Selective Obliviousness / Comic Books

• Asterix:
  • Don't bother to ask the Gauls about the location of Alesia, the place where Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix and annexed the Galia into the Roman Empire (with the exception of a small village that resists, then and ever, the invader). The Gauls will react with a mixture of berserk screams and aggressive denial. (The Historical In-Joke being that, at the time the books were written, people really didn't know where Alesia was. These days archeologists are pretty sure it's Alise-Sainte-Reine.)
  • Another example from the same comic strip: the very obvious obese Obelix is always in denial that he is "fat". Whenever characters refer to him as "fat" he is either blissfully unaware they are referring to him or he just gets angry and shouts: "I'm not fat!"
• Batman:
  • It's implied that, if Commissioner Gordon wanted to, he could figure out Batman's identity, but he deliberately chooses not to, and has, in fact, refused to look when Batman offered to reveal who he really was.
  • In Batman: Year One, Batman, out of costume, just saved his infant son's life and hands him the child. Even though he's personally met and spoken to Bruce Wayne, Gordon blames the loss of his glasses for his (claimed) inability to recognize the man he's talking to and standing two feet away from.
  • In the No Man's Land arc^note both the novelisation and comics, Batman tries to get the understandably-abandoned-feeling Gordon to trust him again, and takes off his mask. Gordon immediately turns away, stating that if he wanted to know Batman's identity, he could have figured it out years ago, and even cryptically saying, "And for all you know, maybe I did."
  • In the Dick Grayson Batman era, it is repeatedly all but stated that Gordon knows who Batman is and more importantly, who he was.
  • In the New 52, Batgirl offers to take her hood off in front of him. He doesn't want to know. In the pre-52 continuity, he tells Barbara that he already knew about her being Batgirl when she comes clean to him, just never let on about it. There's a different take on this in Booster Gold, where Booster's sister poses as Batgirl, and Jim is clearly eager to seize on this as evidence that Barbara isn't Batgirl, without admitting to himself that's what he's doing, because that would be admitting the possibility had occurred to him.
• Emma Frost: Hazel refuses to believe her daughter's claims of Winston's infidelity even when confronted with clear evidence. Not even Emma telepathically sharing the memory of her witnessing Winston's affair is enough to convince her.
• Fantastic Four: It's painfully obvious that Doctor Doom, being a supergenius and all, should be able to realize that Reed Richards had nothing to do with the malfunction that caused Doom's experiment to blow up in Doom's face, and was only trying to explain to Doom that the experiment was flawed. However, Doom apparently can't stand the idea of Reed being smarter than him, so he steadfastly refuses to see reason and continues to try to destroy Reed's life in "revenge". It's hinted he does know this full well deep down though, as whenever Reed calls him out on this bullshit, he tends to fly into a homicidal rage, and at least once started beating Reed into a bloody pulp while screaming at him to admit he sabotaged the experiment "or else!"
• Like with Doom above, Loki has this problem, though some of it does depend on how sympathetically he's being portrayed. While many writers acknowledge that Loki was The Un-Favourite, how much of this is his own fault varies.
  • Also, Loki often claims things like "everyone hated me" which is untrue. While most of Asgard does indeed dislike him, Thor himself often references that he and Loki were happy together as children, and Loki just seems to block that time out so his Freudian Excuse is more credible.
    • Loki returned to childhood age, with only those memories, and guess what? He's happy and knows that Thor loves him like the little brother he is and cares for Thor in return He also doesn't get why everyone seems to hate him since he doesn't remember all the things he did as an adult, which lends credence to the idea that Loki was editing his own self history to make it so he was "always hated" so his excuse held up.
    • Now he does know since many people of Asgard pointed it out for him that his scheme led to The Sentry bringing Asgard crashing down. However, they are also unwilling to tell him almost anything else (like who people are, what is happening at the moment, etc), since they still want to off him the second they think Thor won't care. The only exceptions so far seem to be the Warriors Three, who seem to do so very grudgingly (unless the story is funny or makes who Loki used to look bad).
    • Loki is a young adult once more, with their past-selves memories and abilities but their child-selfs morality and sense of right-and-wrong, and in the first issue of their own series it quickly establishes that at least some part of Loki's past hatred is justified, as Thor admits that he did use to be quite a bully to Loki when they were younger. After he's briefly returned to his previous cruel, alcoholic bullying self, he apologises for making Loki the way they once were, while Loki themself forgives him now that they're both heroes. Cue awws from the audience.
• Sins of Sinister: In "Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants" #2, Destiny tries talking Mystique out of doing something she disapproves of on the grounds it's "not you". Mystique shoots back that it is, it's just a part of Raven Irene's never liked.
• Spider-Man:
  • J. Jonah Jameson generally frowns upon "costumed vigilantes", considering them usurpers of law and order. But he is willing to give the devil his due when it comes to true acts of heroism and is considerably lighter on those he feels have "paid their due" — like Captain America. Of course, there is a big Spider-Man-shaped blind spot in this P.O.V. — which, Depending on the Writer, can range in severity from Running Gag (Robbie Robertson constantly having to talk Jonah down from some of his more libelous headlines and editorials) to outright insanity (the newly-elected mayor of NYC Jameson gleefully watching a S.W.A.T. team open fire on Spidey without provocation). Robbie Robertson occasionally hints that he knows perfectly well who Spider-Man is, but that he can't acknowledge it. If he "knew," then he'd be morally and professionally obligated to tell his best friend and boss J. Jonah Jameson.
  • In the 2000s, Aunt May found out Pete was Spider-Man and called him out on not telling her, pointing out that she had survived the death of his parents and Uncle Ben. She also said that for a while, she had thought he was gay. Peter burst into laughter.
  • After One More Day saw all public knowledge of Spider-Man's secret identity being erased from the wider world, a side-effect of the spell includes a "psychic blindspot" that basically imposes this kind of view on other people concerning Spider-Man's secret identity. As long as the spell behind the blindspot was intact, even if others were faced with a stack of evidence pointing to the fact that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, people were unable to put the pieces together; as an example, when Norman Osborn found a camera fitted with a motion detector focused on a tracker in Spider-Man's suit, Osborn concluded that Spider-Man took pictures of himself and used Peter Parker as his front man to sell the photos, unable to make the more logical deduction that Peter and Spider-Man were the same man.
• Superman:
  • One story has Lois Lane admonishing the Man of Steel for "that creepy Clark Kent impersonation." (Indeed, one might make a claim that the whole Superman mythos embodies this trope, as it would seem painfully obvious that Superman is just Clark Kent without glasses.)
  • Lex Luthor can be a particularly bad example of this, overlapping with Evil Cannot Comprehend Good. Despite his genius-level intellect, several times he's discovered the secret identity of Superman, but disregards it as a mistake since he cannot fathom that a Physical God could be living a normal life as the meek, mild-mannered Clark Kent.
  • Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet. During the Batman: Hush storyline, Batman surmises that Perry may be well aware of Superman's secret identity (being "too good of a reporter" not to see it), but chooses not to let on that he knows. However, the New 52 version is unaware of the truth, and takes it very badly when Superman's identity is revealed to the world in Superman: Truth, believing Clark was only working at the Planet to "sell his story", and firing him not long after. The Rebirth version also seems to have been unaware, but takes the reveal better.
• Suske en Wiske: Lambik is very vain, yet never realizes he's not as clever, powerful or great as he thinks. In "De Dromendiefstal" a villain tricks him into leaving him unguarded and then escapes. As Lambik returns and finds this out he first says: "How stupid of me!" But then he immediately corrects this to: "Stupid? No, he just took advantage of my confidence."
• Tintin: Professor Calculus, who is obviously stone deaf, doesn't wear a hearing aid, because "he's just a little hard of hearing, that's all."
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Under Marston's pen it's questionable whether or not Gen. Darnell is just clueless about Diana Prince and Wonder Woman being one and the same, but Steve Trevor acting like he doesn't know "Di" and his "Angel" are one and the same is highly suspect, given he can recognize her by voice, can recognize her with her hair up, can recognize her with glasses on, regularly teases her about the similarities between the two and seems to love catching "Di" wearing part of WW's outfit and so on, but maintain plausible deniability by never actually confronting her or confirming his "suspicions". Under later writers Steve seems to be legitimately clueless.

---