Characters insisting you take their word for it in live-action movies.
- Inception is a good example of how to do this trope well. Near the beginning of the movie, Cobb talks about how it's possible in the dream world to "build cathedrals, entire cities, things that never existed, things that couldn’t exist in the real world." However, the actual dream scenes later on are ultra-realistic and mundane, with the occasional Bizarrchitecture moment (e.g. the Parisian street scene). This lets the audience know that far more things are possible in the dream world than what is being shown on screen, giving the impression that literally anything could happen next.
- Neil witnesses Victor Kulak rescuing young campers from falling over a waterfall in Wet Hot American Summer and simply shouts, "Whoa! Whoa! You're a master! What the! What the fu- you're doing it! You're actually doing it! You saved them! You saved them!" This could also be considered an Offscreen Moment of Awesome.
- In Serenity (2005), a recorded message ends with the horrible death of the person giving the report at the hands of Reavers, but during this part, the camera focuses on the faces of the cast, and we only hear the sounds — and then not even all of them, as Mal shuts off the playback before it goes too far. To be fair, this may be due to keeping the movie below NC-17 — as Zoe explained in the pilot, Reavers will "rape you to death, eat your flesh, and sew your skin into their clothing. And if you're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order." The message plays again later in front of the operative, who sees the whole thing and then decides to let the crew go and tow them for repairs.
- In All About Eve, Eve's on-stage performances are described by the narrator as magnificent, but not a single one of them is actually shown. Then again, most of her screen time is a performance and a damn good one.
- In Stranger Than Fiction, the book being written by Emma Thompson's character throughout the movie is supposedly so beautiful that it justifies dying for. It's so beautiful, in fact, that even the person who would have to die agrees; it helps that his death would save a young boy from being run over by a bus.
- In Beetlejuice, when Adam Maitland asks Betelgeuse if he can be scary, he turns and shows them. The camera shows things sprouting out of his face, but not what his face looks like. An actual scary face was created, using several pieces of large animatronics that were filmed separately then overlaid photographically, to make a single, highly detailed, highly articulate monstrosity. Tim Burton eventually decided to scrap it in favor of...nothing (he probably thought Nothing Is Scarier). Pictures of the pieces can be found on the Internet.
- Forrest Gump
- When Forrest delivers a short speech on Vietnam, his microphone gets unplugged, so we can't hear it. Abbie Hoffman, the only person close enough to hear what Forrest actually said, is reduced to tears, saying, "You said it, man! You said it all!" Apparently the words we see Tom Hanks mouth are, "Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don't go home at all. That's a bad thing. That's all I have to say about that."
- Also done with the wound on his buttocks, which Forrest shows to LBJ in full view of the cameras. His mother is shocked, but the President just says, "Goddamn, son."
- Kill List is not a film that shies away from showing brutal violence onscreen (in broad daylight, no less), so when it chooses not to show what is heavily implied to be a Snuff Film, but just Jay's disgusted and horrified reaction to it, the audience knows it must be really bad.
- In The Silence of the Lambs, Chilton has that great speech about Lecter, ending in, "When the nurse leaned over him, he did this to her," and hands Clarice a photo. All we see is Clarice's expression of shock, and then Chilton adds, "His pulse never got above 85. Even when he ate her tongue." We do see footage of the attack, however, in Hannibal.
- In Wayne's World, Garth's rant at Wayne, triggered by the latter walking off the set of the TV program he was hosting with the former, is 95% obscured by the noise of a passenger jet coming in for a landing not far behind them, except for the bit at the end: "... until the handle breaks off and they have to find a doctor to pull it out!" It is clear that Wayne hears it just fine, though, to judge by his expression of astonishment throughout and his response: "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?!"
- In Mr Frost, the titular character's psychiatrist receives a videotape from the police detective who originally captured the mass-murderer. We never see the tape, only the psychiatrist's reaction to it.
- The audience never sees the glowing object in Marsellus Wallace's briefcase in Pulp Fiction. One character asks, "Is that what I think it is?" Judging by the reactions of all who see it, it's pretty fantastic.
- We never see the eponymous character in Rosemary's Baby, probably because it is the Spawn of the Devil himself. One character states, "He has his father's eyes."
- In The Ipcress File, both Ross and Dalby remark that Dalby doesn't have Ross' sense of humour, which is nowhere in evidence.
- Subverted in There's Something About Mary when Ben Stiller's character gets his genitals caught in the zipper of his fly. The results are only visible to several characters, and each gives a flamboyantly shocked reaction. Just when it looks pretty clear that the film is going to leave it up to the audience's imagination, it flashes an extreme close-up shot of the whole thing. They should have let us take their word for it!
- Used for excellent dramatic effect in The Third Man. Holly is finally convinced that his friend Harry Lime is completely evil and needs to be killed when he sees some of the children who took Lime's phony black-market penicillin. We don't see the children, but from Holly's reaction it isn't pretty, and probably far beyond what could be depicted onscreen at the time anyway.
- Used and then inverted in Up Pompeii. References are made to some erotic frescoes in a Roman building, but they cannot be seen. Then, in the final scene, Frankie Howerd gives in and says "Oh, go on then" and the frescoes are shown over the closing credits. They're not actually that erotic, which is not surprising considering that the film was R-rated when it was released in 1971.
- In Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novel Murder Must Advertise, an advertisement has to be changed at the last second because, while the illustration and the headline are individually inoffensive, put them together and they somehow become indelicate. In the book we get the headline ("Are you taking too much out of yourself?") and a description of the illustration ("A (male epithet) and a (female epithet) who look as though they'd been making a night of it"), but when the BBC made a movie of the book, they pointedly did not let the camera ever see the illustration in question.
- Hal Hartley's Henry Fool has a character who writes a literary work of life-changing brilliance, which we never get to hear/read. Also understandable considering how much of an effect it is supposed to have on people who read it. One person commits suicide, one woman's period is brought on early, and one person breaks out into a sad song. Henry Fool's work is also the trope, but for a totally different reason.
- Guy Ritchie's Rock N Rolla. The painting that is a main plot point of the film is never shown. From the reactions of several of the characters, one would assume that it is very beautiful, even to serious gangsters.
- In Clerks II, Elias tells Randall about his girlfriend's "pussy troll". According to Kevin Smith, the studio wanted him to film a pussy troll, but he told them nothing he could come up with would be nearly as funny as what the audience is imagining.
- In The Next Voice You Hear (1950), God pre-empts radio programs all over the world for six consecutive days to address the human race. The audience never gets to hear what God said. For the entirety of the film, people discuss what God said. Finally, at the film's end, people the world over gather 'round their radios to hear God's seventh message; the scene is given a huge build-up, with the strong implication that we, the audience, will finally ourselves get to hear the message. At last the announcer intones reverently, "Ladies and gentlemen, the next voice you hear will be the voice of God." There's a lengthy pause ... and then the announcer says, "Ladies and gentlemen, today is the seventh day. We must presume that God is resting."
- In Dogma, Bartleby and Loki enter a board meeting for the presidential staff of Mooby's, and go around the table, listing off all their sins. One of the members is so 'disgusting', Bartleby whispers it into the president's ear, then leans back, allowing Loki to say, "You're his father, you sick fuck!"
- In The Impossible Years, the psychologist's older daughter is involved in a protest on campus where she held up a sign saying "Free Speech!" There was something else on the other side; the audience never sees it, but it is something very shocking.
- In the French comedy The Wing or the Thigh, Louis de Funès' character and his sidekick research a factory of an evil fast-food magnate, where they find among other things, chicken bred to cube form. But we only see their faces when they make the discovery.
- Larry Cohen's werewolf movie spoof Full Moon High makes a joke of its own lack of budget for decent special effects by at one point breaking the camera, and having characters tell us about the amazing scene that's happening over a completely black screen.
- At the beginning of When a Stranger Calls, the police arrive to find the remains of the serial killer's latest victim, and not only does the detective put his hand to his mouth in horror, but we are also told soon after that no weapons were used.
- Whatever Samara/Sadako does/shows to her victims to leave them looking like that in The Ring and Ringu. One of the milder instances occurs in The Ring Two when a Samara-possessed Aidan apparently psychically shows a child psychiatrist something that makes her commit suicide by air embolism.
- In La Vie en Rose, the audience doesn't actually hear Edith Piaf sing in her breakthrough performance (though we do in all other performances in the movie)- just the piano, and we see Marion Cotillard mime the songs (actually, all the performances were dubbed by a sound-a-like). At one point we also here the audience laughing.
- Babydoll's dancing in Sucker Punch is never seen, covered instead by the bizarre metaphorical battle sequences.
- Deliberately invoked during the Terminator films in regards to John Connor's tenure as leader of the Resistance. During the first three films and the television series, every character who comes back from the future is in awe when they talk about John Connor's legendary combat prowess and leadership skills and are willing to throw down their lives at the drop of a hat to protect him. In flash-forwards, of the two times the audience ever sees Connor, he's looking through a pair of binoculars at a ragtag Resistance outpost, and cheering on his soldiers after the Battle of Crystal Peak. Terminator Salvation toyed with this - John Connor is serving as an ineffectual lieutenant midway through the Future War, and never gets a chance to take true command until the last major battle sequence.
- For fairly obvious reasons, the audience of Labyrinth doesn't get to experience the odor of the Bog of Eternal Stench themselves.
- When The Picture of Dorian Gray was adapted into a film in 1945, The Hays Code dictated that Dorian's perversions and debaucheries couldn't even be named, let alone shown or described, so the narrator just tells the viewer that he has done such terrible things that he is a social outcast among most everyone who isn't blinded by the idea that Beauty Equals Goodness.
- In The Godfather, the grotesque state of Sonny's corpse is not fully shown to the audience, but the reaction shots and the terrific acting of Marlon Brando say it all
.Vito: Look how they massacred my boy. - During the infamous transporter room scene form Star Trek: The Motion Picture, we can see hints of the Body Horror being inflicted on the two victims, but it's the unseen Starfleet transporter technician's shocked report which really drives that horror home:Transporter Chief: Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long. Fortunately.
- Plays a major part in the ending of Grizzly Man. Audio exists of the fatal bear attack that killed Tim Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie, but the film doesn't play any part of it. Instead, we watch director Werner Herzog listen to the audio through headphones. The famously unflappable Herzog's stricken expression conveys all we'd need to know about how horrible it is. After the audio ends, he immediately advises the owner of the tape to destroy it without listening to it.
- In What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), the mother of Ike's two older sons, Laraine, locks herself in the bathroom after discovering his and Tina's affair and shoots herself. We never see the aftermath of it all, thankfully and we soon discover that it was not a headshot, but based on everyone's horrified reactions upon breaking down the door, it was still a nasty mess.
- We never learn what was in the hostess' refrigerator in Can't Hardly Wait. She screams at the discovery and is disgusted with it and whoever did it, while party guests peek inside and giggle at whatever it was.
- Although much of the plot of Meet Me in St. Louis surrounded around the family attending The World's Fair and they do eventually go by the end of the film, ultimately, we never actually see the event itself.
- Lambchops: Gracie Allen wants to tell a story, but George Burns won't let her as her stories tend to be really dirty. He insists on having her whisper it into his ear instead. She does so, giggling all the while. After she's done, George makes a face and says goodbye to the audience, and the movie ends.
- Cat People is famous for suggesting the threatening creatures by reaction, sound, and shadows, rather than showing them. This may partly be due to its minimal budget (less than $150,000 in 1942).
- In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the last we see of Deiter is him being brought down by a compy mob and his blood turning a stream red as the camera pans away. Roland later remarks that the search party found Deiter's body, but "only the parts they didn't like".
- This is Spın̈al Tap:David St. Hubbins: He died in a bizarre gardening accident.
Nigel Tufnel: Authorities said, you know, best leave it... unsolved. - In the film version of The Martian, when the stranded Watney expresses frustration at NASA, they advise him to watch his language because everyone on Earth can see what he's typing. Watney then types something that yields groans from the officials and the United States President calling the head of NASA over it.note
- Dodge's infamous "Welcome Aboard" tattoo in Down Periscope. Showing a penis clearly enough for the tattoo to be readable would definitely have not allowed the film to get a PG-13 rating.
- Frankenstein Island: The storm that wrecked the heroes' balloon and stranded them on the island certainly sounds spectacular. Shame we never saw it. Ditto whatever is under Jocko's Eyepatch of Power. Being shown it was enough to make Curtis recoil in horror, but the audience only gets to the see the back of Jocko's head.
