxuries are opulent, and tools and other objects that were used for once-mundane practices are considered mysterious.
• A foreigner; said object might be rare or unknown in his own country.
• Really rich, to the point that some normal things can amaze them.
• Really poor, to the point that normal conveniences seem extravagant.
• Had previously lived a sheltered life.
• A time traveler, making him a Fish out of Temporal Water.
• Just plain easily-distracted.

Generally, this trope is played for comedic effect. However, in some cases, the segment will be drama. Perhaps the character had too much fun or overestimated its usefulness, destroying the item in the process. Or perhaps they just ran over a stroke of bad luck, damaging it in the process. Either way, the character will cry over the object, and the ending will be set in a Heartwarming Moments way.

Compare Incredibly Lame Fun, Easily Impressed, Far-Out Foreigner's Favorite Food, Kids Prefer Boxes. A subtrope for Mundane Made Awesome. If it's a once mundane object that's become obsolete, it's What Are Records?. Contrast Worthless Yellow Rocks and We Have Those, Too. See also Commonplace Rare, when such an item is inexplicably hard to get in a game. If the object is used to threaten, it's This Is My Boomstick.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Aldnoah.Zero:
  • While having dinner with a captured Slaine, Count Saazbaum muses that their meal - chicken, gravy and some vegetables, shipped in from Earth — would constitute an incredible luxury back home on Mars, where the majority of the populace subsides on algae and krill. Despite the amazingly advanced technology of the Vers Empire, Mars simply doesn't have the agricultural capacity for its people to eat anything better.
  • Another Martian Knight, Count Mazuurek, marvels at a simple compass, remarking that it could never work on his homeworld, which lacks Earth's magnetic field.
• Bleach:
  • Rukia is amazed at the way you drink out of juice boxes, by poking the straw through the foil hole and using it to drink. In the anime, she even tells Hanatarou about it as if she'd mastered some difficult skill by being able to do it.
  • When Hitsugaya's advance guard settles into the human world to prepare for the arrancar invasion, Ikkaku is so amazed at the idea that shops can sell multitudes of neatly wrapped onigiri (and order even more when they run out!) that he's convinced it must be a conspiracy - he can't imagine humans being capable of such a feat without something dodgy going on behind the scenes. Ironically, he's not technically wrong. It's just that the "dodgy behind-the-scenes" stuff is... basic industrial food production.
• In A Certain Magical Index, characters from the Magic Side often get amazed or frustrated by modern appliances like computers, washing machines, TV's, etc.
• Kimishita from DAYS is so dirt broke that the most simple things in life are luxuries to him that leave him sparkly-eyed. Examples include quality food, enjoying the view from a fourth-floor hotel room while drinking coffee, and a soft drink machine at a café.
• In The Devil is a Part-Timer!, Suzuno, after coming to Earth from Another Dimension, is fascinated and sometimes frustrated by technology such as televisions and ATMs.
• Nobita tries to invoke this in an episode of Doraemon. He takes a few gadgets from the future back in time and actively searches for cavemen. He tries to impress them with a flashlight only to discover that the batteries are dead. He tries to entertain them with a radio but no stations have been invented yet. Everything he tries ends up falling flat. The Cavemen decide to keep him as a pet. The episode ends with everyone practically worshipping Doraemon due to the fact that while rescuing Nobita, he shot a rampaging mammoth with one of his futuristic gadgets and impressed all who witnessed it.
• In Dragon Ball, Goku gets this a lot during his youth as he explores the wider world, due to him living in the isolated mountains for all of his life. While there are genuinely amazing feats of technology like the DynoCaps (which Bulma herself considers normal), Goku is often scared and amazed of more mundane things like bikes, cars, planes, televisions, electric lighting, and intercoms. He is also amazed by the city lights when viewed from the air and initially confuses them for the stars having fallen onto the ground and asks Roshi if he can have one. As the Funimation narrator explains, Goku can be equally fascinated by a bread basket as the stars in the sky.
  Krillin: He rides on a cloud but is fascinated by a suitcase.
• Dr. STONE has the native Stone World characters fascinated with the end result of reinventing things the modern characters used to have back into the present.
• Happens in Gintama episode 111: Kagura received an umbrella with a flower pattern from Gintoki.
  • This is followed by a montage (with a nice melody) of Kagura strolling around the streets happily, the montage is repeated with slightly heavy rain with more rock added into the music. She still went out with the umbrella even when there's a typhoon rampaging outside, you know the rest.
• Sai from Hikaru no Go is prone to this because he's a 1000-year-old ghost that's been trapped inside a Go board for over a century. He is amazed by things like telephones and airplanes, often to Hikaru's annoyance.
• The Ideal Sponger Life: Yamai Zenjirou is an ordinary guy who moves to a fantasy world to marry its queen. He brings several electronic devices like his laptop, which fascinate the natives. It turns out this world never invented glass, so the natives are also fascinated by the glass cups, wine bottles, and marbles he also brought.
• In Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu, the citizens of Aitheria, a country similar to medieval Europe, are completely fascinated and amazed by the modern day objects and foods prepared at Nobu, such as the "chilled ale" (draft beer) served in glass mugs (glass is expensive in their world). One man even freaked out when Shinobu casually added pepper to his salad, as pepper is equated to gold there.
• K-On! has Tsumugi, who lived a sheltered life until entering highschool and rarely communicated with the outside world, much less know about it. She is absolutely amazed at anything "normal", usually because either she never saw them before, is amazed at how "normal" it is, or a combination of both.
• In the early seasons of Lyrical Nanoha, Mid-Childans often comment about the convenience of earth cell phones whenever the said item is used. In fact, they liked it so much that they've incorporated the technology for civilian use by Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid (at least), except their Magitek cell phones are capable of interstellar and interdimensional communication.
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid:
  • An early anime original segment has Kobayashi taking Tohru and Kanna shopping for supplies for Kanna's first day of school, and the two dragons are fascinated by all the stationery they encounter.
  • Kanna ends up becoming interested in manhole covers while wandering around town with Kobayashi and decides to make them the subject of her independent research for her summer homework, running all over town while drawing the different shapes and designs she finds.
• In One Piece, the people of the Floating Continent Skypiea find gold to be worthless, but find dirt to be worth fighting over since it's so rare in sky islands made of cloud. At the end of the arc, Usopp is also able to trade a few rubber bands (since rubber is unknown in the sky islands) for some very useful tools.
• In Ouran High School Host Club, all the boys in the extremely rich Ouran High School's Host Club are amazed at everyday 'commoner' things that Haruhi does or uses, like instant coffee, and saying things like "Commoners are so clever!"
  • Oddly enough Tamaki does seem to have a passing familiarity with several "common" things, but especially cheap convenience foods like ramen which he eats to comfort himself.
• Plus-Sized Elf:
  • Elfuda is obsessed with french fries and wonders how people in our world can refer to them as junk food. This is because in her world seasonings of any kind can only be afforded by the very rich so even something like french fries tastes a lot better than anything she's ever eaten.
  • Oku's orc tribe has a secret legendary technique passed down from generation to generation that allows orcs to lose weight. She learns the technique almost immediately after arriving on Earth because here it's known as dieting.
• Happens quite a bit in Sgt. Frog, despite Aliens Steal Cable often taking place.
• Shomin Sample is about a school for rich young girls. They are often fascinated by things bought from the world of commoners.
• In the anime Squid Girl, The title character considered the umbrella that Eiko gave her as a "worthy weapon" while fantasizing on how she will use it to fight a robotic Eiko. The umbrella was crushed after it was run over by a random car passing by, when Eiko came out from the store Ika was crying on the death of her partner, named Ika Model One, 'Excelsior'. Eiko asked Ika Musume to share her umbrella together and then went home together.
  • The sword is the umbrella's true form, a fact which remains recognizable to a human until sometime in his 30s.
• In Tokyo Ghoul, many Ghouls grow up in poverty and barely on the fringes of human society. As such, those adjusting to living among humans often find mundane things amazing.
  • When Koma first started working at Anteiku, he was so completely in awe of baking soda that he explained this miracle substance to his gang. Mighty Baking Soda, powerful enough to defeat the strongest grease and even stinky feet! His men are amazed that humans possess such an incredible product.
  • In an omake, Naki is so startled by a fireworks display that he faints.
• The World God Only Knows:
  • Elsie, a three-hundred-year-old demon from Hell, is absolutely obsessed with firetrucks. No reason is given, she just thinks they're cool.
  • Diana, a goddess from Heaven currently Sharing a Body with a human from Earth, is very impressed with her host's magic tricks.
    Diana: I used to be able to split the sea and control the weather... but you can pull flowers out of a hat!
• The titular character of Yotsuba&!, being young, is no stranger to this trope. She is amused at just about everything, except for the scarecrow.

Comic Books

• Edge of Spider-Verse (2022): Princess Petra is amazed by the sight of a frying pan, in a way that suggests she's never seen one before.
• One of the Manos in El Eternauta does a long praise of the elegance of a... coffee pot. Believe it or not, it's a thoroughly touching sequence in which the Manos reveals he comes from a noble species, enslaved by the alien conquerors and forced to do their bidding. Finding beauty in everyday objects would be the Manos' purpose in life were they left on their own.

Fan Works

• In Stardust, Twilight Sparkle finds a ballpoint pen, and is amazed by such ingenuity. She also displays wonder every time something modern is presented to her.
• Calvin and Hobbes are really amazed at a stick they find in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series. It gets lampshaded, providing the page quote.
• Hope in An Astral Drop in Heatherfield explores the novel concepts of school, babysitting and being able to meet people since she Really Was Born Yesterday.
• More like Mundane Activity Amazement in the Teen Titans spin-off of the Dusk to Dawn novels. Conner Kent, true to his comic counterpart, was born a teenager but is under a year old in his debut. He's eager to experience all aspects of a normal kid's life, e.g. attending school, trips to the beach, hanging out with friends, and jumping into autumn leaf piles.
• Gone Batty (Sefiru): Saejima has been in prison for such a long time that when he's released he is astounded to have his own table.
• Heroes of the New World; due to her abusive and sheltered upbringing, Yamato has little exposure to the world outside of Wano and so quickly becomes a Genki Girl who reacts with great excitement at anything new she sees, from toy stores to dress shops to new foods and drinks. One of the most prominent examples is her joy at discovering showers (which surprised even Izuku given the Schizo Tech of One Piece), as not only are they new but it's also a means by which Yamato can bathe without risking her Super Drowning Skills taking efffect.
• Harry Potter and the Natural 20 has Milo, who comes from an RPG Mechanics 'Verse in Medieval Stasis. Consequently, he is utterly amazed at the price of salt, since he comes from an era in which salt was worth as much as silver. He then promptly starts buying salt in huge quantities and using it as crafting material.
• Kuyou Suou in Kyon: Big Damn Hero and her fascination with cookies, from baking to eating them, making it also a case of Trademark Favorite Food.
• Little Hands, Big Attitude: Silver and Blaze, who come from a post-apocalyptic dimension, are now amazed at things like plush toys and blankets.
• In the Discworld and The Big Bang Theory crossover The Many Worlds Interpretation, by A.A. Pessimal, it is exactly this reaction that catches out the visitors from the Discworld who have arrived in California. In both cases, it is the extremely bright Leslie Winkle who does the catching-out. Leslie notes Johanna Smith-Rhodes' strange reaction to something as simple and everyday as a Band-Aid. It is as if Johanna has never seen one before. ^note Johanna realises how effectively simple an idea it is as a portable field-dressing for minor but nagging wounds; she speculates on how much money could be made by the person who introduces these to the Disc and gets the patent. Meanwhile, she offers Ponder Stibbons a pot of Instant Ramen. After all, Ponder was a penniless student once and all students live on these. Don't they? Fortunately, Ponder's unfamiliarity with them is explained on the grounds that he's English, and they call them Pot Noodles over there... Ponder and Johanna reflect that being respectively "English" and "South African" in California excuses many unfamiliarities and eccentricities.
• Out of all of Agatha's inventions in A Spark of Ice and Fire, the one King Robert loves the most is the "beer helmet", since it allows him to drink without using his hands.
• In Stolen Time Remus Lupin spends hours watching the full moon in the afterlife. Justified as Lupin is a werewolf who hasn't been able to look at a full moon since he was a small child.

Films — Animation

• Frozen II: When the Enchanted Forest has been freed and the Arendellian soldiers have returned home, Mattias gets his photograph taken with his longtime crush Halima. While he has been trapped in the forest for more than 30 years, his calling the medium "crazy magic" is actually Truth in Television: In the 1840's (the time that the franchise is set), photography was still a very new medium. The oldest surviving photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras, had been created just 20 years earlier.
• Justice League: War: Wonder Woman's mind is utterly blown by the existence of ice cream, something the Amazons don't have back home.
• The LEGO Movie: The antagonist collects mysterious otherworldly relics, many of which defy the physical laws of the LEGO world and have strange powers. These objects include a huge sphere that destroys all in its path (a golf ball), a cloak that entraps anyone who dares put it on and is rumored to be horribly painful to remove (a Band-Aid), and, most plot-critically, a substance with the power to permanently fix LEGO bricks in place and turn people into living statues (Krazy Glue, or "the Kragle" as they call it).
• The Little Mermaid (1989): Ariel is fascinated by the world of humans and has collected an entire secret grotto's worth of trinkets that the surface-dwellers had dropped into the ocean. Unfortunately, her contact regarding information about what they are and what they do is Scuttle the seagull, who imparts such wisdom as a fork being called a "dinglehopper" which humans use to comb their hair.
• Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants: The ants wage war with human-made objects over a box of sugar cubes. The ant looking after the good guys' stash of human artifacts has a keen interest in a 15-sliding-puzzle toy which it finally solves in the post-credits scene.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Twilight Sparkle enters the human world and is utterly impressed with computers (even though she hardly can use them).
• The Nightmare Before Christmas: "What's This?" is a song about Jack Skellington, king of Halloween, finding the ins and outs of Christmas (snow, mistletoe, presents and Christmas trees et cetera).
• Pocahontas: Pocahontas eventually becomes convinced that John Smith's compass is the spinning arrow from her dreams, and the item literally points her towards saving his life (magnetic compasses had been known in Eurasia for centuries, but had yet to become commonplace in the Americas).
• Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World: Upon disembarking in London, the Pocahontas launches into an entire musical number about all the foreign things she’s seeing for the first time (people, food, clothes, and more).
• In Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Ponyo, being a literal Fish out of Water who has just turned into a human, is fascinated by mundane objects she sees in and around Lisa's house. She finds Sosuke's pail blowing off the fence, is mesmerized when Lisa gives her a light, and finds the towel Lisa uses to dry her to be comfy. She doesn't let go of any of these things by the time she makes it to the table, and she has to be told by Sosuke to let go of her items and still doesn't let them go.
• Ralph Breaks the Internet: During Vanellope's encounter with the Disney Princesses, she finds they're so used to wearing fancy ball gowns, they're amazed and impressed by her casual clothing. In fact, they're so amazed that they're inspired to wear similar attire when off-duty. Ariel even nearly breaks into a parody of "Part of Your World" over her amazement at getting to wear a t-shirt.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Spider-Man Noir, who is from a world where everything is Deliberately Monochrome, is fascinated by a Rubik's Cube because of how colorful it is. He even takes it home as a souvenir to amaze more people in his dimension.

Films — Live-Action

• 10 Items or Less: Upon entering a chain retail superstore, Morgan Freeman's character is awestruck, while Scarlet (a checkout worker at a grocery) is thoroughly dispassionate.
  Him: This is amazing.
  Scarlet: It's... Target.
• Aquaman (2018): When Arthur and Mera arrive in Sicily, she’s fascinated by the fruits and flowers she sees in vendors’ booths. When the flower vendor gives her a bunch of roses as a gift, she assumes they’re edible and bites a blossom right off the stem (Arthur follows suit, apparently not wanting her to feel self-conscious).
• Bagdad Cafe: Jasmin sees an unusual light pattern in the sky, calling it "her vision". Rudy later tells her it's caused by the local solar panels, and uses the pattern as his signature. Jasmin is no less impressed.
• Being a couple of country girls from West Virginia, Rose and Sadie from Big Business have different reactions to fancy things they find in New York City. Sadie is giddy with glee while Rose is less than impressed.
  Rose: They have a toilet in the living room.
  Sadie: That's what the French call a bidet.
  Rose: (tries to wash her ass with it) French people must be taller than me.
• Deconstructed in Black Knight (2001). Jamal often fails to impress the people of the middle ages with things he brought from the future.
  Jamal: Behold! (uses a lighter) I can make fire!
  Peasant: We have fire.
• Discussed in The Book of Eli. Eli uses things like disposable lighters and wet wipes as valuable barter. When explaining the world before the apocalypse, he says “we used to throw away things that people would kill each other for now.”
• Cast Away: On returning to civilization after five years marooned on an island, Chuck is shown in his hotel room just clicking the light switch on and off.
• Edward Scissorhands: He would sometimes stop to stare at smoke alarms, walls, hairdryers, and other everyday objects, seemingly entranced by them.
• Fitzcarraldo: The indigenous people of the Amazon jungle stare in awe at a block of ice that the titular character presents to them.
• The Gods Must Be Crazy: A quasi-cargo-cult reaction occurs when a group of Kalahari bushmen find a glass Coca-Cola bottle. Nothing in their area or history has had the hardness and smoothness of the glass bottle. It can be used to crush nuts, work leather, make ropes, and many other things. Only problem is that there's only one, and a competition for it causes a lot of trouble in the world. The tribe eventually comes to refer to it as "the evil thing," and one of the bushmen makes a point to get rid of it.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), cows are only found on Earth and they fascinate aliens.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Beer servings in pubs outside the Shire. Funny as it's standard in the UK:
  Pippin: What's that?
  Merry: This, my friend, is a pint.
  Pippin: It comes in pints?! [beat] I'm gettin' one!
• Meet Joe Black: A good chunk of the film has Joe, who is on vacation in a mortal body enjoying things like swimming and peanut butter.
• Moscow on the Hudson: When Vladimir (a recent Soviet defector) goes to a grocery store in the US, he nearly has a mental breakdown, after seeing the great variety of food available (similar to the Real Life event listed below), and paramedics have to be called in after he collapses.
• My Favorite Martian: When "Martin" sees the ocean for the first time, he's shocked and calls Earthlings amazingly fortunate; the only water available on Mars has to be squeezed from rocks.
• The Smurfs: The title characters are amazed by the invention of Google.
• Splash: Being a mermaid in New York City, Madison is easily distracted by new human things. She excitedly fixates on a flashing streetlight, exclaiming "pretty!" Allen is bemused, but has to admit that she's kind of right — it is pretty, it's just something humans take as a given.
• Stargate: The boys of Abydos are utterly fascinated by O'Neil's lighter. Skaara's smug demonstration of its function later is treated as sorcery.
• Steel Rain. Two North Korean girls accompany their Glorious Leader across the border to flee a Military Coup. A doctor cooks up some cups of instant noodles for them, and they're amazed that it contains white rice.
• Wonder Woman (2017): When Steve and Diana arrive in London, she’s quickly drawn to a baby in a pram before Steve refocuses her attention on their mission. As they prepare to board a train, Steve buys Diana her very first ice cream cone, which she considers wonderful and says to the vendor that he should be very proud.

Literature

• American Gods: A rare serious example when Shadow is resurrected. He spends quite some time getting re-acclimated to all the stuff around him, as previously he was in a place where there was literally nothing at all.
• Animorphs:
  • Ax is constantly amazed by human technologies, especially those adapted for mouths (which his people lack — they absorb nutrient through their soles), like a lid over a cup of coffee. Special mention goes to books, which he considers to be a greater achievement than computers. Noteworthy, however, is that the technologies with which he is enamored are frequently things his people have had for centuries, but invented in an entirely different order (with the obvious exception of anatomically specific technology like clothes and drinking straws).
  • At the end of The Departure, Cassie learning about what life is like for Yeerks in their natural state leaves her with a newfound appreciation for her human vision. When Rachel asks her which of two coloured sweaters she'd like, she answers:
    "Both, Rachel. And I like the blue. And the yellow. And that gross color there. And the stripes. We live in paradise, Rachel, and we don't even know it. And we don't know when it might end. We'd have to be fools not to enjoy it while we can. So, whip out your credit card, girl, we're adding some color!"
• Brotherband: Justified by Ingvar. As he used to be very short-sighted before Hal made him primitive spectacles, Ingvar spends a while after first putting them on expressing wonder at far-away flags, hay bales, etc. which he could never have seen before.
• The Dead Zone: The protagonist (who has been in a coma since 1970) is amazed by a felt-tipped pen, and in The Dark Tower series Susannah Dean (a disabled woman from The '60s) is amazed by lightweight modern wheelchairs and vending machines that accept paper money.
• A Running Gag in Discworld is that it is correct to be amazed by the mundane, and the fact people aren't is, itself, kind of amazing. Maybe turning water into wine is a miracle, but turning sunlight into wine is even more of one, and happens every day.
• Harry Potter: A number of wizards have this reaction when they come into contact with muggle technology. Arthur Weasley is amazed to see an escalator in operation in London, Ron is fascinated by the shape of a 50 pence piece, etc. In some cases the reaction can be negative, as Molly Weasley thinks the idea of healing a cut by sewing up your skin (in other words, stitches) is crazy.
  • Although less commonly featured, the reverse is also true: Characters like the Creevy brothers (Colin and Dennis), as well as Harry himself, were from muggle families or were raised by muggles. As such, things that are routine in the wizarding world, like animated photographs and any number of magical creatures, are revelations to them.
• The Hunger Games: Tributes from impoverished Districts sent to the Capitol for the Hunger Games are often fascinated by objects and conveniences that are commonplace to Capitol citizens. During the interviews, Peeta makes a joke about the Capitol showers working differently that amuses the crowd.
• The Irregular at Magic High School:
  • Ex-slave Tatsuya, who was never taught anything unrelated to killing people is visibly confused by a birthday cake. His more fortunate sister muses that she's glad she was able to give him a birthday celebration, but she's not sure whether it was for his satisfaction or her own.
  • Similarly, Tatsuya finds the concept of democracy very quaint; when he sees election speeches at the titular school, he compares it to old pre-war movies, where nobody's fighting or threatening each other or anything and people choose who they want to be in charge. He knew about democracy beforehand, but seeing it in real life is different.
• The Lost Fleet: Human contact with the Dancers is facilitated by a gift of "universal fixing substance", i.e. duct tape. The Dancers are masters of engineering on a level well beyond human comprehension but are fascinated by seeing humans escaping a damaged ship use the same materials to improvise a bandage for an injured crewman, patch a spacesuit and make structural repairs to the pod.
• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket: The primitive natives of Mysterious Antarctica are absolutely blown away by the schooner the hero arrives on, taking great care not to inadvertently "injure" it, and even more amazed when they discover that this "creature" has an interior. The chief goes nearly catatonic with shock upon noticing his reflection in a mirror for the first time. Pym makes sure to mention that he and his party are just as blown away by the antarctic "miracles" that the natives probably consider just as mundane.
  There were, however, some points in their demeanor which we found it impossible to understand; for example, we could not get them to approach several very harmless objects — such as the schooner's sails, an egg, an open book, a pan of flour.
• A Place Beyond Courage: When Sybilla of Salisbury takes her young stepsons to browse the vendor’s booths at an outdoor market, she’s amused by how wide-eyed with surprise they are. Their birth mother was very meek and pious, rarely taking the boys on outings away from the family estates, and certainly not to crowded areas.
• Station Eleven: In this post-apocalyptic world, the displays in the Museum of Civilization include credit cards, cell phones, stiletto heels, engine blocks, a motorcycle, and newspapers.
• Swellhead: The title character is a Bond-type 1970's supervillain from an alternate timeline, and the Five-Second Foreshadowing that he's taken over his Alternate Self from this timeline is his sudden fascination with the compactness of a laptop computer. That, and using it to bash the owner's head in.
• War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches: One character comes across a Martian staring rapt at a flowing stream, free-flowing water being unknown on Mars.
• The Witch Watch: Simon is obsessed with electric lights. Granted this is Victorian London and it's reasonably new but they probably don't deserve to be stared at continually no matter what else is happening around them.
• Xanth: The novel Man From Mundania features Princess Ivy, who travels from her Magical Land to "Mundania" (the 'real' world) where she encounters a computer for the first time. Given that in Xanth, Com-Pewter is an evil creature, Ivy is rather taken aback by the computer's innocuous nature.
• Young Wizards: When the Tree Alien Filif visits Earth he's fascinated by the human concept of "decorations" (that is, clothing). At first, he wants to drape his branches with lingerie, but his human guides eventually manage to convince him to make do with a baseball cap.

Live-Action TV

• 3rd Rock from the Sun: In one episode, Dick is fascinated by a box of kleenex, particularly the way it keeps producing a new tissue every time he takes one out. In another episode, Dick marvels over the word-play in a book he's reading... which happens to be Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss.
  Dick: "When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles / And the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles / They call this a muddle puddle tweedle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle!" [Beat] This man is a genius!
• Aaron Sorkin likes to give his TV Genius characters Popcultural Osmosis Failure as a way to demonstrate that (as Ainsley Hayes of The West Wing says when she can't set up call waiting on her phone) they've "been focusing on other things." President Bartlet has several moments of being amazed by the everyday world, such as when he drinks an egg cream for the first time and tries to explain it to Toby.
• Alma Gêmea: Serena comes from a remote indigenous village, so she's impressed by lots of everyday urban things. She's amazed by cars and scared of the sound they make, terrified at the shower because the water is so hot (though she loves it once she gets used to it), overjoyed about an old mattress because of how soft it is, and mesmerized by a faucet. She's also fascinated the first time she sees a rose, the flower she had visions of in the river back in her village, puzzling Crispim and Bernardo.
• Beastmaster: Largely subverted with protagonist Dar. While he’s rarely “amazed” when encountering arguably normal things such as metal, written language, or philosophical thinking (indeed, he can sometimes be dismissive/scornful of them), he’s not the only one who doesn’t understand such things. Justified, as in-universe many societies are fairly primitive, and what might seem mundane to viewers can be revelations to many of the characters.
• Cowboy Bebop (2021). When Spike and Jet first lay eyes on Ein, they stare at the Welsh corgi in fascination because dogs are incredibly rare, as only the rich could afford to bring their pets with them during the Homeworld Evacuation.
• The North Korean squad from Crash Landing on You are initially mesmerized by the South's prosperity. Food is plenty and electricity does not have to be turned off after sundown. One of them even gets tricked into believing that vending machines are operated by someone inside.
• Dead Gorgeous: The sisters have this reaction upon their first exposure to television.
• Deutschland 83: Has a touching scene in which a man goes into a West German supermarket and is thoroughly amazed by everyday groceries — because he grew up in the communist East Germany and has lived his whole life under food shortages.
• Doctor Who
  • In "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" a woman sells out a couple of rebels to the Daleks in exchange for extra food, in short supply after the devastation caused by the Alien Invasion. In the novelisation she gushes over an orange, which she hasn't tasted in years.
  • The Doctor will occasionally wax poetic about various elements of human nature he likes. He did a fairly long one on edible ball bearings (metallic, spherical cake decorations, properly called dragees) in "Fear Her".
• Father Ted: After Father Jack gets over the initial shock of being sober for the first time in years, he moves onto this trope:
  Father Jack: CHAIR! [beat] CURTAINS! [stomps his feet a few times] FLOOR!
• Fixer Upper: Shiplap (a type of solid wood wall) when it is uncovered during demolition. If it is not left in place, it is almost always repurposed into another object such as a table or kitchen island.
• From the Earth to the Moon: In the episode "Galileo Was Right", there is an epic scene (with upswelling music and lots of drama and a sense of utter and complete triumph) about the astronauts finding a rock. Granted, it was a pretty awesome rock, but it was just a rock.
• Game of Thrones: When Jon Snow, Ygritte, and a small band of wildlings venture south of the Wall, Ygritte is drawn to an ordinary windmill, thinking it’s a palace. Justified, since the wildlings have remained hunter-gatherers for thousands of years and the only “architecture” consists of tents made of poles and animal skins.
• The Goodies: Graeme becomes enthralled by the process of making a cup of tea in "Holidays".
• The Good Place:
  • Gen, the omnipotent judge who is only slightly younger than elemental hydrogen, enjoys Mexican food, TV dramas, and finds Tahani's British accent adorable.
    Gen: Say "aluminum".
    Tahani: ..."Aluminium".
    Gen: [giggles] I love that!
  • Another similar being, Michael the afterlife architect, is fascinated by human errata such as paperclips and frozen yogurt.
• Kamen Rider Saber: Yuri was sealed in a pocked dimension for a thousand years, so he has Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! problem while adjusting to present. He got lost pursuing a passing by bicycle and a ramen stand while noone was looking.
  • Rintaro Shindo tries to practice discipline and stoicism as he thinks a warrior of an anciet order should do only to have his concentration ruined by seeing lottery stands or pastries. The upbringing in said ancient warrior order was unfortunately an extremely sheltered one. Lot of sword fighting and reading and that's about it. He is easily distracted like Yuri because he is excited to finaly see those things he read about for himself for the first time.
• Kitchen Nightmares: In the Barefoot Bob's episode, Ramsay brings in an accountant to help with the finances. One owner becomes absolutely giddy and even remarks that she's probably the only person ever to get excited about seeing an accountant.
• Making History (2017): Ham is apparently like "cocaine-covered gold" to people in the past. Trading a ham away gets him released by a bunch of Redcoats in the first episode and he brings ham as gifts or to trade bites of it for favors.
• NCIS: Mossad Director Eli David, who is far from a hick, is positively delighted when he first eats Combos.
  "This is incredible. Pretzels with peanut butter inside. This is American ingenuity."
• Odd Squad: In "Partner Problems", as part of a plan to get her to go on vacation, Oprah changes Olympia's work uniform into a glittery panda-themed roller-skating outfit — her "vacation outfit", as the Director so calls it. Sure enough, she goes nuts over the outfit and expresses amazement at her roller skates in particular.
  Olympia: Look, there are wheels on my feet! [as she skates away] The wheels are moving. The wheels are moving on my vacation! Bye everyone!
• Outlander:
  • A. Malcolm: When Claire returns to the 18th-century and reunites with Jaime after 20 years, she shows him photographs of their daughter Brianna. Aside from being shocked by photography as a medium, Jaime is borderline scandalized when he sees his daughter in a bikini, accompanied by a male friend at that!
  • First Wife: After taking a gunshot to the arm, Jaime is being treated by Claire. When she whips out a penicillin-filled syringe she brought from the 20th-century, Jaime instantly recoils ("What in God’s name is that?") and seems skeptical about how jabbing a needle in his backside will prevent his arm from becoming infected.
• The main characters of Paper Girls, being time travelers from the 1980s, are awed by things that people in the year 2019 take for granted. In a particularly notable example, Mac mocks her now adult brother's car for lacking a tape deck before he demonstrates the voice-activated stereo system, which she's immediately impressed by.
• The Pretender: This was a regular feature, where Jarod would become fascinated with some item like Twinkies, Mr. Potato Head, or roach motels, and then work them into his scheme for an Engineered Public Confession.
• Red Dwarf: The episode "Lemons" had the crew travel back in time, meet Jesus and accidentally take him years millennia into the future. However, Jesus takes traveling through time with cat-men and metal men very well, mostly because the real focus of his attention is on the humble carrier bag.
• When Vorenus and his wife Niobe from Rome attend a party at Julius Caesar's house, she is amazed by its opulence. In particular, because even its ceiling is painted.
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Sabrina was traveling through closet doors during Christmas while dressed as Santa Claus and happens upon a bratty kid who demands a present. She hands him a random object, a spatula, and travels on. Cue to, at the end of the show, the kid happily burbling about the spatula Santa gave him while his expensive toys he received as gifts languish in the background...
• Selfie: Eliza (whose apartment and general life can charitably be called a mess) is amazed when Henry helps her organize her budget with colorful files in a bright pink cabinet, comparing it to a magic rainbow. Henry, being his usual serious self, reminds her there is no magic.
  Eliza: But what about this... sparkling bag of treasure?
  Henry: These are brads.
• Stargate SG-1: After the death of his wife Sha're, Daniel muses over how fascinated she had been by a simple ballpoint pen.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: The Enterprise meets a merchant in the Delphic Expanse who is willing to sell the recipe for Trellium-D, but it won't be cheap. So they give him a rack of Earth spices. Justified as while these are probably only a sample of what's in the ship kitchens, they're completely unknown in the Expanse.
• Supernatural:
  • In the episode "What Is And What Should Never Be", Dean can't stop smiling when mowing the lawn even though he has a lot more difficulty handling a lawnmower than he has with a machete or shotgun.
  • Castiel develops a minor fascination with television, trying to understand both porn and cartoons. When he comes back from Purgatory in season eight, he sits happily in front of the TV in the Winchester's hotel room, saying fondly, "I missed television."
• Torchwood: In one episode, time travelers from 1950's Britain are fascinated by modern conveniences such as automatic doors and the wide variety of produce (bananas in particular). The latter is justified, considering food rationing due to World War II continued for nine years after its end. Things like imported produce would have been a luxury for many Brits.
• Young Sheldon: In "A Free Scratcher and Feminine Wiles", everyone but Missy wonders at the new dishwasher the Coopers bought with the scratcher money. George is even keenly interested in Sheldon reading the user manual for the dishwasher.

Music

• Much of the Blue Man Group's comedy revolves around the fact that they have no idea what any modern physical object is or does, and will investigate its uses and capabilities as best they can.

Radio

• In one skit on John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, a man who built a time machine out of a horsebox is nonplussed to find that the Victorian he encounters considers the actual time machine to be an Unusually Uninteresting Sight (he read all about them in H. G. Wells) but is fascinated by the idea of a box for horses.

Tabletop Games

• GURPS mentions this in a sidebar about wealth saying that "wealth is relative: a 21st-century middle-class American lives in more luxury than medieval kings, even though he may have less gold coins in his basement." Time Travel, Alternate Universe, or plain growing up in a lower TL/politically unstable area (like Real Life third world countries) could result in someone ending up in a modern western nation and being amazed at things we almost all take for granted. Or a modern-day middle-class American could end up in a TL 11 world and be amazed at stuff TL 11 citizens take for granted.

Video Games

• BioShock:
  • In BioShock, one of the audio diaries found in Arcadia tells of a family whose daughter is astonished and frightened by the trees present in the zone. In this case, her daughter having such a reaction prompts the mother to worry about the advisability of journeying to the underwater city.
    Mariska: I thought she was having some sort of seizure and then I realized... trees... trees! Never saw one before, thought they were monsters.
  • And in BioShock Infinite, Elizabeth gets excited by mundane scenery in Columbia, as she spent her entire life locked in a tower.
• Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening:
  • Justice, an immortal spirit from the Fade, is massively amazed by most trivial things in the material world. For instance, his favorite possession is a simple ring lined with Lyrium that apparently emanates beautiful sounds that only he hears.
  • Sten, another foreigner who doesn't seem to like anything about Fereldan, likes cookies which his homeland doesn't have.
• EarthBound: Opening certain (yellowish) boxes in the game elicits a hilariously over-the-top reaction even if it's just a ruler or toothbrush or something:
  Ness opened the box. WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! There's an example inside! Ness takes it!
• Eichi of Ensemble Stars! is the heir to an extremely wealthy family, so he has very little experience with commoner things and tends to be easily impressed by them. He especially seems fascinated by vending machines - he could not understand how they worked at first, and quickly decides they're an excitingly easy way of quickly obtaining food.
• The Exile and Avernum series commonly show your characters, who have grown up in the eponymous underground cavern/dungeon, show shock and/or amazement at such surface entities as trees and cows. (Avernum 5, which features a group of Empire adventurers sent into Avernum, has similar moments regarding the local cave wildlife.) Perhaps the best moment is when the party first reaches the surface in Exile 3 / Avernum 3 and a text pop-up describes in loving detail their first look at the sweeping plains of the surface.
• Fate/Grand Order:
  • Reaching the maximum bond level with a Servant prompts them to give you an exclusive Craft Essence to equip to them, and a short explanation of its significance to them. William Shakespeare's is a typewriter, and a rant about how it's "really convenient" compared to writing all his plays by hand.
  • St. George, one of many patron saints of travelers, took up amateur photography in Fate Apocrypha and kept the hobby in Grand Order. His maximum-bond Craft Essence reveals the subjects of his favorite photos are things like stray cats and random Chaldea personnel.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake: Yuffie gets completely fascinated by a hologram. Scarlet mocks her as a hick for being distracted by something so common.
• In No Umbrellas Allowed, your Robot Buddy HUE is surprised to see how "soft" humans are towards cats when a customer donates some money to you after seeing Guylian rest on your countertop.
• In Pikmin 2, Olimar, Louie, and the President make their money collecting mundane Earth objects which are highly valuable on their home planet.
• Pokémon Sword and Shield: In the Crown Tundra expansion, Calyrex is amazed by a seed packet.
  Calyrex: By the stars! You say that you have Carrot Seeds? That strange bag contains the seeds of carrots? You humans never stop adapting and evolving. I am constantly amazed by your ingenuity.
• In the RuneScape quest "Death to the Dorgeshuun", cave goblin Zanik travels with you to see the surface world for the first time. There's an entire cutscene about sunlight, since she's the first of her tribe in centuries to see any, and later she's intrigued by wood and paper because the underground does not have trees or tree-derived products. After this quest, there's a minigame selling "exotic" surface foods, like baked goods and fruit, to cave goblin gourmets who have never tasted those things before.
• In Sam & Max: They Stole Max's Brain!, Sammun-Mak, from ancient Egypt and without any attention span to speak of, constantly declares that mundane objects are the "most awesome" things in the world after simply seeing a picture of one.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Elizabeth and Theodore in Persona 3. Not only are most of their fetch quests about getting mundane objects they find fascinating, they also will be amazed by everything around them when you take them out on a date.
  • In Persona 4, Marie has a similar reaction to the various things the protagonist and the rest of the cast show her around Inaba. This becomes a plot point in her dungeon; there are clear signs of objects from the town around, proving that she has a connection to the real world.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, the Samurai are positively awed by the strange technology strewn around Tokyo. Justified, as they come from a largely medieval society.
• In The Sims 3, Imaginary Friends, after being made real, get positive moodlets the first time they perform ordinary tasks like eating food or using the toilet. The descriptions of these moodlets talk about how amazing these tasks are, at least from the perspective of the Imaginary Friend.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006): Silver, who comes from a post-apocalyptic Bad Future, calls a desert beautiful, and expresses amazement at the sky being blue and the people being happy.
• Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory features an early level where Sam can overhear a conversation between two guards. They are discussing how impressive it is that that estate they are guarding has motion-activated lights. Sam can interrogate one of the guards, during which the guard explains about the lights.
  Sam: You mean like the kind you have on your garage?
  Guard: Not me, señor. I couldn't afford something like that.

Web Comics

• In Anecdote of Error, Atshi had never seen a bunk bed before enrolling at boarding school. Her eyes go wide, and she claims the top bunk because she wants to be like a bird.
• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!: Galatea, when she escapes from her lab, finds everything about the outside world alternately terrifying or awe-inspiring (and considers pizza an almost inconceivable luxury). Similarly, the four time-displaced ninjas are amazed by everything about the modern world.
  Lari: [on seeing a cell phone] Is that another magical item?
  Molly: Only in the Clarkean sense. Not in the Gygaxian sense.
• The Little Trashmaid: Tidy is would be a firm believer in "One man's trash is another man's treasure" if she knew what "trash" was. A lot of comics are about how Tidy is fascinated by the garbage around her, thinking of them as treasures.

Web Original

• In CAPTAIN YAJIMA, when the slug-like alien Professor Genius rescues a human astronaut stranded in space, he asks the astronaut if Earth really has "cars." When the astronaut confirms this, Genius is amazed at the prospect. This is in spite of the fact that Genius is the co-pilot of a Flying Saucer.
• "I Don't Know My Age: 5 Things I Learned in My Isolated Tribe" from Cracked. There's one section dedicated to talking amazing and insane modern technology is to him. He's expressed amazement over the following things: faucets, flushing toilets, cars, the different types of music, the internet, and grocery stores. Granted, he sometimes misses the food back home in the jungle, mainly monkey and bugs.
• From the SCP Foundation: SCP-328 is the alien equivalent of a CD, containing research logs for a bizarre, mysterious, and extremely dangerous alien artifact. This is a perfectly reasonable description to come up with when your primary sense is taste and electromagnetism in the UV/Vis spectrum is lethal to you, but to a human reader, the object is obviously a laptop computer.

Western Animation

• In Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, the monsters are entranced, almost hypnotized, by a lava lamp.
• Amphibia: The frogs are amazed by the various items that Token Human Anne happened to have with her when she ended up in their world. They call her smartphone a "magic memory box" (and have to be told what electricity is when it runs out of power) and are fascinated by pens. The thing they're the least interested in seems to be the actual magic box which brought her there.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Not exactly "mundane" but still a huge culture shock. In The King of Omashu, Katara and Sokka are mesmerized by the imposing walls and buildings of the titular city. While cities throughout the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation display varying levels of such grandeur, for two kids from the devastated South Pole, it's impressive to see any buildings that don't melt.
• Dexter's Laboratory: The title character frequently experiences this, due to being a Ditzy Genius.
  Dexter: Could this be the strange substance Mother calls "dust"?
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: In one episode Eddy gets a package from his brother that turns out to be a bunch of baby stuff. Ed is fascinated by the baby rattle.
  Ed: [while hugging Eddy and Edd] Listen. [five seconds of rattling]
• Family Guy:
  • Stewie Griffin, despite being something of an Evil Genius, has a sense of childlike fascination. It's justified by him being a year old.
  • Lampshaded in one episode where Lois shows Peter something in the newspaper and he is shocked by "movable printed type", which he determines to keep secret from the Medieval serfs that have suddenly appeared as agricultural workers outside the house.
• Futurama: In the early episodes Fry, being a Fish out of Temporal Water, was constantly amazed at things that he (and we) would found astonishing but that people in the 31st Century dismiss as commonplace. He even accuses the others of acting "like it's the boring time where I come from."
  Professor: Boring? Wasn't that the time period when they cracked the human genome, and boy bands roamed the Earth?
• Gravity Falls:
  • A constant problem for Soos:
    Dipper clone: Hey Soos, look! A glowing dot!
    Soos: Oh man, I'm so glad I turned my head. That dot does not disappoint.
  • Sev'ral Timez, due to their isolated upbringing, find regular objects astounding.
    Creggy G: Yo, I heard about these things called 'trees?!' I dunno WHAT they are, but I wanna KISS one!
• Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh: The alien Oh takes great wonderment at various human things. He explicitly sends a letter to space through the human postal system rather than the far more efficient and suited to that task Boov postal system simply because he finds the entire process fascinating.
  Oh: I mean, applying moisture to secure a paper fold? [Oh licks and seals his envelope and giggles with excitement]
• House of Mouse: A perfectly normal lamp intrigues Jafar, who after ordering Donald to "Bring me the lamp" actually rejects Aladdin's lamp from the prop room and specifies he wanted the lamp in Mickey's dressing room.
  Mickey: With the clock gizmo and the fringe along the shade?
  Jafar: It has a clock gizmo? Outstanding!
• Legend of Korra: Set 70 years after the end of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the South Pole has advanced quite a bit, but remains comparatively rural. When Korra first arrives in the bustling metropolis of Republic City, she's seemingly awed by a traffic jam. Although cars are not new to her, she's never seen so many at once.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Silverstream the hippogriff, having lived underwater for almost her entire life, gets excited about stairs, which were unnecessary in Seaquestria since they could just swim everywhere. Even her chaperone General Seaspray is intrigued by the prospect!
  • Princess Luna expresses excitement over the mere existence of an entire postal service. When she and Celestia take a short vacation, one of her sights to see involves sending an ordinary postcard to her sister, who is in the exact same room as her.
• The Owl House: Gus Porter, leader of the Human Appreciation Society at Hexside Academy, is Easily Impressed by anything related to humans, including mundane things like high-fives or braces.
  • In the first season, Eda's shop sells random items from the human world, which the denizens of the Boiling Isles would buy out of fascination.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: The children in the live-action segments of “Phantom Of The Jam” are improbably impressed when Gene Hardy shows them a handsaw, and then improbably impressed again when he produces a violin bow.
• Ready Jet Go!: Jet, being a space alien, is constantly fascinated by the most simple of Earth objects, such as drinking fountains.
• Regular Show:
  • Benson shows his new surveillance system to Pops, who exclaims, "What a marvelous device!" He was referring to the computer mouse.
  • Likewise when Benson buys a new state-of-the-art cart. Despite all the amenities like heated seats and a GPS, what fascinates Pops most are the cup holders.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer gets all enthusiastic about the napkin dispenser in a 1950s-style diner, acting like it was some fantastic antique. Lisa tried to point out that they have those in modern restaurants but to no avail.
  • When Jasper is defrosted after trying to cryogenically freeze himself in a Kwik-E-Mart freezer, he thinks he is in the future and is amazed when he finds a product called Moon Pie.
  • A Treehouse of Horror segment parodying Sherlock Holmes has "Bartley" impressed by everything, especially a doorknob. The joke being he is ONLY impressed by mundane things, as when a stool comes to life and runs out of the store he doesnt even give it a mention.
  • Perfect summary of the phenomenon:
  Homer: And I'm not easily impressed... Wow, a blue car!
• SpongeBob SquarePants: "A pen: One of the most permanent of all writing utensils!"
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • On a visit to the USS Vancouver, Tendi and Rutherford geek out over everything they see, despite the fact everything on the Vancouver is the same as on the Cerritos, just in better condition. They even think the doors are amazing.
  • In a later episode, Tendi is fascinated by sand. Apparently, Orion only has pebbly beaches, and she somehow managed to never get to the beach while studying at Starfleet Academy.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil:
  • In the premiere episode "Star Comes to Earth", Star is shown to be fascinated by everyday Earth things like light switches and drinking fountains.
    Star: [to her mother] And you said there was no magic on Earth!
  • In "Freeze Day", after Star's time-stop spell frees Father Time from having to run on the Wheel of Progess, he runs around being fascinated by ordinary things like rocks, mud, and a stray goose ("I dunno what this thing is, but it's waddling!")
  • In "Royal Pain", Star and her father King Butterfly are amazed by the bathroom of the Diaz family, especially the toilet.
  • In "Interdimensional Field Trip", Star is the only member of her class excited about the trip to the paper-clip museum.
• In Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Omega (who grew up in the enclosed cities of the water world Kamino) is amazed when she first sets foot on a terrestrial planet covered with dirt.
  Omega: (grabs a handful of dirt) Whoa! What is this?
  Tech: That would be dirt.
  Omega: It's amazing!
• Steven Universe:
  • This is usually Played for Laughs, with things such as the Gems being even more confused by a comically overly-complicated board game than the average human player would be.
  • This is Played for Drama in the episode "On the Run" when Amethyst becomes giddy over seeing some perfectly normal rocks she played with during her time alone in the Kindergarten.
    Amethyst: Look! Aww, it's my climbing rock. Ooh! And that one there? That's my sitting rock! And that was the one rock that I kicked into two rocks!
  • Even Steven, who is familiar with human culture, is prone to this due to his exuberant nature. When Garnet returns from a solo mission he asks if she brought him a present, he is handed a rock. He gleefully puts it in his mouth. This can also occur due to his unusual upbringing - he is also fascinated by Connie's description of a school, and a book series (which he doesn't know should be read in order, because the books he's used to don't have an order).
  • Peridot, who hasn't been on Earth as long as the other Gems, displays this. She stares at a mirror in fascination, is amazed by rain, watches the same episode of a TV show over and over while unaware that there are more, and becomes obsessed with owning a cheap carnival prize as soon as she lays eyes on it.
  • When Sadie first shows Steven the employees-only room of The Big Donut in "Joking Victim", he comments "This is the most magical place I've ever seen" - this comes from a boy who spends every other day going to actual magical places left behind by the Gems.
  • In the short "Video Chat", Peridot is amazed at Steven showing an optical illusion that makes a pencil look like it's bending like rubber.
• TV Funhouse: This is a Running Gag in the animated short "The Baby, the Immigrant, and the Guy on Mushrooms." The three of them would be in awe of absolutely everything that catches their attention.
• Xiaolin Showdown: Omi is an orphan who has lived most of his life sheltered at the Xiaolin Temple, which has very little in the way of modern technology or contact with the outside world. As such, when three new students arrive - kicking off the entire series - he is constantly amazed by things that are routine to them.

Real Life

• Boris Yeltsin: When Yeltsin visited a grocery store in suburban Texas, having spent his life in Soviet Russia, was so stunned at the amount of food available for purchase at any time that it induced a Heroic BSoD in regards to his Communist beliefs.
• Cargo cults: The concept behind these belief systems is closely related to this trope.
• George H. W. Bush: After Bush visited a grocers' convention in 1992, a rumor sprung up that he was amazed by the checkout scanners on display, despite such technology being in common use for well over a decade. It wasn't true, but it fit in with the popular conception of him as an inept elitist.
• The Lykov family isolated themselves in the Siberian wilderness for nearly 40 years to escape religious persecution. When they were discovered in the 1970's and reintroduced to society, they were fascinated by television but simultaneously afraid it would lead them to sin. According to this article, they would hastily cross themselves each time after looking at it.
• Peter the Great: During his "Grand Embassy" - a largely undercover trip to Amsterdam and London from 1697-98 - this Russian Tsar and his entourage famously had wheelbarrow races through the hedgerows of his London residence. Apparently they had never seen wheelbarrows before and were fascinated by them.
• Nujood Ali: According to her autobiography - I am Nujood: Age 10 and Divorced - after she obtained her ground-breaking divorce, Ali was invited to the Yemen Times newspaper offices where she saw a computer for the first time. She marveled at the device and imagined how she would use one herself.
• Super Mario Maker 2: Invoked by the announcement trailer. While there are several new features (handmade autoscrolling paths, a Super Mario 3D World theme), level locations (new forest, desert, and snow biomes) and objects (Banzai Bills, sideways-moving Thwomps, the Angry Sun), the first half-minute of the trailer is dedicated to introducing slopes, which were infamously absent from Super Mario Maker 1.
• Trevor Noah: Spoke about a particular moment that amused him during a visit to Zambia. While Zambia has every convenience of modern technology — hi-speed internet, smartphones, etc. — what amused Noah was that there were Disneyland-like lines to ride escalators in a shopping mall, including a group of young schoolchildren who "lost their minds" at just seeing the escalators.
• Played for Laughs by a group of pranksters including Horace de Vere Cole and Virginia Woolf. They dressed as members of the Abyssinian royal family, including "blackface" theatrical makeup, and toured the HMS Dreadnought, pointing at various common items and babbling gibberish excitedly.
• A defector from North Korea was amazed at plastic bottles as something that wouldn't break if you dropped it, unlike glass. During his escape from the country, he even tried to take one from a landfill before being told that they're really common and not to bother.
• Fukuzawa Yukichi, a member of the first Japanese delegation to the US in 1860, claimed to be unimpressed by such things as steam engines and telegraphs (being familiar with the concepts already), but was amazed to see things like wall-to-wall carpets and drinks served with ice in the summer.
• Sequoyah as well as many of the Cherokee was amazed at the "talking leaves" that Europeans had; that is, writing.
• Pedro Pascal first saw a cabbage field when filming The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent in Croatia, then excitedly pointed it out to Nicolas Cage, who couldn't believe afterwards that cabbage would genuinely impress his co-star.
• During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, videos and rumors of Russians troops (often extracted from the poorest regions of the country) being amazed at things like flat screen televisions, lawn sprinkler systems, and even flush toilets have been widespread. Russians looting washing machines has also become iconic to the whole conflict.
  • Ukraine released a video of some of their tankers examining a captured fully intact T-90M, one of Russia's most advanced tanks. They spent most of the video marveling how the ignition works the first time, as the aging T-72s both sides use often need a few tries before the engine finally rolls over.

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