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"Spider-senses, tingling!" "Your what's doing what now?" "Look, there's danger, all right? - Spidey and the Green Goblin, Spider Man Unlimited
"I get these chills up and down my spine, and all of the sudden, itīs as clear as day. That if I stay put, Iīm dead." - Kabuto, Psyren
A character has the psychic ability to know when something is about to happen, and react accordingly to prevent some kind of harm. Named after Spider-Man's iconic super-power.
When the character knows that something has just happened, as opposed to knowing that something is going to happen, it's an example of My Significance Sense Is Tingling. If it's limited to surveillance, it's awareness of Being Watched.
In comics, this is often denoted as squiggly lines around the character's head. See the Trope Namer and Professor Xavier of the X-Men for two prominent examples. Compare I Sense A Disturbance In The Force, which is when a character can sense another's Power Level.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- This is a pretty widely-known trope; Kyon in Suzumiya Haruhi refers to his "danger sense tingling".
- You develop this pretty quick around Haruhi. It's a survival trait.
- The martial artists in Ranma 1/2 can sense if someone is about to attack them.
- Yes, this includes Akane, who really is "a martial artist, too." Takahashi just wasn't ever interested in giving her fair fights. Akane's the damsel, Ranma's the hero. (Though she manages to help him out in both the Ryugenzawa and Phoenix Mountain battles.)
- Unfortunately for Ryoga, his "danger sense" is also affected by his terrible sense of direction.
- In Bleach, the shinigami have the ability to sense when someone else is fighting, doing badly in a fight, or about to die, by 'feeling' their Reiatsu (or spiritual pressure, if you want). It's slightly inverted though, due to the fact that often said shinigami are a good couple of miles away from the fight (or whatever else may be happening), and more often than not, in a position where they can't really go and help out.
- A character in Get Backers has the ability to forsee the future in increments of a few seconds each time, up to eleven seconds (IIRC), with much the same effect
- In Naruto, several characters, most notably Hinata's father, have demonstrated the ability to detect the intent to kill.
- Svenīs seerīs eye in Black Cat allows him to see a few seconds in the future, thus detecting danger before it happens.
- Psyren has the psychic abilities from the "Sense" category (a sub-category of the body-strengthenig "Rise") which improve the users basic senses, allow them to feel psychic pressure and can basically act as lesser spider-senses. A perfect example is Kabutoīs main power "Menace", which allows him to clearly feel and see the menace of dead and thus predict all of the enemies attacks.
Comic Books
- Naturally, the Spider-Man comic books feature this all the time, and also have villains trying to find ways of stopping/evading it.
- In Spider Man 2099, Miguel O'Hara had enhanced perceptions that happened to tune in more quickly to what's pertinent. What's pertinent could be anything that's an immediate danger to him or a more general plot point. It's still limited by what Miguel's understanding of what his focused sight/hearing/smell is focused on, and although a genius, he could still be caught flat-footed.
- The X-Men had to deal with Destiny, a mutant Blind Seer who can foretell the future.
- Blindfold, one of the X-Men's students is just younger version of Destiny.
- One of the 198 still-powered mutants is a minor precog named Ticktock who can see 60 seconds into the future.
- When Grant Morrison was writing the X-Men, he created a Goth mutant girl who was living in Genosha and dreamed about its destruction. If she was only smart enough to tell someone about this earlier, not five seconds before the first strike...
- Parodied in Sam & Twitch by Sam.
Twitch: "I think something's wrong."
Sam: "Yeah, me too. My spider-sense's tingling."
Film
- The 2002 Spider-Man movie depicted his Spider Sense using Bullet Time. Whenever something bad was about to happen, time would slow down from Peter's perspective, allowing him ample time to react. Later on in the film (and its sequels), the use of this power is mostly left to be assumed by the audience.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer had this as a featured power of the title character, but it was modified for the television series (see below.)
- In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode Puma Man, the main character of the film "get[s] this way when [he] sense[s] danger." Tom Servo mocks him: "A Post-It note senses danger better than this guy!"
Literature
- Robert Heinlein's novel The Number of the Beast. Zebadiah Carter had a danger sense that alerted him to trouble just before it occurred, allowing him just enough time to react to it.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Death Star had Nova Stihl and 'blinking', a spider-sense of his own that allowed him to excel as a martial artist and stormtrooper. But it's actually the Force.
- This is in fact one of a Jedi's most basic skills; short-scale precognition.
Live Action TV
- The live TV version of Spider Man redefined the Spider Sense completely. Instead of just the sense that something bad was about to happen, Peter would get the full-on Phoebe Halliwell/Cordy Chase flash (only conventionally shot with a red filter). This would be accompanied by a shot of Parker (played by Nicholas Hammond) standing still while his eyes flashed.
- Curiously, while this was the only superpower she possessed in the film, the titular character of Buffy The Vampire Slayer did not possess this ability in the TV series. One early episode played with it and featured Giles chastising Buffy about her lack of the intuition and the fact that she instead (correctly) deduces vampires based on their outdated wardrobe.
- Although, it did carry over her premonition dreams, which was more of A Storm Is Coming type of thing. It featured prominently in the movie and the first season, then continued to feature, if not heavily then recurrently throughout the whole series. To name but a few examples, she mind links with Faith and has prophetic dreams while Faith is in a coma, She has a prophetic dream of the Gentlemen in Hush which actually helps her defeat them, and she sees the army of the First Evil's Uber Vamps.
- Strangely Faith did claim she'd know if there was a vampire anywhere near, so maybe Buffy just never bothered to practice it, relying instead on...fashion sense. Given how many times she's been surprised by vampires, she probably could have worked on developing her magical senses a bit more.
- And on Angel, Doyle, and later Cordelia, got precognitive visions from The Powers That Be about demonic events of note in the L.A. area.
- Phoebe Figalilly in Nanny And The Professor seems to have a more generic version of this, not limited to harmful events.
- The British series No Heroics has a hero named Timebomb who can see sixty seconds into the future. "Oh, you might want to watch out for the anti-tank missile." "What anti-tank missile?" *BOOM*
- The Immortals in Highlander could sense each other's presence, usually leading to their finding a private place to try and lop each others' heads off.
Tabletop Games
- The Hair Trigger Neck Hairs gun shtick from Feng Shui is essentially a gunman's Spider Sense.
- Several Super Hero role-playing games have Danger Sense as an allowable power.
- In the Champions system, "Danger Sense" is a "stop sign" ability, since it can be difficult for the GM to run certain plots with this power in the vicinity. (Particularly if the player bought the character's power up to "planetary" level.)
- In The World Of Darkness, Danger Sense is a relatively cheap merit that gives you a bonus on reacting to imminent threats.
Video Games
Western Animation
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, there's a mutant power category called 'Exemplar'. People with sufficiently high levels of this often have a danger sense, along with direction sense and eidetic memories. Yeah, this one comes with a lot of bonus features. Stormwolf is a good example. Chaka, who can manipulate Ki, can use her Ki to tell when someone is focusing on her or where someone's attack will go.
- Also, Franklin Delarose, the (non-mutant) Chief of Whateley Security, has an uncanny ability to sense when something bad is about to happen on campus.
- Of course, this may simply be that he's had a lot of experience dealing with a lot of very weird things, and has been in the job long enough to subconsciously recognize when something's not right.
- Cynthia Arden from The Lonely Winds
 has a danger sense that warns her moments before something hazardous happens to her or someone nearby.
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