History Main / RuleOfPerception

* In the DonRosa story "The Three Caballeros Ride Again," [[SaludosAmigos Jose Carioca]] hides out in DonaldDuck's trunk and asks him to help him flee from a bandit. The two exchange several lines of dialogue, but do not recognize each other until they are face to face--apparently in a comic book, neither of them can hear the other's [[GratuitousForeignLanguage distinctive]] [[SpeechImpediment speech patterns]]...

* BoneThugsNHarmony hit this trope HARD in the 2000's, They would release mainstream albums and people would still say "I thought they broke up?", Or "I didn't know they had a new album out". Despite having previous albums people seem to have short attention spans thanks to the FleetingDemographicRule.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'' just about always has the characters hiding in plain sight of the audience -- where those characters ought to be clear to the searchers, too.

->'''Jon''': OW! ...Did you do that?!
->'''Garfield''': Nope.
->'''Jon''': You kicked me!
->'''Garfield''': If you didn't see it, it didn't happen.

** ''[[JasonFriedberg Epic Movie]]'' has a characteristically boneheaded take on the same scenario: Edward drinks from the "chocolate river," and apparently likes it just fine, until someone tells him it's [[VulgarHumor actually a sewage line]].

* In ''WillyWonkaAndTheChocolateFactory'' (circa 1971), none of the visitors recognize that the chocolate river ''is'' chocolate until Mr. Wonka tells them. At least one asks something along the lines of, "What is in that river?" Clearly, the chocolate ''smells'' no stronger near the chocolate river than anywhere else in the confection-filled room.

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* In an ''[[TheXFiles X-Files]]'' episode (might have been "The Pine Bluff Variant"), Mulder and Scully's conversation is bugged with a laser beam against the window of Mulder's apartment. The laser is bright red (so we know it's there), instead of infrared, which would be a lot more discreet.

If you don't touch the visible part of a tornado, the most it can do is whip your hair around a little.

* The telepathy variant is averted in ''Series/{{Heroes}}'': when Matt Parkman reads someone's mind, all the audience usually hears is a jumble of sounds, with an ''occasional'' clear sentence bubbling through the chaos.

** Hiro's powers used to require ''intense concentration'', which meant screwing his face up.

* ''DeathNote'': Light Yagami's eyes turn [[RedEyesTakeWarning red]] and [[GlowingEyesOfDoom glow]] during his most psychotic moments. Unlike other fictional characters with glowing red eyes, Light isn't magical (not that [[DealWithTheDevil the option wasn't offered multiple times]]) so his eyes aren't actually glowing in-universe; it's just visual shorthand to show us [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope how far]] [[AxCrazy he's gone]].

** Maybe it was to indicate they serve hard liquor?

* In ''Series/{{Noob}}'', [[TheCracker Tenshirock's]] avatar seems to exist for interaction with players, NPCs and in-game objects. However, earasing it is treated as the same thing as keeping him from doing anything to the game and the effects of his hacking only seem to ever happen a short distance away from him.