Real After All / Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series:
  • In the episode "Goose Pimples", Lt. Pug scares the pups with a story about a monster named Lockjaw. Throughout the episode, some characters believe that Lockjaw may be in the woods, while others think there's a rational explanation. In the end, what they thought was Lockjaw was just Captain the horse going around the woods trying to give the pups a hay ride. Although in the very last scene, it turns out that Lockjaw was real, and Cadpig is seen trying to mediate a conflict between him and Pug. Apparently Lockjaw didn't like all the mean stories Pug was spreading about him.
  • In the episode "Invasion of the Doggy Snatchers", Spot believes that her friends have been replaced by aliens. Though that turns out to not be the case, one of the chickens that Spot befriends in the episode does turn out to be an alien.
• Aaahh!!! Real Monsters: One episode had the trio trapped in a severely haunted house, the rub being that while monsters exist, ghosts do not (this is repeatedly stated by Hermione Oblina). It turned out that the house was the bunker/battle ground for a soldier monster who caused all of the strange happenings—except one. All four monsters quickly leave, and the house resumes all of its disturbing behavior.
• The Ace Ventura: Pet Detective Animated Adaptation episode about "G.C." uses the "helpful person was dead all along" variant.
• The Addams Family (1992) had an episode called "Puttergeist", which revolved around the legend of a golfer ghost with a giant golf ball for a head appearing every Halloween. It initially turns out that the Puttergeist is nothing more than a publicity stunt performed by the Normanmeyer family for generations, but the very end of the episode shows that the Puttergeist actually exists.
• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
  • Subverted multiple times before being played straight in "Phantom of Retroville": The tale of a ghost at an amusement park is told, and Jimmy, being Jimmy, decides to disprove it. The first phantom encountered throughout the episode turns out to be Nick in a costume. Then another phantom shows up, but is quickly revealed to be Cindy and Libby, also in costume. Then another phantom shows up, this one having a sinister glow, and succeeds in scaring the kids into running away, but turns out to be Judy Neutron in a more elaborate costume, with the goal of scaring the kids for sneaking out at night in mind. Then, while she and Hugh have an argument about pie, a fourth phantom rises out of the ground, this one translucent and glowing purple, scaring the two away.
    "Ohh, what about blackberry?"
  • Being a person of logic and science, Jimmy Neutron didn't believe in Santa Claus (it didn't help that he didn't get the present he wanted two years prior), but soon learns that there are some things that can't be proven with facts (except how the present he wanted needed five years before it was finally ready, and he feels silly for not realizing the process).
• Adventure Time:
  • In the episode "The Creeps", all the characters are seemingly killed one by one by an evil ghost. It is finally revealed that the whole thing was a practical joke organised by Jake that all the others helped with... and then Jake denies being responsible for the ghost sighting and poltergeist activity experienced by Finn after he thought that he was the sole survivor. A later episode returns to this and explains the nature and origins of the real ghost in detail.
  • The episode "Fionna and Cake and Fionna" double-subverts this. Ice King's Gender-Bent Alternate Universe character Fionna apparently turns out to be real when she arrives to visit him and has a video tape of one of her adventures as "proof". However, it turns out she was actually a rabbit woman who learned about Fionna and Cake when she caught some radio waves transmitting one of their adventures on her television, and she was scamming Ice King to try and find more "tapes" of Fionna and Cake, whom she believes must be from some old tv show. But then when Ice King goes to sleep that night, a strange red light starts beaming Fionna and Cake's adventures into his head, implying both his brain and the rabbit woman's television actually caught inter-dimensional images of the real Fionna and Cake's adventures. The sequel miniseries Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake later explained that Prismo created the Fionna and Cake universe and was the one sending the beam to Ice King's head in order to store the universe there since it's creation was unauthorized and he didn't want to get into trouble.
• In the The Amazing World of Gumball episode "Christmas", Richard accidentally runs over a homeless man who he (and the children) believe to be Santa, who turns out to be the real thing.
• In the American Dad! episode "The Two Hundred", the eponymous Two Hundred was revealed midway through the episode to be just Roger, who admits he made them up and pretended to be the Two Hundred to scare people and collect the things they dropped, having amassed a large spoon collection by doing this. Towards the end of the episode, however, as the reunited Smith family are pitted against a mob of survivors, they are all suddenly attacked by the real Two Hundred, who turn out to be a large group of Roger's many personas. Roger himself initially doesn't believe this until he remembers he walked into a hadron collider demonstration, creating the Two Hundred and thus being responsible for The End of the World as We Know It.
• One episode of Angela Anaconda has the entire class teasing Angela about being in love with "Bob": a fictional kid on a flash card after she created the sentence "I love Bob and hot chocolate" with them. The episode ends with a kid who looks and dresses identically being transferred into the class, who is actually named Bob. He even becomes a background character from then on and even dons the "Bob" t-shirt from the flash card!
• In The Angry Beavers episode "Omega Beaver", Daggett becomes convinced of the existence of the Howler Leeches from a conspiracy comic book, eventually being attacked by a group. After it's revealed that the leeches were actually Norbert and their friends playing a trick on Daggett (following him siccing a vicious leech-killing dog on them), it's revealed to the viewers that the leeches are real. Thankfully, they appear to be rather benign and instead leave with the frozen dog (who then proceeds to maul them in their spaceship as they leave Earth).
• Angry Birds: Summer Madness: During "Hollow-Weenie", it is revealed that the titular monster is real.
• Arthur:
  • In "D.W.'s Snow Mystery", it's revealed that aliens really did take the snowball D.W. was hiding in the freezer.
  • In "The Fright Stuff", the girl in a ghost costume who played a prank on Binky and George turns out to be a real ghost.
  • In a variant, Arthur and Buster have become convinced that there are dangerous exotic animals loose all over their town and a conspiracy is covering this up, partly by news stories about missing dogs, and a "tiger hunter" they see with a trap in a park. It turns out the whole thing was a social experiment by Brain - except that he had nothing to do with the "tiger hunter", who was a crazy person abducting people's dogs. At the end of the episode, he's arrested and the dogs are returned to their owners.
• In the Season 3 episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender titled 'The Painted Lady', the heroes encounter a small fishing village that is dying out because of pollution caused by the Fire Nation. Shenanigans occur while Katara masquerades as the Painted Lady, the patron spirit of the river and the village, and saves the day despite her ploy coming to light. Valuable lessons are learned regarding honesty and hard work, and it appears that the Painted Lady exists only in the hearts and imaginations of the village. The end! Oh, except for the part where after all this, right before they leave, the REAL Painted Lady appears to Katara to thank her for all that she's done.
• In "The Wisdom Toad" from Babar and the Adventures of Badou, there's supposedly a toad called the Wisdom Toad that supposedly knows the right answer to everything. However, it turns out that says "Yep" every time a question is posed of it. When Crocodylus tries to use it to trick the crocodiles into making him leader, Badou discovers a whole pond of these toads and finds that some of them say "Yep" and some "Nope." He therefore pulls a swap, swapping the supposed "Wisdom Toad" for one of the ones that says "Nope," so that when Crocodylus asks it if he should be leader, this is what it says. Afterwards, he shows the pond of frogs to the true crocodile leader and everyone present agrees that it was never a good idea to let a toad choose the leader. Everyone clears out except for Badou and Babar, and Badou asks Babar if he thinks it's possible that there could be a real Wisdom Toad. A voice calls out from the pond: "Maybe."
• In the episode "Grundy's Night" of The Batman, after Solomon Grundy is revealed to be Clayface in disguise, a real zombie hand reaches out of the swamp. Ooooh...
• In the Bluey episode "Fairies", the kids and adults play a game where they pretend fairies are causing chaos all over the house, with the chaos implied to be caused by Bingo. At the end of the episode, an actual fairy shows up setting up the love heart Bingo had made with dominoes that had gotten knocked down earlier, with Bingo telling dad to come look (his reaction could easily be him noticing only the love heart, implying the fairies are Invisible to Adults).
• Captain Pugwash once came up with the brilliant idea of using a fake sea serpent to scare the crews of other ships into running for the lifeboats so that he and his crew could rob them blind. (The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, the crew of the Black Pig most assuredly were not!) Just after the grand scheme had gone hilariously pear-shaped in a way that Tom the cabin-boy couldn't get his boss out of, a real sea monster showed up and succeeded where the fake had failed.
• Code Lyoko has "Is Anybody Out There?" After the "ghost" is revealed to be a monster created by XANA, the episode ends with Sissi trying to summon the ghost after a Return to the Past. Sissi and her friends are scared off by a spooky voice, but it turns out to be Odd and Ulric playing a joke. But then they leave and we see the boiler door shut and hear a ghostly moan...
• Celebrity Deathmatch has "The Prophecy". Stacy finds what she believes is a prophecy foretelling that one of the Deathmatch staff dies tonight. Throughout the episode it looks at several points like one of them will bite it (Nick gets shocked by a faulty microphone, Stone Cold gets run over by a moose, Mills Lane almost spontaneously combusts, and finally a plane crashes into Johnny), but they all survive. At the end, Stacy admits that she made a mistake. Then she explodes, killing her.
• In the Courage the Cowardly Dog episode "Courage Under the Volcano", Courage has to save Muriel from being sacrificed by the natives to a volcano god. For most of the episode, we are given the impression that the volcano god isn't real and that the natives are just being superstitious. After the natives' leader Chief Wiki Wiki points out that Courage proved there is no volcano god, the volcano god proves that he actually does exist and in the process reveals to the natives that a man named Otto is trying to force them off the island in order to turn the place into a ski resort.
• In the DuckTales (2017) episode "Quack Pack!", Donald Duck accidentally traps the main cast in a stereotypical 1990s sitcom set after making a wish for a "normal family" that was overheard by a genie that had been trapped in the lamp since 1990. Donald at first refuses to wish everything back to normal until Goofy, who had suddenly appeared as a result of his wish, has a heart-to-heart with Donald, convincing him to undo the wish and poofing everyone back where they started. To everyone's surprise, Goofy is still there with them, as the genie didn't create him, but instead teleported him to their location because (in his own words), "magic has nothing over the power of a big-name guest star".
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: After ten long years of flirting with the idea that Plank may be more than just an ordinary piece of wood, "Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show" wraps up the mystery by confirming that Plank is indeed sapient and capable of moving around and interacting with his environment independently of Jonny (Plank ends up driving a bus around town).
• The Emperor's New School: Yzma used fake aliens in a failed attempt to become Empress and she constantly told Kronk aliens didn't exist. In the end, Kronk met real aliens but didn't believe it.
• The Family Guy episode "The Fat Guy Strangler" features a particularly crude version of this. Lois discovers that she has a younger brother named Patrick who's been in an asylum for decades. She brings him home and he seems fairly well-adjusted... except for the fact that he has an Imaginary Wife. Brian and Stewie have a field day with this, taking a cucumber and placing it on the couch (supposedly where the "wife" is sitting), joking that they're putting it inside "her" vagina to pickle. Later in the episode, Lois is looking for Patrick when she notices something and calls out "Who left this pickle on the couch?" Stewie and Brian hear her and express utter delight.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In the episode "Crocker of Gold", Cosmo keeps spouting about a being called the Great Potato. Towards the climax of the episode, when Timmy and the fairies were in danger of being boiled by angry leprechauns, Cosmo claims that the Great Potato will save them, at which point Wanda snaps at him and tells him there's no such thing as the Great Potato. At that moment, the Great Potato shows up to save them, much to Wanda and Timmy's shock.
• When Barney Rubble sees a sea serpent in the The Flintstones, his response is to tell Fred "I was reading this article where this scientist says there's absolutely no proof for the existence of sea monsters". Fred says so what and Barney delivers a punch line of "So I wonder if that sea monster believes in scientists".
• Freaky Stories has a segment where a ghost hunter was called to investigate when a family preparing to move was experiencing a haunting in their house. In the end, it's revealed that the son was responsible (he didn't want to leave the neighborhood and did it to stop his parents from selling the house). As the ghost hunter was leaving, he complimented the son for his tactics despite being an amateur, especially the family picture with blood dripping from their necks, citing that as the mark of a true haunted house. The son then replies "What bleeding portrait?". The ghost hunter promptly hightails it.
• The Funky Phantom:
  • At the end of the episode the "ghost" was usually shown to be a fake a la Scooby-Doo, but in a couple of episodes one of the guest characters turned out to be a real ghost.
  • An episode had a real Bigfoot running around in addition to the fraud.
• In the Futurama episode "I Second That Emotion", while searching for Nibbler in the sewers, the Planet Express crew discovers a tribe of mutants defending themselves from "El Chupanibre", a creature that has been stealing their crocodiles. Knowing that Nibbler likes to eat crocodiles, the crew thinks that he's the one the mutants are referring to and offer to help catch him. Upon finding Nibbler, Bender presents the mutants their "El Chupanibre"... only for the mutants to tell him that El Chupanibre is actually the giant monster standing right behind him.
• Garfield and Friends:
  • In "Unidentified Flying Orson", Roy pranks Orson with a fake alien invasion. Real aliens show up at the end.
  • "Barn of Fear" had the gang frightened in a barn by "ghosts" that turn out to be Orson's brothers trying to scare them off so they can steal the harvest. Then the brothers are attacked and driven out of the barn by floating objects. Orson dismisses the event as an earthquake, but after they all leave it is shown to be the spirits of departed farmers haunting the barn.
  • In "Heatwave Holiday," Garfield, Jon, and Odie deal with the titular heatwave by setting up a Christmas display in the middle of July. Soon, everyone in town follows suit, and the group even exchanges presents—right before a news announcement reminds everyone that it's still, you know, July. That night, as Garfield sleeps, we hear sleigh bells; the fat cat wakes up and goes into the next room, where he speaks to someone just offscreen: "Oh, it's you...no, it's not Christmas. Sorry." Garfield goes back to bed and comments "You'd think of all people, he would know better"—and a loud "HO HO HO!" is heard outside the house.
• The Garfield Show:
  • The special "Long Lost Lyman" revealed that the reason Jon's friend Lyman hasn't been seen in years was because he went missing searching for a cryptid known as the Zabadu. When Jon eventually reunites with his old friend, it at first appears that the Zabadu isn't real and was only a disguise used by Lyman and his predecessor to defend endangered wildlife by scaring away poachers. At the end of the special, the Zabadu turns out to actually exist when the creature shows up to scare off the special's villain Dirk Dinkum.
  • The episode "The Very, Very Long Night" has Garfield, Odie, Drusilla and Minerva scared from watching a horror film about a monster known as the Creature with Tentacles. After they and Jon go to bed, the episode ends with the monster turning out to be real.
• Goober and the Ghost Chasers often featured the real ghost helping the gang against the fake ghost (sometimes the fake ghost is also pretending to be the real ghost).
• In Gravity Falls, this trope would appear a lot since it's a show about kids who look for supernatural weird stuff in a creepy town, but they usually find out it's real in the middle of the episode. The only exception is in the episode "The Legend of the Gobblewonker", where the titular sea serpent was revealed to be an automaton made by Old Man McGucket. But at the end, the last disposable camera Dipper got to photograph the monster sinks to the bottom of the lake, passing a large sea serpent swimming around, making whale noises... Later in "Society of the Blind Eye", a recording shows McGucket freaking out about a monster he saw in the lake, implying he saw the real Gobblewonker and designed his robot after it.
• Growing Up Creepie, despite its short run pulled this often:
  • In one episode, a "haunted" theater is revealed to have just had a termite infestation—except for the part where the termites are eventually revealed to actually be ghosts.
  • In another episode, after Creepie and friends fail to find Bugfoot, the camera zooms out to show that the wilderness they're in is actually located on said giant arthropod's back.
  • "Legend of the Locker" has Creepie hearing from Josh about the legend of a girl named Gina Red-Shoes, who was locked in the equipment room just for losing a game of baseball. Creepie goes to investigate it, only to find Josh behind it. To get revenge, she got a bunch of fireflies to go into the red shoes to scare him away, while a cicada make ghostly sounds. Creepie then goes about her business, only for Gina's ghost to spawn as soon as she leaves the scene.
  • "Children of the Pumpkin Patch" has Creepie and friends going to a pumpkin patch, worried about the scarecrow nearby that reminds them of an antagonist from a horror flick. The scarecrow indeed appears to be haunted, only for it to be revealed to be some guy trying to scare away potential customers. At the end of the episode, the gang leave the pumpkin patch, only to see Chris-Alice's mom sitting in the back with them instead of behind the wheel. Cue the haunted scarecrow.
• Hailey's On It!: In "Mer-made in Oceanside", Hailey and Scott go diving to look for for a mermaid that the former saw years ago, only to find that it was really just an advertising model that was moved around from being played with by dolphins, and the mermaid that A.C took a picture of was actually Scott. However, while Hailey and Scott are looking down at the sea at the end of the episode, a real mermaid appears, and winks at the viewer as she swims off.
• Hey Arnold! was also very fond of this trope, having several horror-based episodes with this sort of ending. Heck, the fact that there are more examples listed below than anything else on this page in a Slice of Life show than an actual show that's supernatural or science fiction in nature is really insane.
  • "Haunted Train" was an episode where Arnold, Helga, and Gerald heard the story of a train that takes you straight to a "fiery underworld" with the ghost of the conductor who'd supposedly driven the original off the tracks and down into the underworld. The kids go check it out and sure enough a train shows up and takes them through a hellish scene, just like in the story. It turns out it was just an average train that passed through a steelworks. At the end the train races past with the ghost conductor sitting on the front, playing accordion and singing the urban legend.
  • "Wheezin' Ed" tells the story of the gangster Wheezin' Ed and his treasure, located out on Elk Island and hidden in one of the caves. Intrigued by the promise of treasure, Arnold, Gerald, and several of the supporting characters head out to the caves where instead of a ghost they come across two counterfeiters. They end up saved and the counterfeiters arrested while the scene ends with the sound of Wheezin' Ed's laughter echoing through the cave.
  • "Ghost Bride" finds Gerald telling the story of a woman who, left on her wedding day by a groom in love with her sister, puts on her wedding dress, grabs an ax and kills both her ex-fiancee and sister before jumping out the window to her own death. Every year on the same day, the ghost of the bride returns to the cemetery looking for fresh victims, humming the wedding march the whole time. Of course the children decide to meet up that night at the cemetery. The boys are then chased through the graveyard by Helga dressed up as the bride, and later by Curly. After agreeing that there's no ghost bride, the group minus Curly leave...and then he hears humming.
  • "Headless Cabbie" has the boys at the sleepover, telling scary stories. Arnold tells of a cabbie who finds himself approached by a woman, mourning the loss of her little dog. She asks for a ride through the park and gets into the carriage, offering the cabbie her scarf because it's such a cold night. When she hears barking she becomes mad, encouraging him to go dangerously fast, until a man with a golden hook for an arm causes him to swerve off the road, the scarf getting caught in the tree and taking his head off. When the boys go through the same park for ice cream later...they believe they're being chased by the cabbie who is eventually revealed to be Ernie, driving a carriage to earn more money. It ends with him being approached by the same woman, mourning the loss of her dog and offering him her scarf.
  • In "Four-Eyed Jack", Grandpa tells Arnold and Gerald a story about a Mad Scientist who lived in the boarding house and was killed by an exploding bean experiment. Afterwards, weird things start to happen that fit the tale. After the events are revealed to be coincidental to Grandpa and his secret bathroom, the boys go to bed and Gerald (who had been dismissing it the entire time) wakes up to Four-Eyed Jack who had come back for his glasses and halfheartedly scares him.
    "Um... Boo."
  • In "Sid The Vampire Slayer", Sid thinks Stinky is a vampire, but is seemingly proven wrong when he notices Stinky has a reflection. At the very end when Stinky is alone with a bat, he grows fangs, meaning he is a vampire. This is weird even by the standards of the other episodes, as those at least involved urban legends and not a significant character.
• Used as a Double Subversion in Jackie Chan Adventures, "The Chan Who Knew Too Much": Jackie tries to stop a villainous group of modern-day druids who believe Stonehenge is an ancient magical Weapon of Mass Destruction and intend to activate it; he dismisses their claim as a crackpot theory, along the same lines as people who think it's a landing beacon for UFOs. At the climax, they succeed... but nothing happens. Later, after the disappointed druids are arrested by Interpol, a UFO appears, drawn by the signal of the activation.
• In Inspector Gadget episode "Luck of the Irish", Gadget encounters a pair of short MAD agents dressed in green, in the disguise of leprechauns. Later on, when Penny is stuck in a hole without her backpack to help her escape, when it mysteriously falls down to her. After the MAD agents are captured and Dr. Claw's plan is foiled, Penny is still left wondering how her backpack was knocked down to her. The audience is then shown a trio of real leprechauns hiding nearby.
• Jem, "Mardi Gras": Jem and the group are invited to stay at a haunted hotel where there are strange things happening. People assume it's the ghost of a pirate that loved Lily Rose. Jem is able to use a hologram of him to scare a boy band hired by the Misfits to screw up Jem's group. It turns out the stolen stuff was stolen by a descendant of the pirate's pet, a monkey named Francis. At the end, the ghosts of the pirate and Lily Rose appear.
• The Johnny Bravo episode "Tooth or Consequences" has Johnny tell Little Suzy that the Tooth Fairy isn't real. After feeling bad about shattering her hopes and dreams, Johnny tries to make things right by impersonating the Tooth Fairy. After his efforts to grant Suzy's wishes to prove he really is the Tooth Fairy end in him getting arrested and Suzy admitting she knew it was really Johnny all along, the real Tooth Fairy shows up. As a Brick Joke, the Easter Bunny also turns out to be real when Suzy had earlier stated that she knew the Easter Bunny didn't exist and Johnny belted out a Big "NO!" after he grasps what Suzy said.
• Jonny Quest TOS:
  • In the episode "Monster in the Monastery", a group of Communists dress up as yeti to scare a group of monks. They're eventually discovered dead, ripped to pieces by an unknown force. At the end of the episode, a real yeti, the one that killed them, is seen walking into the mountains.
  • In another episode, a con-man kidnapped half the protagonists and tried to convince the other half they'd vanished magically in the Bermuda Triangle, in an attempt to get at a sunken treasure. He does get it, and makes his escape. By boat. Through the Bermuda Triangle. Guess how that turned out.
• Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures:
  • In "AMOK", the main characters encounter a peaceful tribe in Borneo, living in hiding, who protect their village's secrecy via having someone dress as a local legendary monster, the titular Amok (which looks like a hybrid of a gorilla, baboon and sloth) to scare away outsiders. Later, everybody is captured by drug smugglers, who plan to execute the villagers for interfering in their business. Jonny escapes and together with, as he assumes, the guy in the Amok costume, manages to free everybody and capture the smugglers, except for their leader, James Compton, who escapes into the jungle. When Jonny thanks the guy in the costume for his help, he claims to have been captured alongside everybody else and was with them the whole time. As the episode ends, the characters suddenly hear Compton's terrified screams, as he begs for something to stay back, followed by a monstrous roar, coming from the jungle.
  • In "The Spectre of the Pine Barrens", The Jersey Devil appears to be just a descendant of the Minutemen in a costume. In the ending, the real Devil appears and passes Team Quest a container with the original Declaration of Independence.
• In an episode of Kim Possible, Kim and Ron find out they had identical ancestors living in the 1800s. The episode turns out to be All Just a Dream. Word of God said that it really did happen. Even ignoring this, it's still an example as afterwards, Kim and Ron find out they did have identical ancestors, albeit living in Ancient Rome.
• The Little Critter cartoon "Just Me and My Dad" has a creature called Bigpaw, which is believed to be an urban legend. At the end of the cartoon, the creature is shown happily eating a bag of nuts.
• In The Mask animated series, a crime wave perpetrated by criminals dressed as Santa Claus prompts the mayor to decree wearing a Santa costume ground for immediate arrest. This causes the real Santa to be thrown in jail.
• In the Goofy and Max segment of Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas, Max's faith in Santa is shaken. The real Santa shows up at the end.
• Moville Mysteries: The local Conspiracy Theorist drags Mo into investigating the Mystery Meat in the school cafeteria, since it's really good (and cafeteria food that tastes good is unnatural) and it glows in the dark. He is convinced it's alien in origin, and all the evidence Mo finds seems to confirm this. The two of them confront the lunch lady while she is in a meeting with two guys from the mystery meat company. She reveals the heinous secret behind mystery meat: it's not made by aliens, it's made of tofu. All of the kids are immediately disgusted that they've been eating something that's healthy and renounce mystery meat for good, causing the distributors to cancel their contract with the school. After they leave, Mo asks the lunch lady why the mystery meat glowed in the dark. She says she didn't know it glowed in the dark. Cue a shot of the meat guys driving down the road, and their cars turning into UFOs and flying away.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
  • One episode revolves around a ruined castle supposedly haunted by the Pony of Shadows, but all the odd things in the castle turn out to have a mundane explanation. The Stinger reveals that the Pony of Shadows (or at least something strange, as the real Pony of Shadows was actually Sealed Evil in a Can) is real after all.
  • The next episode revolves around the Mane 6 going off to meet the creator of their favorite fictional character, Daring Do. The shocker for them comes once they discover that the author and Daring Do are one and the same! And those villains she fights in her stories? They're real too!
  • In the in-universe story in "A Hearth's Warming Tail", Snowfall Frost is of the opinion that the Windigos are nothing but a myth. Turns out they're very much real.
  • Season 7 has Twilight telling sick foals in a hospital a story about a monster named Grogar and how Gusty the Great defeated him. Season 9 reveals that not only were Grogar and Gusty the Great real, Grogar himself is now the Arc Villain. Even with the later reveal "this" Grogar was just Discord in disguise, the existence of Grogar's magic bell sealed behind a powerful barrier created by Gusty is proof both of them did in fact exist.
• In the My Little Pony Tales episode "Slumber Party", Patch tells a ghost story that scares the others and makes them check the attic for signs of the ghost, but find nothing but a cat. In the last scene, Patch is surprised when the ghost appears to her and thanks her for helping keep his legend alive.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Ghost of Castle Kilbane", two brothers stage a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax and pretend to be ghosts in order to drive Jimmy and Lois away from the castle. In doing so, they accidentally summon up a real ghost.
• In Oggy and the Cockroaches episode "The Ghost Hunter", Oggy kills the roaches after watching a horror movie. The ending is scarier as the monsters from the movie emerge from the floor!
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • "That's the Spirit" Lampshades and then subverts it. After discovering the haunted house was just a Halloween hoax, Phineas says "Isn't this the moment in one of these things when someone really turns into a ghost?". Spooky music plays, the camera focuses on the family behind the hoax for a moment before Russell just says "Dude that's it", and they wander off.
  • In the original airing, this episode was followed by "The Curse of Candace", where Candace spends most of the episode thinking she's a vampire due to some of Phineas's and Ferb's preset experiments. At the very end, they clear up the misunderstanding, she takes off her cloak... and then she crumples into ashen dust. So in a way, this is a double subverted Brick Joke.
• In Pinky and the Brain episode "Beach Blanket Brain", during a trip to the beach for Brain's latest plan to Take Over the World, Pinky goes on about wanting to meet sea chimps, which he read about in comics, much to Brain's consternation. At the end of the episode, when the pair is leaving, Pinky, who didn't see any sea chimps, figures that Brain was right. Brain then hesitantly tells him that when he went underwater while surfing, something helped him get back to shore.
  Pinky: Egad! Was it a sea chimp?
  (Cut to a shot of a trio of giggling sea chimps on rocks below Pinky and Brain's car)
  Brain: Either that, or I've spent too much time in the sun.
• In Pound Puppies (2010), it is a common twist whenever a supernatural/out of the ordinary element is involved that the supernatural element is actually real.
  • The titular character in "Zoltron" initially appears to just be a dog who believes he's an alien, but after he's reunited with the family who owns him, the car they drive in starts flying into the sky.
  • In the Christmas Episode "I Heard the Barks on Christmas Eve", Chris Jingles (the canine equivalent of Santa Claus) is revealed to be real in spite of Patches and Cupcakes' disbelief in him.
  • The episode "No More S'mores" has Strudel inspired by one of the campers' stories to build a fake swamp monster disguise and use it to make Millard face his fears and rescue his perfect person Jennifer. While things don't go as planned, Millard does end up adopted by Jennifer and the Pound Puppies state how glad they are that swamp monsters aren't real. The very end of the episode shows an actual swamp monster, who isn't amused by the idea that his kind eats people.
• Recess: In "Yes, Mikey, Santa Does Shave", Mikey has a crisis of faith about Santa, but rallies after an inspiring conversation with an old man who turns out at the end to be Santa himself.
• Rick and Morty:
  • A non-paranormal example. In one episode, a bunch of wacky new characters ("Ghost in a Jar," "Reverse Giraffe," etc.) are introduced in Remember the New Guy? fashion. Eventually, the Smiths discover that they are actually all alien parasites who can implant false memories, and start shooting them all to make them reveal their true forms. However, one new character ("Mr. Poopybutthole") doesn't turn back, showing that he actually was a close friend of the family.
  • In the Season 3 premier, Rick shows his Galactic Federation interrogator a set of Fake Memories about the day he invented the Portal Gun in order to hack the Brainalyzer from the inside and escape the Lotus-Eater Machine, where supposedly an alternate version of himself killed his version of Beth and Diane. The season 5 finale reveals the backstory to be completely real: an alternate version of him did kill his world's Beth and Diane, causing Rick to fall into a downward spiral, and the only fabricated part of the memory is that Rick invented the Portal Gun instantly after the incident, when it actually happened years later when he decided to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • In the season 5 premiere, Rick uses a portal to a universe running on Narnia Time to age wine for a dinner party, periodically sending Morty through the portal to collect it. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, the inhabitants of the dimension see Morty as a demonic child who periodically appears in their world to wreak havoc. Due to the nature of time in the other dimension, decades pass between Morty's visits, leading to a coup against the royal family out of belief they're squandering resources pursuing a legend...only for Morty to emerge from the portal seconds after the rebels have won, prompting the rebels to freak out at the realisation the legend of the devil child was true after all before Morty kills them all.
  Rebel leader: I was born in the pits that made these stones. I lost my years building a temple to a lie. So I made lies my power. And what is power but a lie we... [the portal reopens and an extremely annoyed and heavily armed Morty emerges] Oh shit, he's real! He's real! I was wrong, so wrong! God is real-! [Morty shoots him]
• In the Rocko's Modern Life Halloween Episode, after Rocko and Heffer chase after a crazed Filbert to the cemetery, they encounter the legendary Hopping Hessian. Afterwards a one year Time Skip, it shows that he's actually a nice guy when he's not on the clock, with him, Gordon the Foot, Rocko and Heffer looking at slides from the previous year. The twist then comes when the group is leaving and a nervous Filbert asks where those slides came from, specifically the last one which shows all five of them.
  Filburt: Who took those pictures?
  The rest of the characters: [Jaw Drop]
• Rocky and Bullwinkle: In one "Fractured Fairy Tales" take on "Snow White", upon being told by her Magic Mirror that Snow White was the fairiest, the Queen continuously went to the seven dwarves' cottage to give her a poison apple, only for the dwarves to talk her into a deal each time under the assumption it would help her become the fairest. Turns out the whole thing was a con by the dwarves in order to swindle the Queen out of everything she owned, with the mirror even being operated by one of the dwarves inside it. At the end of the cartoon, however, a portly woman arrived at their cottage, revealing that she was Snow White, much to the surprise of the lead dwarf, followed by delight as the dwarves had "another pigeon".
• Rugrats, "The Santa Experience". Drew hires someone to play Santa at the lodge where the Pickles are celebrating Christmas, but the guy flakes out on him. Then Drew does a double-take when he realizes this is after a guy dressed like Santa Claus came in and gave gifts to all the kids.
• The Scooby-Doo franchise itself has done this in some of its shows. And some of the DTV movies.
  • In "A Night of Fright is No Delight", the will said the house is haunted yet for most of the episode it's a hoax, until a bone comes floating out of nowhere at the end. This is one scare that doesn't bother Scooby, though.
  • In "Scooby's Roots", Grandad Scooby says a ghost haunts Scooby Manor, and it's a Bedsheet Ghost. Until they unmask the fake ghost as the real ghost of Great Grandpa Scooby!
  • Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers: With all the ghosts being revealed as a hoax, Scooby impersonates the ghost of Shaggy's Uncle. Then when driving away Shaggy sees him standing on the road and tells Scooby to knock it off, who then reveals himself to be in the back of the truck this time.
  • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: In an episode where the gang goes trick or treating they find an evil ghost pirate haunting the house. It's a hoax, but the rumors about the house being haunted are true; the real ghost is actually nice and hires the Scooby Doo Detective Agency.
  • The Alien Invaders is a unique case, where the gang ends up needing to save the real aliens (who had been tagging along with the gang for most of the movie disguised as unremarkable characters) from the humans who had been pretending to be aliens!
  • The film Camp Scare has the gang being menaced by a trio of monsters. While it turns out the first two were the same guy in disguise, the post-credits scene reveals that the third wasn't a disguise: it was a real ghost!
  • Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery played with this trope. It's implied that there may be two Crimson Witches: the real one wanted to use the the 'rock of Kisstera' as a tool for unleashing the Destroyer, the fake one wanted to sell it as a priceless diamond.
  • In What's New, Scooby-Doo? episode "Reef Grief!" a coral monster was believed to be pulling people under the beach, but it was actually an engineer disguised as a hippie digging a tunnel to New Zealand using hypnotized slaves. The monster was real, but had nothing to do with the hippie's plot and was actually benevolent, saving Scooby from drowning. The only reason it appeared at all is because of its home being disturbed by the tunnel construction. Once the digging stops, it goes back home without a fuss.
  • In Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster, the plot advances like what you would expect from Scooby-Doo, with it turning out that the two Loch Ness Monsters appearing throughout were homemade submarines/robots made by the same person with the intent of using them to convince a colleague that the monster is real (her cohorts just wanted to do it as a prank). After the villain (unaffiliated to the hoaxers) is arrested, the gang sees pictures taken by a previously lost underwater camera taken at a much greater depth than the submarines could have operated at, which show flippers and other body parts of a completely different entity. As the gang drives off in the Mystery Machine, the real Loch Ness Monster briefly comes to the surface in the foreground before diving underwater again, unnoticed by everyone expect Scooby.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Treehouse of Horror XI" combines this with a parody of The Brady Bunch. Lisa and Bart, playing Hansel and Gretel, are captured by a witch, who claims she needs to get ready before her boyfriend comes over. She says that his name is "George Cauldron," a deliberate reference to Jan Brady saying she had a boyfriend named "George Glass" after seeing a drinking glass on her nightstand. After Homer saves the children from the witch by pushing her into the oven, a man arrives—his name is George Cauldron, and he's looking for the witch so they can go to a concert.
  • In "Don't Fear the Roofer", Homer makes friends with a roofer called Ray Magini, but when asked to prove the man's existence, he can't — because he fails to appear whenever Homer is sure he will. The fact that "Ray Magini" is an anagram of "imaginary" definitely does not help his case. Homer is sent for psychological treatment (electroshock)... and right after the treatment is done, Ray appears in front of everyone, proving Homer was right.
  • In "Yokel Chords", Bart makes up a story about a cook named Dark Stanley who cannibalized school children in the past in order to steal his schoolmates' lunches. Later in the episode, while Bart's counselor is discussing with her own psychiatrist, it turns out that Dark Stanley was in fact real.
  • In "Sky Police", after Reverend Lovejoy calls Apu a heathen, Apu says that's offensive to the Hindu god Hanuman, who mistook the Sun for a mango, only to then admit he was right. At the episode's end, Homer says he still believes in God, and Hanuman himself appears.
• South Park:
  • Parodied in "Crack Baby Athletic Association", which does this with Slash.
  • "My Future Self 'N Me" features a number of kids' future selves landing in the present, and all of them just so happen to be drug-addicted losers. It turns out that they were actually actors hired by the kids' parents to scare them away from doing drugs. At the end of the episode Cartman declares that he actually learned a lesson from this and promises to clean up his life, lose weight, and become nicer. A man in a nice suit then walks up congratulating him on this decision, and introduces himself as the future Cartman, who considers this to be the defining moment of his life and assures the present Cartman that if he continues on this path, he'll grow up to own a time travel business and be very rich. Present Cartman assumes he's just another actor trying to trick him and says he's now going to live his life even worse than before out of spite. After he walks away, the future Cartman turns into a fat mechanic.
  • The monster ManBearPig was originally a Climate Change Allegory created by people who believed that climate change was a hoax. In the episode "ManBearPig" where he first appears, Al Gore is depicted as being an idiot for believing in him, and in the later "Imaginationland" episodes, he is depicted as an evil resident, showing that he is imaginary. By the time of the two-part episode "Time to Get Cereal" and "Nobody Got Cereal?", however, climate change had become a far more urgent issue whose effects were being felt in the real world and increasingly difficult to deny. As such, the episode serves as Trey Parker and Matt Stone's mea culpa for their previously dismissive attitudes, with ManBearPig finally appearing in the real world causing havoc while the people trying to ignore his existence are now depicted as fools sticking their heads in the sand.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In the very first episode, "Help Wanted", SpongeBob wants to become a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, which Mr. Krabs considers him unfit for due to his clumsiness and naivete. With Squidward's help, Krabs sends him on a Snipe Hunt to find a seemingly nonexistent "hydrodynamic spatula with port and starboard attachments" ("And don't forget the turbo drive!"). It turns out said spatula actually does exist, and SpongeBob found the last one in stock at the Barg'N Mart, much to the shock of both Squidward and Mr. Krabs. It was also helpful because they had to attend to a sea of hungry anchovies that moment.
  • In "Scaredy Pants", it's implied that the townsfolk believe the Flying Dutchman to be just a myth until he personally lays siege to the Krusty Krab.
  • In "Bubble Buddy", SpongeBob creates the title character and the episode treats him as a Companion Cube. In the end, however, he turns out to really be animate.
  • In "Christmas Who?", after Squidward dresses as Santa and gives away all his stuff as gifts to the entire town, the real Santa comes and thanks him.
  • In "One Krab's Trash", Mr. Krabs makes up a story about how the soda drink hat he sold to SpongeBob is cursed to scare it off of him as he found out it's worth a lot of money. He claims it belonged to someone named Smitty WarbenJagerManJensen. It turns out that the story he made up on the spot is true.
  • In "Blackened Sponge", the character "Jack M. Crazyfish", who SpongeBob dreams about, and uses as a cover for his black eye, turns out to actually exist.
  • In "Yeti Krabs", Mr. Krabs tries to scare Squidward and SpongeBob into working harder by making up a story about a Yeti Krab who tracks down and eats lazy workers, along with anyone in the vicinity. When a real Yeti Krab coincidentally shows up after Mr. Krabs leaves, SpongeBob is terrified and runs around doing busywork to placate it, while Squidward, who never believed Mr. Krabs' story in the first place, simply assumes it's him in a costume. The Yeti Krab, who's merely hungry and was attracted to the Krusty Krab by the smell of food, eventually does try to eat all three of them out of desperation, but SpongeBob figures out the problem and wins it over with some fresh Krabby Patties.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Much Ado About Boimler", the Farm is assumed to be a myth, since the patients have spent months on the Osler, but it turns out that the journey just takes a while and the Farm really is as idyllic as people say.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil: The residents of Mewni celebrate "Stump Day" (their equivalent of Christmas). Little kids know that, if they're bad, the Stump will come and carry them off. Older kids know that the Stump is just a fable used to make little kids behave. Guess who's right?
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): In one episode, a monster hunter comes to look for the "green man in the woods" after the turtles are spotted and videotaped; about halfway through the turtles discover that the green man is real and have to keep both it and themselves out of her reach.
• ThunderCats Roar:
  • "The Legend of Boggy Ben": Cheetara and Tygra make up a monster called Boggy Ben and Lion-O goes on a quest to face it. The Boggy Ben he faces turns out to be Tygra in a costume, as they were trying to teach Lion-O a lesson. Just as they explain this, the real Boggy Ben shows up and attacks them.
  • "The Horror of Hook Mountain": Snowman rants about a monster called the Sparklemaw, but Tygra thinks he's making it up. It shows up at the end.
• Subverted in an episode of The Tick: The villain of the episode is a robbing Santa impersonator who has managed to clone himself. This confuses the Tick, who refuses to fight even when his fellow superheroes are viciously attacked by a dozen guys in Santa costumes: "Odds are it wasn't the real Santa, but how can you ever be sure?" Santa later appears, with an Elf Secret Service team, compulsively hands out gifts such as pencil sets, and tells the Tick to get a grip.
• Time Squad: At the end of "White House Weirdness", Time Squad has just exposed a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax perpetrated by William Howard Taft and his staff to make people belive that the White House was haunted by the ghosts of former Presidents to scare away any competition for the Presidential election. However, just as Taft is led away by the police, a ghostly moan echoes through the air...
• T.U.F.F. Puppy:
  • The episode "Hide and Ghost Seek" has Mayor Teddy Bear hire T.U.F.F. to rid a mansion of the ghost of Dr. Hyden Vonseek. Keswick repeatedly brings up that ghosts do not exist, and it eventually turns out that the Chameleon was impersonating both Mayor Bear and the ghost of Hyden Vonseek as part of a ruse to trick Dudley, Keswick and the Chief into staying in a building that's scheduled to be demolished, but Keswick gets the shock of his life when he finds out that the Ghost of Dr. Hyden Vonseek is actually for real.
  • "Great Scott" has the Loch Ness Monster initially turn out to be a disguised Chameleon, but the creature in question turns out to exist after all at the end of the episode.
• The Wild Thornberrys:
  • The episode "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yeti" takes place in the Himalayas, with Eliza searching for the Yeti who supposedly lived there. She eventually discovers that the "Yeti" is actually her father's old colleague Dr. McWhirter, who dresses up like a monster to protect the region's endangered snow leopards. At the climax of the episode, a Yeti approaches and helps Eliza fight off some greedy land developers. Later, Eliza thanks McWhirter, but he explains that he wasn't wearing his suit at the time, as he was instead tending to the snow leopards in their cave. Eliza ponders what this means, and a loud roar sounds from the mountains...
  • Another episode, "Spirited Away," takes place in Mexico and has Eliza running into a friendly old woman who helps her solve her problem of the week. The episode's ending reveals that the woman has been dead for years. Fitting, as the episode was centered on the Day of the Dead. In fact, the woman had been helping Eliza because Eliza had kindly decorated her gravestone with flowers, which no one had done in ages (these offerings of flowers are essential parts of the holiday and are said to encourage spirits to return to the world of the living for visits).
• Winnie the Pooh: In the original books and all Disney iterations until the late '80s, Heffalumps and Woozles were just figments of Pooh and the gang's imaginations. Even their very names were implied to be just Tigger's malapropism of "elephants" and "weasels." But starting with The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and continuing with Pooh's Heffalump Movie, Heffalumps and Woozles are portrayed as very real, usually as bumbling antagonists but sometimes as unexpectedly friendly.
  • There's also the Backson from the 2011 film, who is assumed by the characters to be a mischievous troublemaking monster responsible for "kidnapping" Christopher Robin (he was actually attending school at that time, and the letter he wrote misspelled "back soon"); they even sing a song describing how unpleasant the alleged creature is and make a trap for it to fall into. At the end of the movie, the Backson comes out of the woods at night, proving once and for all to the viewers that, yes, he does exist. However, he turns out to be actually benign, harmless and helpful, picking up the scattered items leading to the trap and eventually falling in.