History Main / ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve

* Website/GaiaOnline's ill-named "Demonbusters" event in 2009 ends with the titular gods depowered and turned into humans. The following Christmas event had them getting Gaians to believe and pray to them so they could become divine again. [[spoiler: [[SubvertedTrope It didn't work.]]]]

* ''Literature/AbandonedByDisney'': The final story in the series [[spoiler:interprets Disney's entire "when you wish upon a star" imagery and their works in general to be a way to experiment with, and harness this. They're convinced that, when people believe in something intensely enough, and in big enough amounts, it may just come to be. Problem is, HumansAreFlawed, and negativity tends to seep into these attempts and corrode them, or even create them in their entirety out of terrible thoughts. This is why their every attempt has failed: Things do come into being through belief, but so far, all those things have been [[EldritchAbomination flawed, negative, and entirely wrong]]]].

* The ''[[VideoGame/OsuTatakaeOuendan Ouendan]]'' and ''VideoGame/EliteBeatAgents'' series run entirely off this, in which members of a Japanese cheerleading squad (or secret government agency, in the case of EBA) show up and miraculously resolve random peoples' issues through, cheering and/or interpretive dance. This is taken to its logical extreme in each of their final story missions, where everyone's fighting spirit takes on a more, uh, [[CombinedEnergyAttack tangible form.]]
** Ouendan's [[spoiler:destroys an asteroid about to collide with Earth.]]
** EBA's [[spoiler:crushes an alien invasion.]] Bonus points for featuring the cast actually clapping their hands because they believe. "I WAS BOOOOOOOOOOORN IN A CROSSFIAH HURRICAAAAAAAAAAAAANE"
** Ouendan 2's ''[[spoiler:reignites the dying sun.]]''

* In ''Anime/ReCreators'', the limits to what a character can do, as well as [[AuthorPowers what the author can do to them]], are based on whether the audience believes it would be possible in the given character's canon or not. Simply put, it ain't working if [[FanonDiscontinuity it ain't canon]]. [[spoiler: Altair, however, has a bit of a cheat: Since her personality was defined ''solely'' by fanon, all it takes is for one fan to believe she can do it and the power is hers.]]

* The LogicalFallacy known as ''[[AppealToPopularity argumentum ad populum]]'' implies this. For some reason that doesn't stop people from using it, even though the implications should be obvious.

A variant of this trope, common in works aimed at children (and their parodies) involves one character [[BreakingTheFourthWall turning to the audience and asking them]] to clap their hands/stomp their feet/whatever to accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished at the time.

* Deconstructed in ''Literature/KingdomKeepers''. Enough people believing in them is what causes several Creator/{{Disney}} characters to come to life...including the villains, who are putting the world in danger.

* The fact that people's beliefs influence how they act, and by acting people can create things, means that in a very real way the belief in something can cause in to come into existence. The effect is generally much more subtle than it is portrayed in fiction however. And the opposite is almost as likely: there are many many cases of people inventing something in the process of trying to prove that thing ''wouldn't'' work. It is also true that people do not necessarily act on their beliefs, but are in fact very susceptible to social pressures: so it's relatively rare for this trope to occur even in its subtle form in real life. However, many modern technologies were first conceptualized in science fiction and then became reality almost solely because someone read the story and decided they were going to figure out how to make that cool thing a reality.