History Main / ExtraStrengthMasquerade

** One of the Sunken Scrolls reveals 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.

* 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.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirlsFriendshipGames'' ends with Abacus Cinch [[spoiler:threatening to report Celestia to the school board for cheating by using magic in the Friendship Games. Celestia then says that nobody will believe her claims of magical destruction]]. This implies that the existence of magic is still largely unknown, even though the main characters make no effort to hide their powers, all the Canterlot High students are aware of its existence, and on three occasions beforehand the school has been the location of large magical attacks (including at least one that was visible from quite far away, as the opening to ''Rainbow Rocks'' shows). This is justified considering Abacus is known as being a poor loser and highly competitive person, the [[AdultFear damage could be explained away as a terrorist attack as well.]]

This is when a story has a {{Masquerade}} in place that, based on the events of the plot, should have been {{broken|Masquerade}}, but somehow [[StatusQuoIsGod isn't]]. Maybe a dragon terrorized the populace of Manhattan. Maybe aliens landed in London and had [[SpotOfTea tea with]] the Queen. Or maybe the Sphinx came to life and led a mummy army against Cairo. Whatever the specifics may be, it seems like the world of the story should have become [[TheUnmasquedWorld unmasqued]], yet the general public seems as ignorant as ever.

* 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/{{Gargoyles}}''' masquerade could be surprisingly resilient when the creators wanted it to be: after a spell turns most of Manhattan's population into stone for two consecutive nights, said population lets it go with a shrug. While there's a scene where the people are understandably frightened at the prospect of having lost a night, nothing comes of it. Nobody outside of Manhattan seems to notice the largest city in America shut down completely either.
** That one's especially egregious if you know that much of Manhattan's subway system would flood within a matter of hours if nobody was there to operate its pumping stations.
** There's also the fact that Demona shattered some people while they were turned to stone yet no one questioned where they went.

** And somehow, Oberon putting the whole city to sleep in the middle of whatever they were doing ("The Gathering") does not result in [[InferredHolocaust thousands of deaths]].
*** Likewise, the statue incident above should've led to situations like, say, a petrified bus driver's foot being immovably locked onto the accelerator...
** [[AWizardDidIt Puck Did It.]]
** [[WordOfGod According to some of the creators]], most or all of the [[NoEndorHolocaust implied destruction that didn't seem to happen]] DID actually happen... But the average episode was already straining the limits of what Disney would allow on the air, so they had to leave some things up to the imagination. Because [[NothingIsScarier letting imaginations run wild]] is ALWAYS better.
*** It was also presumably easier to write the stories without having the city locked down due to a state of emergency after a major disaster in New York killing thousands. Of course, perhaps they didn't think that could happen...because the series aired entirely before 9/11.

* Beacon Hills on ''Series/TeenWolf'', as of Season Three. There are only so many times that supernatural beings can throw down in places like the high school, the hospital or the police station before it becomes irrational to use "animal attacks" to explain the casualties and damage. Matters get worse when an evil {{Druid}} starts committing human sacrifices around town to power BloodMagic, and even [[MassHypnosis possesses]] the entire high school orchestra during a public recital! By the end of season four, Japanese demons have run amok (and stabbed an FBI agent), other supernatural creatures are all over town and there is now a section of the local insane asylum dedicated entirely to holding paranormal individuals. The town as a whole is ''still'' in denial, and only a handful of people know what is really going on! Oh, and a new main character is a teenage girl who turned into a werecoyote as a child, killed her mother and sister during a full moon, and went to live in the woods as a coyote for nearly a decade out of remorse. When Scott manages to change her back, her return is happily accepted without question by her father, she is put into high school(!) and nobody questions the fact that she openly talks about life a coyote!
** Turns out the Masquerade wasn't so extra strong, after all: by the second half of season six, an Anuk-ite can tap into years of Beacon Hills denizens witnessing or being brutalised by the supernatural to turn them against all supernatural creatures so it can feast on the ensuing chaos and violence. As a result, ''the entire town'' is turned into an army of overzealous, trigger-happy amateur hunters, eager to get back at every instance of supernatural that had affected their lives.

** ''Film/GhostbustersAfterlife'' averts this trope -- as of the start of the movie (which take place thirty-plus years after [[Film/GhostbustersII the sequel]]), ghost sightings seemingly stopped completely after the events of the second film, according to Mr. Grooberson. (It's later explained by [[spoiler:Ray Stantz that the team disbanded due to a combination of business drying up and Egon being convinced that a temple for Gozer had been erected near Summerville, Oklahoma, leading him to abandon the team and take most of their equipment.[[) The Ghostbusters' exploits are still ingrained in the public consciousness (at one point, Phoebe watches a vintage CNN report of the team's arrival at the Shandor Building during the original film), while in the modern day, at least one character carried on their work of identifying and stopping paranormal events in secret.

** The end credits of the sequel show that the Masquerade was broken, with the heroes getting a thank you from the city. Marshmallow man is one thing, having to haul the Statue of Liberty back to Liberty Island, presumably cleaning the mood slime out, and having to deal with the Titanic having finally come to port will do that.

** ''Film/GhostbustersAfterlife'' averts this trope -- as of the start of the movie (which take place thirty-plus years after [[Film/GhostbustersII the sequel]]), ghost sightings seemingly stopped completely after the events of the second film, according to Mr. Grooberson. The Ghostbusters' exploits are still ingrained in the public consciousness (at one point, Phoebe watches a vintage CNN report of the team's arrival at the Shandor Building during the original film), while in the modern day, at least one character carried on their work of identifying and stopping paranormal events in secret.

* In Creator/MarvelComics' first ''ComicBook/{{Inferno}}'' CrisisCrossover, New York City was temporarily merged with a "Hell Dimension" - demons attacked people, inanimate things came to life, etc. After everything was restored to normal, people just assumed the whole thing had been a ''SharedMassHallucination!'' Given the FantasyKitchenSink that is the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, both explanations had a good chance of being right. From the perspective of your average person, it could easily have been a supervillain experimenting with hallucination inducing gas or something. ''Why'' they would believe the scientific option over the demonic one? Because it's easier and less disturbing. Even in real life, the possibilities of creating such a gas sound realistic. New York merged with Hell, not so much.

* ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}:

* ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'' had digital monsters terrorizing [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse Japan]] and, later, the rest of the world, for approximately 3 days. People could look up in the sky and see another world going on. Yet not only does [[Anime/DigimonAdventure02 the world return to normalcy within the next]] [[Anime/DigimonAdventureTri six years]], ''nobody'' remembers any details about the events. They seem to recall that the events happened, but nobody seems to know exactly what. Either that or their {{Weirdness Censor}}s are set too high.
** ''Anime/DigimonSavers'' manages to get away with a ''lot'' because [=DATS=] has memory-erasing technology and enough pull to spin the media. Where it gets ridiculous is when an army of Digimon invades Japan. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people see the army of giant monsters with their own eyes. The only mention it ever gets is that the city is seen rebuilding in later episodes.

* In ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'', the fantastic is a regular part of everyday life, but normals seem to filter it out. Even a massive ZombieApocalypse is rapidly dismissed as mass hysteria induced by Marilyn Mason. The strangest part is that a supernatural being like Satan can appear on reality T.V. and everyone will accept this at face value, and yet they will otherwise express disbelief in demons.

* ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'' lampshades and explains this in the third strip [[http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive&chapter=47138 here]].

* 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.''

* ''Manga/MahouSenseiNegima'':

* The ''FanFic/OversaturatedWorld'' had this in regards to 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.]]

* In ''Series/TheIncredibleHulk'', the Hulk is treated as an urban myth for far longer than should be considered possible considering he has been seen by large crowds in public quite a few times.

* ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'' had digital monsters terrorizing [[TokyoIsTheCenterOfTheUniverse Japan]] and, later, the rest of the world, for approximately 3 days. People could look up in the sky and see another world going on. Yet not only does [[Anime/DigimonAdventure02 the world return to normalcy within the next]] [[Anime/DigimonAdventureTri six years]], ''nobody'' remembers any details about the events. They seem to recall that the events happened, but nobody seems to know exactly what. Either that, or their {{Weirdness Censor}}s are set too high.
** ''Anime/DigimonSavers'' manages to get away with a ''lot'' because [=DATS=] has memory erasing technology and enough pull to spin the media. Where it gets ridiculous is when an army of Digimon invades Japan. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people see the army of giant monsters with their own eyes. The only mention it ever gets is that the city is seen rebuilding in later episodes.

* 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.

* 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.]]
* ''[[Series/StargateSG1 SG-1]]''/''{{VideoGame/XCOM}}'' crossover ''XSGCOM'' plays with this. After battle of Antarctica (with humanity having two 303's and two Ha'Taks, plus a shitload of satelite weapons) and finaly having drone weapons launched X-COM decide to pull so unbelievable excuse, that it must be true: essentially they are claiming that AlienInvasion is a cover up for military-exercise-nearly-turned-WWIII. They also lie that governments have been breaching the disarmament of space. To normal journalist, governments trying to cover up major screw up by alien invasion sounds more possible than the other way around.
** Note that this actually happened, sorta. The whole Roswell incident was actually a cover up for a top-secret early warning system for nuclear weapons.

* 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.

* ''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 ''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 Fourth movie throws the Masquerade out the window, with people not only fully aware of Transformers, but convinced they all need to be destroyed.

** This varies greatly depending on the events of the story. The villain in the first book could plausibly have been a drug dealer ([[spoiler:he ''was'' a drug dealer, it's just that drug had a magical effect on people in addition to its obvious, and terrifying, chemical effect]]), and almost all the conflict could plausibly have been gang-related violence. Same for some later stories as well, where magical events just don't leave traces, or leave traces that could plausibly be mistaken for having mundane causes, and Harry points out real-world statistics which create lots of room for unexplained things. In other books, though, it just gets ridiculous, and Harry explains it all away in the closing narration just as easily as the magical drug dealing. Dinosaur bones found in a park for no apparent reason? College students must have played a prank. People saw a zombie tyrannosaur running through the street? It must have been mass hallucination caused by mold in a bad batch of bread!

** A lot of times, circumstances conspire to keep things secret. A lot of what Harry does happens away from the public eye, since most supernatural baddies prefer to work in the shadows. Like the aforementioned crowded convention, where Harry fights several creatures in the shape of famous movie monsters. The convention is shrouded in unnatural darkness at the time, and the few eyewitnesses are too traumatized by what they saw to be considered credible by the authorities or even the general public. The zombie T-rex is running around at night when most people, due to the mass blackout, are staying indoors. Additionally, on several occasions, it is implied that the governments of the world do have a pretty shrewd idea of what's going on behind the scenes and consider maintaining the masquerade to be a better option than mass panic.

* 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.

* 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.

*** 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.

* 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.

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E7TheMacraTerror 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!]]"

* 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.

*** The series is usually not quite so bad, but has its moments. They had a building teleported into space, fired nuclear missiles in orbit, and realistically, all the alien fleets attacking the Earth could not possibly go unnoticed by astronomers. There was one episode where they made everyone who witnessed an incident sign non-disclosure agreements. In the case of the building being teleported into space, the official story was a [[GasLeakCoverup gas leak]]. The media ''did'' find it odd there was no shrapnel, casualties, etc. but couldn't determine what actually did happen. There's no reason to conclude it was teleported into space after all.

** ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' mostly avoids this, being set in another galaxy. Except the GrandFinale, where a battle between a [[FloatingContinent Floating Island]] the size of Manhattan and a ship of similar size goes completely unnoticed. Even when the ship is destroyed from inside by a nuke. People do notice when the survivor falls into the atmosphere, but the fact that it's the Lost City of Atlantis is conveniently obscured by the re-entry fireball. Even more convenient is the fact that ''everbody in the Western Hemisphere'' was apparently looking away when the fireball dispersed, leaving time to use their InvisibilityCloak... and nobody realized that an object that large should have done massive damage on impact, unless it was powered and decelerated on its own.

* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' is an odd case what with AllMythsAreTrue, but even in a word that has gone through apocalypse, people still surprised by a mere vampire.

*** Averted in the new edition ''TabletopGame/DragonRekindled'' where there no longer is any special effect protecting Dragons from mortals; the reason they still manage to maintain a Masquerade is now because they can assume a human form, most of them are smart enough to realize they must stay hidden to survive, and the few who do get noticed and filmed are dismissed as fake.

* In ''TabletopGame/WitchGirlsAdventures'', the existence of the Masquerade itself is theoretically justified by the fact that it's enforced by witches who are [[PhysicalGod powerful enough]] to rewrite the memories of ''every mortal in the world at once'', which was done to cover up an openly-supernatural UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. No, what's extra-strength is the fact that the Masquerade stays intact in the public mind despite open witch activity across much of Africa, Asia and the Middle East (and in the latter, witch involvement in regional politics, strictly forbidden by witch law). In Japan, for example, everyone knows that you can go to a witch to buy a potion, but it never makes the nightly news.

** Multiple sources say that this was the Patriots' final diagnostic: induce a Gainax-level event and use the media propaganda at their disposal to prevent mass panic, or even situational alarm. They succeeded.

* 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/SluggyFreelance'', the fantastic is a regular part of every day life, but normals seem to filter it out. Even a massive ZombieApocalypse is rapidly dismissed as mass hysteria induced by Marilyn Mason. The strangest part is that a supernatural being like Satan can appear on reality T.V. and everyone will accept this at face value, and yet they will otherwise express a disbelief in demons.
* ''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}}. However, [[spoiler: It also gets input from Seers (if available) before deciding whether to do so and Tedd, who is heavily invested in creating TheUnmasquedWorld, is a Seer. So thanks to his influence, when the tipping point arrives in story, the Will of Magic decides ''not'' to change the rules (much). This is either the first time a Seer has argued for this, or the first time they've been successful.]]

** That one's especially egregious, if you know that much of Manhattan's subway system would flood within a matter of hours if nobody was there to operate its pumping stations.
** There's also the fact that Demona shattered some people while they were turned to stone yet no one questioned were they went.

* In ''WesternAnimation/InfinityTrain'', people suddenly end up on [[EldritchLocation the train]] and are often gone for months before returning. Despite the train simultaneously holding dozens or perhaps hundreds of people for at least several decades, there's no sign of its existence becoming public knowledge. The epilogue for book one shows [[spoiler:Tulip has a MissingReflection even after getting home]], which apparently no one else has noticed.

* 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]].

** Similarly to in the ''[=OWoD=]'', many supernatural powers have built-in Masquerading abilities. [[TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken Urathra]] have Lunacy, a blessing from their moon spirit ancestor that causes most people to go partially insane and mentally block off & rewrite their memories to alleviate the trauma of seeing a werewolf. ''TabletopGame/MageTheAwakening'', in addition to [[WeirdnessCensor Paradox]] (which targets vulgar magic as it goes off), has Disbelief, which means anything obviously magical (like, say, a rampaging fire elemental crafted by an Obrimos) will rapidly degrade under observation by [[{{Muggles}} Sleepers]]. In ''TabletopGame/BeastThePrimordial'', to prevent the obvious problems with the Begotten HulkingOut into nightmarish abominations, it's stated that they can only embrace their monstrous true forms whilst inside of a [[EldritchLocation Lair]]. In ''TabletopGame/DemonTheDescent'', demons can't go into their demon form without setting off metaphysical alarm bells that will see them being dogpiled by ever-increasing numbers of increasingly powerful Hunter-Killer angels.