History Main / ExtraStrengthMasquerade

* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' is a curious case. People will only comment on the Gems when Steven points it out. And even then, unless directly attacked, they won't respond fully. Otherwise it's just an UnusuallyUninterestingSight. It's especially obvious in [[Recap/StevenUniverseS1E26OceanGem "Ocean Gem"]], where despite ''all of the liquid water on Earth'' being siphoned into a giant column, no one's life is turned upside-down by the obviously supernatural event.
** The implication that no one actually really seems to spell out in a case of ShowDontTell is that the Crystal Gems have been around for a millennia already, so while some of the city-threatening things do get people's attention and folks evacuated, they're essentially held as normal fair by this point. Mind you, the Gems apparently even met the city's founder and the British colonists settling into North America.
** The only exception to this is [[ConspiracyTheorist Ronaldo]], who does believe in the crazy stuff at Beach City as he tries to break TheMasquerade - and comes off as a paranoid whacko that no one takes seriously, ''not even the Crystal Gems''. Of course, he's RightForTheWrongReasons as he comes up with the most insane theories possible for not only Gem-related incidents, but even mundane things. Probably because he can't help being an AttentionWhore and a bit of a LargeHam.

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' has a peculiar variant on this trope. There is no effect in place to prevent people from noticing magic, and it is actually a major component of the plot that with modern technology knowledge of magic can be spread all across the world in a matter of minutes. However, the Will of Magic (for reason that presumably make sense to it) does not wish for magic to be too widely used or too publicly known. Therefore, if magic ever becomes too common, the Will of Magic will actually change the rules for how it permits humans to access its power, and suddenly everything that everyone knows about magic becomes false and you effectively have a new and undamaged {{Masquerade}}.

* Seems to be in play in ''ComicBook/LeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen''. A Martian invasion devastates London in 1989, and come 2009 even the head of MI6 (whose predecessor was ''involved'' in those events) is credulous that it ever happened. Presumably the [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Ingsoc government]] of the 50s pulled overtime to edit records and convince people it was [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds just a work of fiction]].

* Seems to be in play in ''ComicBook/LeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen''. A Martian invasion devastates London in 1989, and come 2009 even the head of MI6 is credulous that it ever happened. Presumably the [[Literature/{{1984}} Ingsoc government]] of the 50s kept tight hold on government records to persuade people it was [[Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds just a work of fiction]].

* ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'' takes full advantage of this, especially during Mahorafest. CGI handwaves notwithstanding, you'd think someone would catch on, what with the teleportation bullets and 100-foot-tall demon mecha. Then again, this is a school where the robotics club makes a full size robot T-Rex and a WorldTree dominates the center of campus, so anything goes I guess.
** Originally, it was stated that mages cast spells to make people stay away from magic and to instantly forget when they witness it. Negi casts such a spell when he tries to mindwipe Asuna in the beginning when she sees him (but she has AntiMagic). However, when it became apparent that this would require a stupendous amount of mind-control (BlackMagic according to the actual series!) and gray actions to enforce, they instead provided a (semi-) mundane reason of an extra-big festival event. It may be fantastic to the extreme, but it's non-magic fantastic, so the Masquerade holds!
** [[spoiler:Chao]]'s plan was to come up with a spell that would actually ''make'' people consider the idea by its merits, a world-wide forced recognition spell. How much of that WeirdnessCensor is already there naturally and how much is created by the mages using similar (if smaller) magics is up to spirited debate. (And the plot itself has left Earth, so this is no longer an issue.)
** Lampshaded when, in the Magical World, Rakan accidentally blows up a floating rock [[spoiler:demonstrating the [[SwordBeam Zanmaken ni no Tachi]]]]. Bystanders just say, "Are they shooting a movie?" Even magic citizens find some of the stuff going on unbelievable :)
** Oh hey, there's Negi [[spoiler:with really long hair fighting an epic battle under a giant upside-down floating citadel illuminated by a great beam of light shooting out of the WorldTree in the middle of campus]]! He must be helping the engineering department with a tech demo!
* Humanity on the whole remains ignorant of alien existence in ''Manga/SgtFrog'', even after the main cast of [[IntelligentGerbil Keronians]] have exotic machinery run amuck outdoors and on a couple occasions ''performed before a stadium full of people''.

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'' has a peculiar variant on this trope. There is no effect in place to prevent people from noticing magic, and it is actually a major component of the plot that with modern technology knowledge of magic can be spread all across the world in a matter of minutes. However, the Will of Magic (for reason that presumably make sense to it) does not wish for magic to be too widely used or too publicly known. Therefore, if magic ever becomes too common, the Will of Magic will actually change the rules for how it permits humans to access its power, and suddenly everything that everyone knows about magic becomes false.

** When Octolings start moving to Inkopolis by the time off the ''Octo Expansion'', most of the city's inhabitants don't even realize what they are and think they're just Inklings with funky hairdos.

* ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'' reveals in one of the Sunken Scrolls that the Octarian public was as unaware as the Inkling populace about the former's military attack on Inkopolis, believing that [[VideoGame/{{Splatoon}} the previous game's]] FinalBoss was actually a surprise concert. When that same FinalBoss makes his appearance in this game, he goes along with this narrative by battling the player in a giant concert stadium.

* Humanity on the whole remains ignorant of alien existence in ''Manga/SgtFrog'', even after the main cast of [[IntelligentGerbil Keronians]] have exotic machinery run amuck outdoors and on a couple occasions ''performed before a stadium full of people''.

* The Grail War events in ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' are so tightly {{masque|rade}}d that even though an uncommon frequency of deaths and comas are reported as 'chemical spills' and 'gas leaks', neither the news nor the Muggle characters reach the 'What the hell is going on?' hysteria of say, a virus with less than 5% propagation rate in the same community in RealLife, even when some of those Muggle characters are caught up in it themselves. Especially egregious in the visual novel's 'Heavens Feel' arc, when whole neighborhoods vanish. The novel and ''Fate\Zero'' justifies the effectiveness of the coverup as part of the Holy Church's operation, but the fact that no attempt is made to illustrate just ''how'' it's done makes it more of a HandWave.
** In Heaven's Feel, the disappearances are most definitely ''not'' ignored. However, there is simply no evidence to point to the true cause. Similarly, in other routes, there is evidence to show that people ''are'' reacting to the events (such as the school having a curfew), even if they have no way of knowing why these events are happening.
** In ''Fate/Zero'', we see exactly how the Magic Association deals with breaks in the Masquerade during the flashback to Kiritsugu's childhood. [[spoiler:They burn down the town]]. In addition, in the visual novel of Stay Night, it's mentioned that [[spoiler:killing anyone who finds out about magic]] is standard operating procedure for most magi.
* This is what's probably happening in ''Webcomic/AxisPowersHetalia,'' with the whole personified nations thing. It's a lot more obvious in the Movie, where there's an AlienInvasion going on. Apparently, NASA and every astronomer in the world were too busy looking at solar flares to notice the Pict showing up all of a sudden. And what makes it all the more crazy is that at least in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and [[spoiler: Iceland]], ''none of that's happening.''
* In quite good effect in ''Franchise/DragonBall'', where the general population forgets about things like a Demon Lord taking over the world and alien invasions, within a period of no more than a decade or two at most. They are also somehow convinced that [[KiManipulation Ki Attacks]] are just tricks on the word of the FakeUltimateHero, even though (mind you, this is in the same timespan) said Ki Attacks were once known to be very real and powerful enough to ''[[DetonationMoon blow up the moon]]''. At the very least, the world president and the World Martial Arts Tournament announcer (both of whom lived through those events and witnessed them personally) do not buy into the hype, and the announcer even laments the absence of the main cast which allowed this in the first place (he considers the vanilla fights a lot more boring).
* In ''LightNovel/MagicalGirlRaisingProject'', even though Magical Girls are often seen when helping people leading to rumors about them, their existence is still a secret since memories of them tend to be fuzzy if contact is brief. The Land of Magic also has memory wiping magic if a large incident happens that can't be explained as a terrorist attack or whatnot.

* ComicBook/{{Aztek}}'s SecretIdentity is maintained by the AncientConspiracy who created him through a memory lock on all his co-workers. He can literally walk up and tell them he's Aztek and they'll forget a few seconds later.
* The Masquerade in ''ComicBook/BigTroubleInLittleChina'' really is paper thin, as especially evidenced through Jack's recollections of his past marriages. He's been abducted into a Babylonian cult, stalked by a vampire, and even spent several months as a voodoo zombie. How he and the rest of the world haven't caught on yet is unbelievable.
* In ''ComicBook/AstroCity'' story "Pastoral", the CloseKnitCommunity's means of acting as a collective SecretKeeper is ObfuscatingStupidity. They do it so well that Cammie feels like they are in a Masquerade that only she can see through.

* The ''FanFic/OversaturatedWorld'' had this in regards toward magic. [[spoiler:Specifically, ''human'' magic. Equestrian magic worked fine, right up until it worked ''too'' well, but human magic actively resisted all attempts to study it until the end of the first story.]]

* There are also examples where the AncientConspiracy did try to erase people's memories, but the coverup attempt is laughable. Really, do you think that in ''Film/MenInBlackII'' they managed to erase everyone's memory, considering that 1) it's doubtful everyone was looking at the Statue of Liberty, and 2) that doesn't erase photos?

* In ''Film/TheSorcerersApprentice,'' the main character's mentor explains that normal people must never know that magic exists. Later, an evil sorcerer creates a dragon that chases the main character through China Town. When police arrive citing reports of an actual dragon, the mentor, disguised as a fellow officer, says that it was just a bottle rocket hitting a paper dragon. Apparently that is enough to make the whole thing go away. Throughout the film, sorcerers throw powerful magic around with no one seeming to notice, although at one point a sorceress creates a flaming pentgram over New York and the hero's girlfriend literally can't see it, implying either that some magic is invisible to normals, or that normal minds refuse to accept it.
* The film ''Film/{{Apollo 18}}'' has the premise that there was a secret 18th mission to the moon. Aside from the enormous amounts of money, resources, specialized facilities, and trained personnel such a mission would require, this would necessarily require the government to cover up the launch of a Saturn V rocket. A Saturn V can be seen from hundreds of miles away during lift off, and is detectable by seismographs even further than that. And even if they managed ''that'', all radio communication can be eavesdropped in by radio amateurs who just turn their receivers to the moon. Exactly this happened during the real moon landings.
* Inherent to ''Film/TheMatrix''. [[ItWasHereISwear Any and all evidence as to the Matrix's existence can be erased at will by the Machines]], and even witnesses can be suborned.
* SerialKiller Patrick Bateman of ''Film/AmericanPsycho'' confesses his crimes to a lot of people but nobody seems to think he is being serious. Add to that the fact that proofs of his murders seen to vanish, which may be explained by Bateman being an UnreliableNarrator and obviously insane.
* Taken UpToEleven in the Film/SyfyChannelOriginalMovie ''Polar Storm'', in which the government apparently executes a cover-up of the fact that ''the Earth's axis'' has tilted by 10 degrees, expecting nobody to notice that the sun is rising and setting in the wrong place.

* ''Film/ResidentEvilApocalypse'' cribs the fate of Raccoon City from ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil3Nemesis'', but with a very crucial (and very stupid) difference: Unlike in the game, where the U.S. Government is forced to nuke the city to contain the viral outbreak and subsequently shuts down Umbrella for its role in the disaster, the Umbrella Co. in the movie launches the missile itself and [[ImplausibleDeniability successfully tricks the public into believing that it was caused by a meltdown at a nuclear plant]]. Somehow, not a single nuclear physicist, nuclear technician, or even a layperson with basic knowledge of how nuclear power works is able to call bullshit on this ridiculous excuse, and so Umbrella gets off scot-free.
* ''Film/TheMask'': The Mask moves at superhuman speeds, shape shifts repeatedly, transforms a balloon into a functioning machine gun, voluntarily freezes and unfreezes his own body while still remaining fully conscious, defies the laws of gravity, and survives being shot in the head at point blank range without the slightest sign of injury, all of which is either caught on camera or is seen clearly by multiple eyewitnesses. Despite this, it takes half the movie before anyone even considers the possibility that he's not just a mundane criminal wearing an ordinary green mask.

* In the ''Literature/RiversOfLondon'' novella ''The Furthest Station'', Peter's investigations into a series of ghost sightings on the Underground are frustrated by the fact everyone who's reported them denies ever doing so, and are amazed to check their own phones and discover they did. When he interviews one witness ''immediately'' after a sighting, she starts out lucid, then suddenly has no idea what he's talking about. Dr Wallid suggests ghost encounters don't make it into long-term memory, like dreams.

* Vadim Panov's ''Secret City'': A general {{Masquerade}} is in effect. Most fractions actively work to keep it up, including a dedicated "Cleaners' Service". During the conflict with the Hyperboreans, the battles span the whole of Moscow and include both use of heavy weapons and monstrous Hyperborean units and warlords walking the streets. No explanation is given in-universe aside from the ubiquitous "Cleaners' Service" and "T-Grad.com" both having to work overtimes to suppress physical and electronic evidence and that the recent post-Soviet history has strengthened the overall WeirdnessCensor.

* The TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness has every supernatural race contain at least one subgroup with the job description "Hide the evidence". However, when the masquerade ''does'' slip... well, then you have the [[TabletopGame/HunterTheVigil Hunters]]. Network Zero, in particular, is devoted to ''breaking'' the masquerade.

* In the more technologically advanced domains of ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'', many natives doubt the existence of supernatural threats that are readily acknowledged in distant backwater domains. Justified in that the Dark Powers create each domain to reflect its resident darklord's prejudices and biases, so if Lamordians don't believe in magic or Dementlieuse assume that sahuagin are just fishermen's tall tales, blame the local darklord's own skepticism.

* ''TabletopGame/CthulhuTech'' has a {{Masquerade}} that, by all logic, should have been shattered into little pieces, but somehow the very ''existence'' of the Aeon War and the Eldritch Society side plot are kept secret from the people of the NEG-controlled Earth, thanks to [[GovernmentConspiracy at least]] [[AncientConspiracy three conspiracies]] working as TheMenInBlack. Attempting to bust things open will just get the entire NEG dropped on your head without actually breaking through the censorship.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'', the {{Masquerade}} keeps [[{{Muggles}} the population of Iwatodai]] from ever learning of the Dark Hour, the existence of Shadows, and that a select few can summon their Personas during the former to battle the latter. This is helped by the fact that, during the Dark Hour, most people are transmogrified into coffins... and those who aren't, freak out at the occurrence, are preyed upon by Shadows, and are consumed from the inside, ending up as shambling husks (a condition known to the public as "Apathy Syndrome"). However, every time the heroes defeat a Master of Shadows, its victims return to normal, and they lose all recollection of the Dark Hour they witnessed. Especially egregious [[spoiler:in Natsuki's case, since she experienced the Dark Hour but was never attacked]], and even ''worse'' in [[spoiler:the climax, when ''the entire city'' witnesses [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt both the Dark Hour and the arrival of Nyx]], but ''everyone'' (including the protagonists) [[LaserGuidedAmnesia lose their memories of it]] immediately afterward]].
** The game states at one point that only people who have mastered their Persona can remember the events of the Dark Hour, even if they both experience it and survive. A character states something along the lines of "She doesn't have the power like us, she won't remember any of this." They seem to be subconsciously aware that ''something'' happened, but they can't recall any details and most will just assume they were dreaming.

* The end of ''VideoGame/VampireTheMasqueradeBloodlines'' has [[spoiler:The Sheriff using high-level Viscissitude to transform into a gigantic bat who flies around the Venture Tower in plain sight and attacks you by dropping cars and bypassers onto you]]. Since the game is ending at that point you never get told how anyone managed to cover ''that'' whopper up, but one can imagine [[AncientConspiracy The Camarilla]] are none too pleased at the perpetrator.

* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob'' Jean has lampshaded the fact that the only reason Bob can keep having his weird adventures so publicly without drawing attention from the press or the world outside Generictown is that most of the people in Generictown are "really, really ''dumb."''

* The US government in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersPrime'' manages to explain away a beam of light that created a giant alien tower and subsequent evacuation of a nearby town as "meteor showers."

*** Right from the beginning, the show {{handwave}}d the ease with which its {{Masquerade}} was kept by claiming that people would [[WeirdnessCensor ignore or rationalize anything they weren't ready to believe]]. That worked okay for vampires, who might be able to pass as just really ugly psychopaths with a blood fetish. But when the Mayor turned into a giant demon snake during the middle of a graduation ceremony and did battle with the graduating class... well, even if people could pretend they never saw the giant snake, ''someone'' was bound to have been videotaping it.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* ...what was I typing here? I could have sworn there was a... well there's no use worrying about... that... whatever it was, probably just my imagination anyways.
[[/folder]]

* ''Series/{{Charmed}}'' flip-flopped on this. In the early seasons, both good and evil tried to keep a low profile. When the Masquerade was broken it was revealed to be a big deal and required time travel to fix often at a high cost. Later seasons introduced the Cleaners who would rewrite history to cover up events.

* ''VideoGame/MassEffect2:'' Despite the previous game ending with a Reaper attacking the Citadel, two years later, the Council flatly refuse to acknowledge the existence of the "Reapers", instead swearing that Sovereign was a geth ship. Meanwhile, travelling around the galaxy it's possible to find evidence alone that ''something'' keeps showing up every fifty thousand years or so and murderising entire civlisations, usually via mass bombardment from orbit. In one instance, the fluff states intergalactic archaeologists just shrug off the overwhelming evidence on the grounds that they can't think ''why'' something might do this.

** ... And Harry agrees completely. He outright states that some of the stuff they use to convince themselves that nothing supernatural is happening is less believable than "[[CrowningMomentOfAwesome A private eye wizard resurrected a tyrannosaurus, rode it through town, and used it to kick the ass of a zombie army]]." However, he also remarks that it's ''easier'' to believe than the idea of undead dinosaurs.

* In quite good effect in ''DragonBall'', where the general population forgets about things like a Demon Lord taking over the world and alien invasions, within a period of no more than a decade or two at most. They are also somehow convinced that [[KiManipulation Ki Attacks]] are just tricks on the word of the FakeUltimateHero, even though (mind you, this is in the same timespan) said Ki Attacks were once known to be very real and powerful enough to ''[[DetonationMoon blow up the moon]]''. At the very least, the world president and the World Martial Arts Tournament announcer (both of whom lived through those events and witnessed them personally) do not buy into the hype, and the announcer even laments the absence of the main cast which allowed this in the first place (he considers the vanilla fights a lot more boring).

* In Rick Riordan's ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'', this is under the control of the Mist, which makes normal people see attacking Furies as irritated old ladies or [[EldritchAbomination Typhon]] as a freak storm. This is largely maintained by Hecate, goddess of magic, but others with sufficient skill can manipulate it in order to pull a JediMindTrick or even produce solid constructs. Anything that is too big for the Mist alone is dealt with by Hermes. As the god of messengers and bridge between the supernatural and mortal worlds one of his jobs is to help mortals rationalize things as earthquakes or other natural disasters. Shown especially when supernaturals -- gods, titans, demigods, and other mythological creatures caught in the crossfire -- ravage Manhattan, and none of the {{Muggles}} look twice. There are notable mortals who have the ability to [[ISeeThemToo see through it]], and they are taken notice of by the gods.
* In ''Literature/{{Monster}},'' most non-magical humans (called Incogs) are incapable of comprehending magic, so anything supernatural is [[WeirdnessCensor automatically written off as something mundane]]; the few "light Cogs" that can partly comprehend it find themselves forgetting very quickly. In fact, this Masquerade is so strong, it's started to bleed into the magical population, making it harder for true Cogs to cast spells and turning many magical creatures into endangered species. However, at the end of the novel, [[TheMagicComesBack magic returns to power]], allowing Incogs to witness the boom in supernatural activity without the weirdness censor.

** At one point, a vampire confronted by Harry believes himself safe because Dresden would never dare reveal himself to the world by openly attacking him at a crowded convention. In response, Harry points out that he's in the phonebook, under "wizards."
---> ''ring'' "Harry Dresden! [[NamesTheSame Yes, I'm really]] [[Franchise/HarryPotter a wizard named Harry]]. No, I don't do parties." ''click''

* In the ''Literature/SmokeAndShadows'' series by Creator/TanyaHuff the population of Vancouver suffers from a serious case of this. The escalating amount of paranormal activity in the city is largely unacknowledged except by the protagonist, a FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire, a couple of police officers, a [[LivingLieDetector psychic tabloid reporter]] and people who have really had their faces rubbed in it (e.g. by being trapped in a haunted house that is trying to kill them). Otherwise, the surprising abundance of supernatural beings with no regard for the niceties of the Masquerade still fails to break through the denial. The producer of the TV show around which most of the action centers has no qualms about bringing in insurance claims adjusters after his studio is damaged by a demon. Several paranormal individuals express shock that the main characters recognize them for what they are without having to overcome instinctive denial first.
* The young adult horror book series ''Strange Matter'', about a town where strange supernatural events are constantly happening to the local kids, falls right into this trope with its first "Strange Forces" book; the ENTIRE TOWN is attacked by an army of monsters, including such crowded locations as the Mall at peak operating time, and the creatures are seen by hundreds of witnesses of all ages. Yet, later books seem to act as if the huge monster invasion never happened, and there are still people in town who are skeptical about the existence of the paranormal.
* Justified in the ''Literature/YoungWizards'' series, since the wizards have a spell which can change the past by intentionally invoking a RealityBleed from an AlternateUniverse where the {{Masquerade}} was never broken.

* Serial Killer Patrick Bateman of ''Literature/AmericanPsycho'' confess his crimes to a lot of people but nobody seems to think he is being serious. Add to that the fact that proofs of his murders seen to vanish, which may be explained by Bateman being an UnreliableNarrator and obviously insane.
* Vadim Panov's ''Secret City'': A general {{Masquerade}} is in effect. Most fractions actively work to keep it up, including a dedicated "Cleaners' Service". During the conflict with the Hyperboreans, the battles span the whole of Moscow and include both use of heavy weapons and monstrous Hyperborean units and warlords walking the streets. No explanation is given in-universe aside from the ubiquitous "Cleaners' Service" and "T-Grad.com" both having to work overtimes to suppress physical and electronic evidence and that the recent post-Soviet history has strengthened the overall WeirdnessCensor.
* In ''Literature/TheMortalInstruments'', the Shadow World is generally invisible to {{Mu|ggles}}ndanes. Many Downworlders strut around fairly openly, relying on humanity's natural WeirdnessCensor to cause people to not see them for what they really are. The Shadowhunters, being almost human, put a modest amount of magical effort into rendering themselves unnoticeable in everyday society. Also, their ''country'' [[HiddenElfVillage apparently doesn't exist]].

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** Right from the beginning, the show {{handwave}}d the ease with which its {{Masquerade}} was kept by claiming that people would [[WeirdnessCensor ignore or rationalize anything they weren't ready to believe]]. That worked okay for vampires, who might be able to pass as just really ugly psychopaths with a blood fetish. But when the Mayor turned into a giant demon snake during the middle of a graduation ceremony and did battle with the graduating class... well, even if people could pretend they never saw the giant snake, ''someone'' was bound to have been videotaping it.
** Played literally in the 5th season: any humans who learned that Glory [[spoiler:is Ben]] would instantly forget about it.
** Lampshaded in season three in the episode "Gingerbread", where Joyce gathered a rally at city hall after two children were killed under suspect of cult activity [[spoiler: though the children were really a single demon that fed off the mass hysteria that it induced by being there]] and she asked why the citizens continued to act so obliviously when either people went missing, or showed up dead with their blood drained, organs removed, or flayed, and that if they actually acted on said occurrences, it probably wouldn't happen so much. Alas, [[StatusQuoIsGod everything went back to status quo]] after the MonsterOfTheWeek was defeated.
* In Season Four of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' Los Angeles suffers fire raining down from the skies, an entire law firm being massacred and resurrected as zombies, a supernatural cloud blotting out the sun, allowing gangs of vampires to plunge the city into anarchy and slaughter, and thousands of people being Brainwashed by an EldritchAbomination. But by Season Five, the public at large still doesn't seem to realize that the paranormal exists. How the heck they explained everything that happened the previous year is never revealed. At least Jasmine's "message" never made it much past LA, as she was defeated during her first global broadcast.
** In the "Season 6" comics, [[spoiler:LA gets put in a Hell dimension and then returned, so now the entire populace knows what's up and that Angel is a hero. Which, predictably, causes complications for him.]]
* In ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', it's often a major plot point that the superpowered characters keep their existence a secret from most of humanity. However, at the end of Season 1, Peter gave off a giant nuclear blast in the skies above New York City. While that doesn't immediately lead to the conclusion that superpowers exist, you'd figure people would demand ''some'' sort of explanation for what caused that burst of radiation, but no one, including the show's resident TheMenInBlack, seems concerned about that. In the Volume Five finale, which ended up as the series finale, the Extra Strength Masquerade was deliberately broken by Claire {{Bookends}} reprising her jump-off-a-high-platform stunt from the first episode in front of a camera crew. ''Series/HeroesReborn'', set five years after, showed the extensive consequences of doing so.

** No matter how many aliens invaded Earth, people just never seemed to catch on. The series had started [[LampshadeHanging hanging lampshades on it]] by the end of the original run: for instance, in "Remembrance of the Daleks" Ace complains that if Daleks had invaded London in 1963 she'd have heard about it when she was growing up in the 1980s; the Doctor responds by pointing out several other alien invasions she never heard about, remarking that the human species "has an amazing capacity for self-deception". We see this explicitly in action at the end of the new series episode "World War Three", where people are already beginning to convince themselves that the latest alien invasion was just a hoax or a publicity stunt.
** The Masquerade was ''supposed'' to have been officially broken in "The Christmas Invasion", but it took a while to set in - it isn't until "Love and Monsters" and "Army of Ghosts" that people finally begin to talk about aliens as a fact of life. Later episodes of the new series show it beginning to sink in at last; in the 2007 Christmas special, the population of London has been TaughtByExperience to evacuate at Christmas in case something bad and alien-related happens again.

** In the opening of "The Day of the Doctor", the TARDIS is very conspicuously helicoptered across central London to land in Trafalgar Square, with the Doctor hanging out of the door the whole time. The head of UNIT has a whispered conversation with an underling, and they decide to blame it all on Creator/DerrenBrown. [[WildCardExcuse Again.]]

** "This is an emergency! Control must be believed and obeyed! [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial No-one in the colony believes in Macra! There is no such thing as Macra! Macra do not exist! There are no Macra!]]"
** Much like one of the ''Buffy'' examples above, the show has the Silents, whose gimmick is that people forget they ever saw them the second they're not looking directly at them.

* The existence of the Franchise/PowerRangers is normally acknowledged by the residents of [[CityOfAdventure Angel Grove]], but a few writers have forgotten this fact:
** In ''Series/PowerRangersNinjaStorm,'' only Dustin initially believes that Power Rangers are real and not just something out of the comic books. Apparently, the rest of the cast totally missed ten seasons worth of MonsterOfTheWeek attacks, and the time the Earth was briefly taken over by Astronema.
** In the ''middle'' of ''Series/PowerRangersLightspeedRescue'', a girl who saw a monster is assured by a woman that monsters do not exist. (Yes, this ''is'' in the city that is the main setting of the series, the one that's being ''constantly'' targeted by monsters.)

* Played with on ''Series/{{Chuck}}''. The CIA is running an operation underneath a Burbank Buy More, and several times the store is shot up, trashed, or virtually destroyed during shoot-outs, hostage situations, and brawls. In one episode the CIA actually cleaned out ''the entire store'' overnight to check it for hidden bugs before returning it all a day later. Somehow, none of the civilians seem to notice that something odd is happening there (the Ring, at least, recognized they were losing an unusual number of agents). Until [[CloudCuckooLander Jeff]], of all people, is cured of his brain damage when Devon stops him from sleeping in his (running) van, and begins to put the pieces together in season 5.
* It gets pushed repeatedly in ''Series/{{Primeval}}'', particularly the mammoth rampage on the motorway (explained away as an escaped deformed elephant) and the Pristichampsus that rampages through London. By Season 5 [[spoiler:there is a 'convergence' in which anomalies open up everywhere, including the mammoth on the motorway '''again''' and a T-Rex rampaging through London]]. In the sequel series, ''Series/PrimevalNewWorld'', the general public are blissfully unaware of any of this. Granted it's set in a different country but c'mon!

* ''Series/{{Charmed}}'' flip-flopped on this. In the early seasons, both good and evil tried to keep a low profile. When the Masquerade was broken it was revealed to be a big deal and required time travel to fix often at a high cost. Later seasons introduced the Cleaners who would rewrite history to cover up events.
* In ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk'', the Hulk is treated as an urban myth for far longer that should be considered possible considering he has been seen by large crowds in public quite a few times.
* Similarly, in ''Series/TheGreatestAmericanHero,'' Ralph and Bill put virtually no effort into concealing Ralph's superhero antics -- he doesn't even wear a mask! -- relying almost entirely on the RefugeInAudacity principle that even if somebody sees Ralph in action and tells about it, no one will believe them.

* Kenny's ability to return from the dead is not noticed by the other characters on ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark''. There are conflicting explanations of the exact nature of his power.

* This appears to be the case in ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'', assuming there even is a Masquerade at all. (It's [[MindScrew complicated]].) All the adults who aren't villains seem to be completely unaware of what their children are doing or that evil adults are running around causing havoc, despite the fact that both sides' HumongousMecha fight each other in the streets. TheMenInBlack would kill to have citizens who could deny the evidence of their own eyes!

* ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' is a curious case. People will only comment on the Gems when Steven points it out. And even then, unless directly attacked, they won't respond fully. Otherwise it's just an UnusuallyUninterestingSight. It's especially obvious in the episode "Ocean Gem", where despite ''all of the liquid water on Earth'' being siphoned into a giant column, no one's life is turned upside-down by the obviously supernatural event.

* Similarly, in ''Series/TheGreatestAmericanHero,'' Ralph and Bill put virtually no effort into concealing Ralph's superhero antics -- he doesn't even wear a mask! -- relying almost entirely on the RefugeInAudacity principle that even if somebody sees Ralph in action, no one will believe them.

* As in the ''Film/MenInBlack'' example in the film folder, a similar tactic was used in an episode of the [[WesternAnimation/MenInBlack Animated Adaptation]], but with the Empire State Building in the place of the Statue of Liberty. Another episode shows that every traffic light in NYC has a built-in neuralyzer. In these cases, they at least made a public announcement asking everyone to look at the neuralyzers first.
** The GrandFinale had an all-out AlienInvasion, forcing TheMenInBlack to reveal themselves to the world in order to join forces with the authorities. They combine modern fighter jets and alien weapons to beat back the attackers. TheMenInBlack are hailed as saviors, and the award ceremony is broadcasted to the entire world (or so they say). One of them takes out a neuralizer and points it at the camera, wiping out everybody's memory of what happened. But what about people who don't watch TV?
** They become conspiracy theorists and crazies.
** Doesn't explain the billions of people in third world countries that were aware of the invasion, but didn't have access to a television.