Weirdness Magnet - Television Tropes & Idioms

"Strange and bizarre things happen to you with alarming frequency. You are the one with whom demons will stop and chat. Magic items with disturbing properties will find their way to you. The only talking dog on 20th-century Earth will come to you with his problems. Dimensional gates sealed for centuries will crack open just so that you can be bathed in the energies released... or perhaps the entities on the other side will invite you to tea. Nothing lethal will happen to you, at least not immediately, and occasionally some weirdness will be beneficial. But most of the time it will be terribly, terribly inconvenient."

— "Weirdness Magnet" disadvantage from GURPS

For some reason, the character is always standing at the intersection of Strange Street and Bizarre Boulevard. If they move in to a new apartment, their next door neighbor will be the one person psychotically annoyed by a normal morning routine. They have been unable to locate a working ATM since 1987. When they ride on the bus, it's not that crazy homeless people sit next to them, it's that the same crazy homeless person sits down to talk. Every. Single. Time.

Alternatively, the character may not think of the weirdness about them as particularly strange; after all, this sort of thing happens to them all the time. However, if something starts getting surreal on the show, chances are, they're at the center of it.

Often seen in comedy, especially when the writers get lazy and don't even bother to Hand Wave their plots anymore. Also used egregiously in Sci Fi and fantasy series, with the chain of weirdness catalyzing in the pilot, and each specific occurrence resolved at the end of the episode. Bonus points if, at some point, one of the characters brings it up and questions, "Why does this kind of stuff keep happening to me/us," or notes that that "Ever since [the events of the pilot happened], you've been a magnet for the freaky."

Compare to Cosmic Plaything; in that case, someone is, or appears to believe that they are the focus of external forces which cause things to happen around to or around them. These things may not be weird, but they are usually unlikely or disturbingly purposeful. With the Weirdness Magnet, the events themselves are notable for their strangeness.

Related to Busmans Holiday; Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and the like were unable to visit friends, go to a party or take a holiday without someone being murdered nearby.

When this phenomenon concerns a location rather than a person, it is either a City Of Adventure or a town where nothing exciting ever happens. In anime, Tokyo is particularly vulnerable. In the US, New York is the place to go for excitement. In general, Earth tends to get more than its fair share of craziness.

When it is justified by an element of the story to ensure the weird things navigate towards the heroes, then it becomes a Magnetic Plot Device.

What You See Is What You Get is a specific, character-based version of this trope, where the character draws the weirdness in because they are capable of sensing the weirdness in the first place. Or perhaps the weirdness came first and they merely became alert to it out of self-preservation.

Some characters tend to be more prone to this than others: like the Arthur Dent, Cosmic Plaything, Mac Guffin Girl, Strange Girl, and Yuppie Couple. Often, it's because they've Eaten The Mac Guffin, in which case these people consider themselves to be Blessed With Suck. If it goes on long enough, expect the character to start getting chummy with some very diverse "people".

The original source for the name of the trope was the Blue Devil comic books published by DC in the 1980's, where the main character's status as a Weirdness Magnet is noticed (and explicitly named) within the series. It was later adopted by and popularized by the GURPS RPG.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Osaka Naru from Sailor Moon was notorious for attracting almost every kind of supernatural creature in existence as the most frequent Victim Of The Week, earning the Fan Nickname "youma bait". However, her role in later seasons was downplayed until she was finally Put On A Bus.
- Naru herself Lampshaded this early in the second season.
The entire cast of Urusei Yatsura, but especially the lead character, Ataru Moroboshi.
- As a cultural note, the very first story has Ataru's mother reminiscing about all the bad omens that took place on the day that Ataru was born. It reads like a beginner's guide to superstitions with particular references to Japanese beliefs, starting with the fact that he was born on the anniversary of the Buddha's death. Also, his name can be translated to mean "Many stars will hit him on the head". And finally, the name of the series itself can be translated as "Those Annoying Aliens", suggesting that the galaxy and series' version of Earth is teeming with sentient species who are all irritating in their own ways. Ataru is therefore simply unlucky enough to catch the attention of all of them.
Played with in xxxHoLic, as Watanuki is fully aware that he is a weirdness magnet, and starts the story by making a Deal With The Devil (Yuuko, actually, but Watanuki seems to consider them one and the same) to get rid of his unwanted ability.
Ranma from Ranma 1/2, to the point that most fans suspect that Ranma's curse isn't gender bending so much that it's his almost supernatural ability to attract weirdness wherever he goes.
More or less the entire premise of Suzumiya Haruhi. It's not that weirdness gravitates toward Haruhi, though, so much as that she generates it. Relating to the Monk example above, at one point two characters in the series have a conversation to the effect that fictional detectives cause bad things to happen by virtue of their very presence, and that Haruhi, at that point on a "detective" kick, might subconsciously will such a disaster into being.
Yu-Gi-Oh GX: In Season 4, Judai almost drops out of the Academy under the assumption that, as The Chosen One, he is the Weirdness Magnet attracting all the evil, psychotic villains to the place. Two former said psychos clarify that it's Duel Academia that is the Magnetic Plot Device (Sameshima actually revealed it was built for that specific purpose), and Judai can best protect it by staying, not leaving.
In the early chapters of Bleach, characters with spiritual affinity were weirdness magnets. Ghosts appeared to such characters, and hollows hunted them. Ichigo's spiritual attunement spilled over to his classmates making them weirdness magnets as well.
Akari of ARIA tends to run across all sorts of supernatural phenomena completely by accident. Most of her encounters involve the king of cats, Cait Sith, and things not limited to, but including, traveling back in time, visiting The Little Shop That Wasnt There Yesterday, and having a run-in with ghosts. Of course she could also simply be overworked or hooked on some very interesting drugs.
Guts and Casca have this literally carved into their bodies (Guts on the back of his neck, Casca over her left breast) in Berserk; they're called the Brands of Sacrifice. Though it's less "weirdness" and more "ravenous demons".
Mizuki in Mokke has the talent to get haunted by lots of different kinds of ghosts. Her older sister Shizuru can see them, but is lucky not to be influenced by them directly.
As the Mai-HiME quote above attests, Mai (and possibly the rest of Fuuka Academy) appears to be a magnet for the surreal. Nagi specifically mentions in one episode that the Orphans are drawn to girls like her. However, it later turns out there are more sinister forces at work...
Lina seems to be this in the first third of Slayers Next, as she inexplicably keeps tripping on one Mazoku plot after the other. As it turns out there's nothing accidental about this, as Xellos was leading her into these situations by order of the Hellmaster.
Being a magnet for mushi, the Meta Origin for weirdness in Mushi Shi is apparently a common affliction for members of the title profession, including main character Ginko.

Comic Books

John Constantine has spent most of his life as a weirdness magnet, as have many of his ancestors. It seems to run in the blood...
The main character of the comic Major Bummer is a Weirdness Magnet by design — the implants that give him and various other characters in the series powers are programmed to attract one another as well as other weirdness, like demons.

Literature

The namesake character in Candide makes this trope Older Than Radio.
Arthur Dent, in all incarnations of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, is perhaps the quintessential Weirdness Magnet.
Rincewind in the Discworld books was one of these, and it bothered him; he didn't just want to be normal, he wanted to be actively boring. It's no coincidence that one of the books with him is titled Interesting Times.
- He's a favorite of Lady Luck, and Fate hates him personally. Death actually gave up on trying to collect him, as he can no longer tell when Rincewind's due to die (due to massive deformation of his life hourglass — that Death now keeps on his desk as a curio), and treats him rather like an amusing show he drops in on occasionally to see what's happening this episode.
- Tiffany Aching could also be said to be one, though that seems to go with the territory for a Discworld witch, even one still in training.
- Considering that even before Agnes Nitt was an official witch she could sing harmony with herself and had hair that would occasionally eat combs, I'd say it comes with the package.
In the Blood Debt, the last of Tanya Huff's Blood books, Henry Fitzroy wants to know why he is being haunted by ghosts that he does not know, and his lover/regular snack, Tony Foster, points out that 'like attracts like', and as a vampire, Henry should expect ghosts and things like that to show up on his doorstep.
The Armitage children from the various Armitage stories in Joan Aiken's collections have this peculiarity, but it has its genesis in a wish their mother made with a genuine wishing stone, that she would have two children and they would have interesting magical things happen to them one day a week, usually but not always on the same day. She got her wish....
The whole premise of A Series Of Unfortunate Events.
The protagonist of Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein, described as a "shit magnet", is never more than a few pages away from coincidentally bumping into something extraordinarily weird or disturbing.
The title character of Terry Pratchett's Johnny Maxwell Trilogy; though that seems to be more Johnny being the only one who notices the weirdness (due to his chronic lack of imagination, he lacks the mental filters "normal" people have that tell them "This can't be real").
Callahan's Place in the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series at least begins as a magnificent but otherwise ordinary bar that just happens to draw alien observers, talking animals and darts masters who cheat with telekinesis.
"That happen a lot?"
"More often that it should. When you cross over into the weird stuff, there's no going back. Hector has a theory on it. Calls it the law of 'Anomalous Phenomena Attraction.' He explained it to me once. Didn't really pay attention, but it boils down to 'weird shit pulls in more weird shit.' Figure it's gotta be true. Ever since I killed that guy, I keep runnin' across cults and monsters and fallen gods."
-Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez
This troper recalls a series of young adult books about a place called Eerie, Indiana. It involved these two kids called Marshall and Simon who were in a small town in Indiana where lots of weird and crazy stuff happened (like running into kids from the future, or a TV cable salesman ripping holes in reality). It turns out the town literally was a weirdness magnet, for two reasons. 1, a meteorite filled with a material called "eerieum" had landed, and it soaked into the local landscape. This material causes weirdness. 2, the Roswell aliens are being stored there, attracting even more weirdness. Guess you could call them space oddities.

Live Action TV

Lost: The Island has a habit of attracting strange and often insane people.
Dharma And Greg: Dharma was definitely a Weirdness Magnet; out-of-the-ordinary folk just seemed to naturally gravitate to her.
Friends: Phoebe was usually the source or the focus of surreal happenings.
Married With Children: Even in the strange world that we see around the Bundys, Al always seemed to attract the oddest things to him.
Mr. Bean was both a Weirdness Magnet and, we presume, the prime source of weirdness to others who knew him.
Scrubs: J.D.'s problems at the hospital often stem from the weirdness that seems to be attracted to him, including drawing the considerable and creative ire of the Janitor in the very first episode.
He may be a time-travelling alien from an old and powerful race, but even by those standards, Doctor Who's Doctor manages to get caught up in cosmic trouble with an absurd frequency. Even if he just pops out for a bit of air on a street corner in Cardiff, you can bet an intergalactic conspiracy will be brewing within spitting distance. By extension, the entire planet Earth may be considered a Weirdness Magnet for the series; a disproportionally large number of Evil Alien Schemes happen to involve the blue marble, and, for that matter, 20th to 21st-century London in specific.
- A nice Lampshading was done on this in the story Battlefield, where the modern-day version of UNIT regarded the Doctor as a troublemaker, since wherever he turned up, all hell broke loose.
- Somewhat averted in the new series, where a couple of times he mentions those visits to planets that did not involve crazy adventures. However, one short trip gives a good half a season of adventures.
Photographer Chance Harper in Strange Luck had his entire life defined by the bizarre swings of good and bad luck that afflicted him.
A decade earlier, Tom Chance in the British Sitcom Chance in a Million was also surrounded by freak coincidences.
Victor Meldrew from One Foot In The Grave was afflicted with a low-grade version of this. The writer, David Renwick, seemed to delight in putting him through bizarre situations at least once an episode (ranging from the next-door neighbour installing a door in his fence to facilitate a nice chat to having to deal with an old lady's suicide), so it's not surprising he was so disgruntled.
The Canadian kids' series The Zack Files was about the titular Zack and his friends, who chronicled all the weirdness that would inexplicably happen to him.
- Not only is the audience expected to accept that weird stuff just happens to Zack, he even has his own theory to explain it — "maybe it's life that's weird, and I'm just the first person to notice it".
After ticking off a Scottish god thingie, Harris Pembleton in the Canadian kids TV show Seriously Weird is cursed for strange things to happen to him. Mind you, this is a show with episode titles like "When Gods Get Angry", "When Yoghurt Attacks", and "When Fairies Get Mad".
Used, then lampshaded, then subverted in Monk. In the episode "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever", Natalie observes that everywhere Monk goes, people get murdered, supposing he's followed by some karmic cloud of disaster. By the end of the episode, she changes her mind about him: he's not a Weirdness Magnet for murder, he's cosmically drawn to where murders occur so he can solve them.
- Natalie's one to talk here. Before her daughter got her driver's license, she was involved one way or another in at least six murders and a museum heist!
There's a specific variant which happens in any series featuring a supernatural detective. For some reason every time they get a case, the case will be related to the supernatural—for instance, nobody walks in the door with a normal missing person's case, the missing person will have turned into a werewolf or have been sacrificed to a demon. This despite the fact that the person with the case doesn't know that their own case is supernatural, let alone that the detective is supernatural and is the only one who knows how to handle it. Series which do this include Angel, Blood Ties, Moonlight, and The Dresden Files; it's hard to think of a supernatural detective series which doesn't.
- Although you could claim that they do get normal cases, they just aren't the ones we see. After all, we only see them for a small part of their lives, a show might detail one or two days a week for six months out of the year, not every day of their lives.
  - And the series listed usually have the characters at least refer to more mundane cases, if not show them as tiny side-stories; Dresden, for examples, mentions at one point that he's usually just asked to find things. And, at least in the case of The Dresden Files, Harry openly identifies himself in the phone book as a wizard.
  - Harry specifically mentions in Storm Front (and probably one or two of the other books set before he effectively retires from the "wizard in the Yellow Pages" schtick by being drafted into the Wardens that he has referral-exchange deals with various other non-magical investigators in Chicago. This troper submits that most of the other investigators who are subject to this trope have similar arrangements.
- How could you possibly bring up this sub-trope and not mention Kolchak: The Night Stalker?
The entire cast of Dead Last ended up as WeirdnessMagnets after finding a medallion that let them see ghosts.
The various crews of the Star Trek franchise seem to come across an inordinate number of rare phenomena. This was lampshaded in one of the novels with a scientist researching temporal phenomena specifically requesting to be posted on the Enterprise because it encounters more Negative Space Wedgies in a year than most ships encounter in their lifetimes.
Xander Harris attracts the attention of demonic females. In one episode Willow accidentally curses him to attract vicious demons all the time.
- Lampshaded in the season 7 episode "First Date" when Willow receives a text message from Xander. It's coded in such a way that it could mean either "I'm getting lucky don't call me for a while" or "Help a demon's eating my head." Playing the odds, the Scooby Gang save Xander from being a sacrifice for the Hellmouth just in time.
Short-lived series Eerie Indiana — clearly related to the book series cited above, although which inspired which is not known to this troper — depicted a town that attracted Weird the way Sunnydale attracted Evil.

Web Comics

Roger Pepitone from College Roomies From Hell!!!, who at times seems to be weirdness personified.
Dave Davenport from Narbonic, due to his latent madness.
Monica Villareal from Wapsi Square, though she appears to actually be a Cosmic Plaything for Aztec gods.
Dominic Deegan, from Dominic Deegan Oracle for Hire. Fortunately, he can usually see it coming.
Many, many characters from Girly, but especially Otra and Winter; the effect is multiplied exponentially when they're together, to the point of occasionally being so strong it pulls in another' weirdness magnet from the supporting cast, such as Officer Policeguy, and so on until either the magnets are pulled apart by the plot or the weirdness reaches critical mass.
Any member of the cast of Sluggy Freelance.
Shelley Winters certainly, and maybe just the whole cast of Scary Go Round in general. Shelley seems to get the worst of it though: recently she was unable to report on a summer fete without her and two others regressing to primal states through various forms of intoxication and having to fight a bee the size of a cow.
Antimony from Gunnerkrigg Court, partly because of curiosity, partly because she's a medium.
Headmaster: Tell me, do you find strange things seem to happen around you?
Antimony: ... On occasion.
Jenn from Casey And Andy. The author has said that when strange things happen, they happen to Jenn.
Tedd from El Goonish Shive has been generating his own weirdness for a while.
Jamie Kingston from Kismetropolis has had the weirdness since day one, but its intensity is increasing.
Ash Upton from Misfile has, to date, been one of only two people on the whole damn planet to be "misfiled" by a stoned angel (who then moved in with him and is posing as her boyfriend), been forced to race against a woman possessed by a vengeful ghost, been stalked by Lucifer's niece, and raced against a guy who can hold conversations with cars and is haunted by his girlfriend's psychically manifested Id. Oh, and apparently his car growls at people.
Fox in Friendly Hostility is continually getting into bizarre situations, whether they're due to the demands of his job as newspaper reporter or some random person on the street who recognizes him from a long time ago and proceeds to greet/glomp/kidnap him. His boyfriend Collin lampshades this with the remark that he makes a great reporter as weird things keep on happening to him.
In The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob, the title character apparently has a Weirdness Magnet in the roof of his house. Yes, it is a Running Gag — see panel 4 of this strip.
Detective Franklin Clarke from TRU-Life Adventures has a reputation among his fellow police for getting stuck with unusual cases. Enough of them turn out to be related to Time Travel that the Time-Line Authority eventually recruit him as an agent.

Web Original

Adam Dodd of Survival Of The Fittest. Doesn't only get put into the act, but after he wins, he gets put in one of the sequels too. Not to mention at one point in V1 he was attacked by various lunatics, including a sex-crazed schizophrenic and a sadistic (and gay) serial killer.

Western Animation

Courage The Cowardly Dog might be the king of this trope, with something strange happening each episode despite the show literally being set in the middle of Nowhere.
- This kind of makes sense. If nothing weird happens here (somewhere), what's the only place left?
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were often subject to this, with Michelangelo usually providing the Lampshade Hanging.
Ben10; be it the Big Apple or the Grand Canyon, no matter where Ben goes on his four-season summer vacation road trip, he seems to have a knack for attracting weirdness in the form of various monsters and aliens. This is lampshaded early on by Gwen. If the weirdness isn't immediately obvious, expect Ben to go looking for it. He'll find it within two minutes.
Sokka, The Smart Guy on Aang's team in Avatar The Last Airbender, known to occasionally acknowledge tropes, is the first to point out that "weird stuff happens to us" — somewhat justified given that Aang is The Chosen One.
All the main characters of Kappa Mikey appear to be dogged by random events, though considering the stuff that goes on in a typical episode, they might just live in a world where that sort of mayhem is an everyday thing.
The Simpsons hung a lampshade on it when Smithers told Mr Burns: "That's Homer Simpson. All the recent events of your life have revolved around him."
The fundamental premise of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Indeed, in the series' infancy the network execs made the creators of the show turn the characters into detectives, because they couldn't conceive of a show where every single episode consists of something completely crazy happening to the protagonists, apropos of nothing.
Lampshaded in South Park "Pandemic 2 — The Startling":
Craig: That's a shock. I decided to follow you guys, and now I'm in the land of the giant lost world.
Stan: Craig, it isn't our fault! You make it sound like we always wanna be in situations like this but we don't have any choice!
Kyle: Yeah. Stuff just happens.
Craig: Stuff just happens.
Kyle: That's right!
Craig: You just wind up being sent by the government to take down the city of Lima only to wind up in the land of the giant lost world.
Cartman: That's right.
Craig: You know what stuff happens to most kids? They fall off their bikes. They get in fights with their parents. They get swindled out of their birthday money.

Tabletop RP Gs

As mentioned above, GURPS has a disadvantage that turns you into this.
- A number of advantages and disadvantages have similar effects. Cursed and Unlucky cause bad stuff to happen to you leaving others unharmed. Destiny gives one a destiny which means things will center around you at least some of the time. Illuminated makes you a "shining" beacon to other Illuminati. Twisted Mana Generator makes terrible, terrible things happen when magic is used on or around you. Serendipity makes nice coincidences happen to you (which can be a weird as a junkyard having the parts for a ultra-tech flying belt according to the core books). Curious will lead you into doing strange/stupid things.
In Scion, every single character has a "Fateful Aura" that basically turns them into this. No matter where they go or what they do, their own Legend draws things to them, forcing them to respond and thus increase their Legend. It is possible to tone down this aura and shed Legend dots, but characters can never be entirely free of it, and since Legend determines how powerful a character's Boons and Epic Attributes can get, shedding Legend may leave them ill-equipped to deal with the weirdness when (not if) it arrives.

Truth In Television

There appears to be something about the state of Florida that attracts a whole lot of weird stories (the Elian Gonzalez affair, the 2000 electoral recount, hurricane after hurricane, Jack Thompson, etc.) Eventually, so many out-of-the-ordinary stories kept coming in from that state that Fark.com had to devise its own tag just for that state.
- The News show Countdown With Keith Olbermann has a regular segment of odd stories, called "Oddball." So many of them occur in Florida that Florida has its own wing in the "Oddball Hall of Fame".
  - Could it be the fault of our state motto? 'Florida; The Rules Are Different Here'. Not exactly 'Live Free or Die' is it?
  - This troper lived there for three years. If you think what you've heard is bad, you should see what happens that isn't talked about nationally.
- Before around 2000 or so, California was usually thought of as being The State Where Strange Things Happen, and it is still considered to be a weird place by most people. This was less due to strange occurrences as because of the large number of eccentric people who seemed drawn there, pulled by the twin Weirdness Magnets of Hollywood and San Francisco. The saying used to be that when they tipped the country, everything loose rolled into California.
- This troper's first impression of Florida, upon arriving for vacation, was of around twenty men in trenchcoats making out and having katana duels outside a Denny's at 3AM, then coming in and ordering a massive plate of pancakes. Nobody seemed to find it at all odd.
- There's the Bermuda Triangle, of course, although this troper believes that it's due to heavy traffic and unpredictable weather.
  - Similar to the Bermuda Triangle is the Bass Strait, in Australia.
- New Jersey also has more than its fair share of weird stuff. Pick up one of the Weird NJ books (yes, there are multiple) or the semi-yearly magazine that spawned them, and you'll see what I mean.
While there's a high chance of most (or all) instances being faked or psychological, when you hear about people who seem to have close encounters with ghosts, shadow beings and otherworldly horrors almost every other week you almost start wondering whether some people are real life weirdness magnets...
- This troper attracts weird people. Seriously.
Digipen Institute of Technology is bascially what you would expect to see if you culled your entire student base from the member lists of various video game forums. You know when you read some comment online you can't help but shake your head in disbelief at? The person who wrote that either goes to Digipen, is planning to apply, or (most likely) has dropped out after discovering it's not a big Nintendo tournament.
Wizard lookalike and comedian Bill Bailey mentioned being 'A Mecca for those with no agenda'.

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