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"Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it… Of course, it's very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking — they'll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face…"

In a story with Differently Powered Individuals, you'll usually have a group of individuals who don't have those powers — muggles. Ordinary people. Those who are not special, like the favored of the plot. Mundane folk who are only aware of their own small section of reality. The source from which most characters spring.

They're the "normal" for those who crave it and those who would hate it if it happened. Ironically, Muggles often treat extraordinary people like crap, because Muggles are All of the Other Reindeer — although sometimes this happens the other way around, more cynical super-people looking down on them as a pathetically bland, underdeveloped species of Innocent Bystanders.

The most common Secret Identity pretends to be this.

They are the ones whom the Masquerade is used to hide from, who can't get into (or perhaps even perceive) the Wainscot Society, and the ones who are subjected to memories wipes simply so the more enlightened can retain their secret status. Sometimes reality itself conspires to hide the plot from their minds, in ways like the Extra-Strength Masquerade, Bystander Syndrome, Weirdness Censor, and Invisible to Normals. Then again, they may just not want to know because Apathy Killed the Cat.

They are the Victim of the Week eaten by the Monster of the Week.

Muggles are to be protected, avoided, manipulated, or abused (in any combination) by the characters or the plot.

Expect the Red Shirts to be muggles since non-muggles are usually too plot-valuable to waste. Even muggles with characterization need to watch it: they could be Mauve Shirts. More rarely, Muggles Do It Better comes in to play: mundane people with mundane technology have a real fighting chance in works featuring this trope (often the reason why the Masquerade exists — otherwise, once the Witch Hunt starts, the supernatural would get its butt handed over by Badass Normal hunters or mobs with Torches and Pitchforks). Compare Vanilla Unit for the playable equivalent of muggles.

Muggle tropes include:

Not to be confused with Moogles or Buggles. Certainly not to be confused with The Legend of Rah and the Muggles. It also has nothing to do with marijuana unless you're reading vintage crime fiction.note 


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • At the start of Bleach, practically no humans outside of Ichigo's family are spiritually sensitive. As such, they are unable to see things such as Shinigami, Hollows, the souls of the dead or Ichigo's Substitute Shinigami Badge (which is specifically designed to be Invisible to Normals). Orihime and Chad start becoming spiritually aware as they spend more time with him after he becomes a Substitute Shinigami, but Ichigo is caught by surprise when, after returning from Soul Society, he realizes that Tatsuki, who for the most part is not in on the more spiritual elements of their world, can see the badge, signifying that she has also become spiritually aware.
  • All humans (save for the few who can actually use their chi) in Dragon Ball Z are muggles, all with a very strong Weirdness Censor.
  • Gundam:
    • In the UC continuity (the one branching off from Mobile Suit Gundam), regular humans are sometimes referred to as "Oldtypes", as distinct from the "Newtypes" that represent the next stage of humanity's evolution. Rather to the point, some people who believe Newtypes are the next stage of evolution will use "Oldtype" as a Fantastic Slur against those who would get in the way of that evolution.
    • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED we have Coordinators (those with genetic modifications) and Naturals (those without). What starts of as An Aesop about racial equality quickly becomes a Broken Aesop, as the only characters to ever do anything of merit in the show are Coordinators. Reinforced by the fact that only one Natural ever exhibits the show's Super Mode, but this scene was quietly retconned out of existence in the compilation movies. One particular character, who is considered a "Natural" throughout the series, actually shows signs of being a Newtype. He also happens to be the most dangerous character in the series, hinting that Coordinators might still be muggles by comparison.
    • Played with in Mobile Suit Gundam 00, where Celestial Being's Tieria Erde and Manipulative Bastard Ribbons Almarck are revealed to be Innovators, Artificial Humans who Ribbons claims were intended by Aeolia Schenberg to rule over humankind. The classic scenario is inverted, however, when Tieria discovers the truth: the "Innovators" are in fact nothing of the sort, and were meant instead to help humankind reach its potential as the true Innovators.
    • Subverted in Gundam X. The main character is not a Newtype yet time after time he is forced to go up against them in combat, and must contend with his girlfriend's increasingly disastrous predictions of the future. Yet he never gives up hope and was recognized by the First Newtype as living proof that one cannot predict the future. Not bad for a kid who spent the first fifteen years of his life as an orphan in a Crapsack World.
  • In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, only people who have a Stand are capable of seeing others' Stands. Ordinary people cannot see Stands, but can see how they affect the world around them. When we're first introduced to the concept of Stands, as Jotaro's Star Platinum fights Avdol's Magician's Red, the two cops are amazed at how Jotaro is being thrown around without Avdol touching him, and are equally as amazed at how the temperature in the jail cell is through the roof while Joseph and Holly can both see this.
  • Gamu of Kokoro, who lacks Genre Blindness, calls out the mage society on their use of "norm", as well as their championing of the Masquerade and Laser-Guided Amnesia. Admirable if not for the fact that the formerly cool-headed spy girl is willing to take on The Omniscient Council of Vagueness to try and change the world. (Then again, if you had a couple million people out for your head, you might figure that there's nothing to lose, too.)
  • In My Hero Academia, superpowers (here called Quirks) have become so commonplace that 80% of the world's population has them; protagonist Izuku "Deku" Midoriya begins the series without powers, but his determination catches the eye of top hero All Might, who chooses Deku to be his successor and gives the boy his Quirk "One for All". In an interesting sort of middle-ground with this trope, not everyone with a Quirk becomes a hero or villain; some people have powers that just aren't useful for that sort of thing (for example, Izuku's mother can levitate small objects) and just live ordinary lives.
  • In Naruto, the non-chakra users are ordinary people who rely on the ninja and samurai for defense, as well as for doing mundane jobs quickly (dog walking, pet search and rescue, weeding, trash clean-up). It's shown they are completely and utterly helpless against the many enemies in the series. However, unlike most universes they don't resent the chakra users (like, ahem, Marvel's universe.)
  • In Sailor Moon, the normal students Usagi used to be friends with before she found her superhero posse. They're probably better off. When they hung out with Usagi they had a huge likelihood of becoming the Victim of the Week.

    Comic Books 
  • In the Fables universe, the Fables characters refer to normal humans as "Mundanes" and Earth outside Fabletown or the Farm as the "Mundy". With the plots for Sons of Empire and War and Pieces, the tricks Fabletown has learned from the Mundy world show that Muggles simply do it better.
  • In a particularly interesting example, Secret Six features a conversation between Catman and Deadshot in which they refer to "Norms", people who possess a normal sense of morality (conscience) as opposed to their own semi-to-full sociopathy. Since the main cast of the series is entirely composed of supervillains with an extremely warped view of morality, this is a rather chilling use of the trope.
  • In the X-Men universe, mutant supremacists, mostly those less erudite than Magneto, call non-mutants "flatscans" (while referring to themselves as "spikes"), referring to their presence or lack thereof when scanned by power detectors. Also used by Neo Warclan to refer to other, less highly powered mutants, vis-a-vis Domina et. al. Weaker mutants are also sometimes referred to as "halfscan", implying that they're basically a mutant in name only.

    Fan Works 
  • Humans in contrast to unicorns in The Son of the Emperor. They possess no magical abilites and tend to be afraid of unicorn magic or consider it unnatural. This eventually led to them banning the practice of magic for the most part, though the specifics vary by region.
  • Two examples in With Strings Attached:
    • The Idris in Ketafa derisively refer to civilians as "streetfodder", "cityfodder", or just plain "fodder".
    • The tirin in Baravada, except that they're almost as mean and annoying as the skahs, and occasionally nearly as dangerous, as George can attest during his quickie with Ma'ar. They're also happier and far more content with their lot. One of the minor advantages the four have is that they are classified as outworlder tirin and are expected to behave as such, when they actually fit into neither category and thus do unexpected things. The best Grunnel can describe them is "They're not skahs, but they're not tirin either."

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, the Garbage Pail Kids call humans "normies" (a term which has since been co-opted by online communities like 4chan to refer to outsiders).
  • People who are still plugged into The Matrix, unaware of its virtual nature, are known as "Coppertops" (in reference to a battery) or, later, "bluepills" (whether they've been offered the pills or not). Morpheus makes the borderline psychopathic observation that they're either directly (as vessels for Agents) or indirectly (as soldiers, cops, etc.) tools of the system, and thus expendable if necessary, leading to their wholesale slaughter by the heroes at the climax of the first film. One of the biggest criticisms of the sequel is that there were no Muggles (almost), reducing the previously mind-blowing Matrix to a high-stakes video game.
  • In the Men in Black films, any person not part of the MIB is called a "Neutral". Those that are accidentally exposed to the knowledge of the existence of alien life are quickly neuralized and given a cover story preserving Plausible Deniability.
  • In the original Star Wars trilogy, Han Solo (despite his Badass Normal credentials) fills this role with his skepticism of the Force and desire to stay out of the fight between the Empire and Rebellion. He gets better.

    Literature 
  • Artemis Fowl: The main character, Artemis, is a Muggle who discovers the existence of Fairies. They aren't pleased about it — they try to mindwipe him, but he gets around it. Eventually they reach a truce, and Artemis gets to stay in the know.
  • In The Bartimaeus Trilogy, ordinary people (i.e., non-magicians) are looked at with distaste and referred to as "commoners". A bit subverted, in that the wizards are shown to be corrupt aristocrats oppressing the commoners, and one of the main characters is an Anti-Hero trying to overthrow the current regime. Strangely there doesn't seem to be anything actually stopping commoners from learning magic, they just don't get picked for training (which makes sense, since those picked must have very high IQs and parents willing to give up all parental rights). Magicians do not try to stop commoners from learning magic because they hide their real sources of power, which are spirits they summon. Also, any commoners who do manage to learn magic immediately become targets of other magicians, which pretty much spells their doom.
  • Mortals in the The Camp Half-Blood Series. Anyone who is (surprise, surprise) mortal can't see through the Mist and doesn't really know about most of the events described in the novel because of this. There are some exceptions, most notably Percy Jackson's mother Sally Jackson and Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who later becomes the oracle of Delphi. Being able to see through the mist is related to her powers of prophecy.
  • Inverted in the Codex Alera series where almost everyone in Alera (think Roman-style nation) can summon at least one type of fury (an elemental spirit of earth, air, water, wood, fire or metal) and gains pseudo-magical abilities from them (flight, influencing emotions, healing are some of them). The protagonist, Tavi, is the only person without one. He survives on his wits and courage.
  • Played with in The Death Gate Cycle. Mensch is a derogatory term used by the two demigod races to refer to humans, elves and dwarves who used to live on Earth before it was sundered into its four classical elements. Played straight on the worlds of fire and water where they're tormented and slaughtered by ancient monstrosities, averted on the world of air where humans regularly charm dragons into doing their bidding. The demigods themselves look down on them for being lessers and are in turn scorned for being tyrants and jerkasses.
  • Deryni: The majority of people in the Eleven Kingdoms are not Deryni. Because of their relative numbers and ecclesiastical power, they are able to persecute the Deryni for over two centuries, making the Masquerade a necessary evil during that period.
  • Devils & Thieves: Called "drecks" in this universe, most of the world is made up of these ordinary people with no knowledge of magic. Due to her poor control of her powers, Jemmie admits she has considered just packing up and going to live in dreck society, where she'd at least feel average.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • For the normal people of the setting (called "straights" or "vanillas"), the approach is almost opposite the Harry Potter universe's. The Masquerade is upheld by mutual agreement, and kept by the straights preferring to forget the terrors of knowing that the normal, safe, mundane world is a lie. Supernatural power have to hide and have successfully kept their existence secret, but they don't have to put much effort into it.
    • That said, openly involving the derided and preyed upon mortals in their affairs is still taboo, since its indisputably "the nuclear option", complete with the destruction of all sides involved being guaranteed due to humanity's reaction to the supernatural, even of the things that are clearly on their side. Humans might not have the strengths of the creatures of the night, but they don't have their weaknesses; and particularly in the past century, humans have had the growth in population, technology, and weaponry that more than equalizes the playing field. For reference, one of the most feared institutions in the supernatural world is the Wardens, and their preferred weapons, when not using magic or a magic-cutting sword, are guns and discipline.
    • Of the Muggles, a surprising number of them have actually dealt with it (werewolves running amok, hiring a wizard, cops shooting vampires), and some are almost as formidable as the supernaturals. Marcone, Murphy and Hendricks are among the Muggles who nevertheless are smart, savvy, and can hold their own among wizards and other such. Most notably, at the end of White Night, John Marcone and a small squad of human mercenaries take on a horde of uber-ghouls with nothing but assault rifles and discipline, and more than hold their own, though as of Changes, most if not all of the squad of mercenaries are revealed in to be Einherjar. This would make them a) already dead and b) potentially quasi-immortal thereafter. In fact, one of the reasons there's a masquerade going on is because any conflict between generic humans and supernaturals would favour the humans, if only because of sheer numbers, though nowadays the numbers are supplemented by guns and other nasty weapons.
  • In The Familiar of Zero, people without the ability to use magic (who make up the majority of the population) are labeled as commoners or plebeians and are considered second-class citizens subservient to the magical elite.
  • Everyone without a power in the Gone series, most notably Zil and the rest of the Human Crew.
  • In The Grisha Trilogy, there exists a form of magic called "The Small Science". Those born with the ability to practice it are called Grisha, and rather snobbishly refer to those who cannot wield it as Otkazat'sya. It literally means "The Abandoned".
  • The Trope Namer (with a capital M) comes from the British name for non-magical people in the Harry Potter universe (in America, they're called No-Maj's). Some notable ones include: The Dursleys, Tom Riddle Sr, Hermione's parents, and Frank Bryce. Muggles in Harry Potter tend to not play very big roles in the series, and wizards such as the Death Eaters tend to abuse them. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince contains a memorable scene in which the Muggle Prime Minster (that is, the Prime Minister) meets the Minister for Magic.
  • In The Heir Chronicles, humans without some form of magic are called "anaweir". Since they are extremely vulnerable to control by magic, they are treated as pawns or kept in the dark throughout the books, until very late in the third, when some of them are finally told about the magical war going on in their town.
  • Muggles are called Bystanders in Heretical Edge, and they're all affected by the Bystander Effect. This isn't humanity's natural state, however, but something that was magically forced on them. If it were to be removed, humanity would return to being a Mage Species.
  • High School D×D: Vali calls Issei out on the fact that the current red dragon-white dragon rivalry was unfair because Vali's from a privileged family by being a descendant of Lucifer, while Issei's family is just random normal human, he then wished that Issei was at least from a family with some background.
  • In The Hollows, there are no muggles. Magic came out of the closet before the books started, when 4 species weren't affected by a disease that killed 2/3 people on the planet, and scarred the rest. This removed enough humans that revealing magic became a viable option, as the levels were around equal now.
  • The townspeople of Derry in IT, whose apathy towards the fact that their town has a Serious Problem allows Pennywise to operate freely.
  • The Lunar Chronicles deconstructs this trope with the "Shells", Lunars without powers, who are either euthanized or used as slaves. It is explained that while they lack powers, they are immune to Lunar mind-games, which is likely why they are persecuted.
  • Ivy Gamble of Magic for Liars is called upon to investigate a magic school since she straddles both the connected (her sister is a mage and a teacher at the school) and the unconnected (Ivy cannot use magic herself, she's an outsider and thus has fewer preconceived notions, and she's a for-real private investigator).
  • Nemesis Series: Non-powered humans are referred to as "flats" by some villainous supers. The main character calls it the most boring slur she's ever heard.
  • Night Watch (Series) is a fairly dark take on this trope. Because of their magic abilities, the Others have formed their own societies, with negative results in how they relate to normal humans. The Dark Others have massive Lack of Empathy, but the Light Others aren't much better. There are many comments about how because they've seen human evil so often, and because of creating their own society, while Light Others are supposed to be protectors of humanity, they have difficulty identifying with the ones they are supposed to be protecting, trying to improve human life by starting massive social projects but ultimately failing in a spectacular (and bloody) manner. Examples include Nazism and Communism, although it's revealed that two of the Others sabotaged the Communism project in order to avoid a progressive but paranoid world where the Others have already been caught and destroyed. Basically, Muggles have to be kept in misery; otherwise, their Weirdness Censor will disappear. In one of the latter stories, it's admitted plain and simple that the Others actively hinder the development of humans, else the Others would be exposed and exterminated.
  • Of Fire and Stars: In some countries, like Mynaria, magic is rare, feared and banned. Zumorda, though, has magic be ubiquitous and people without it, called vakos, viewed as inferiors whom they treat with contempt.
  • Ordinary humans in Pact, who haven't been made aware of the supernatural, qualify as this, being easily manipulated by even the weakest practitioner. In many ways, this is for their own good, as almost every Other in existence has agreed to abide by the Standard of Suleiman bin Daoud, the biblical King Solomon, which prevents them from targeting the unaware without an excuse. Johannes Lillegard, a powerful sorcerer, argues that this protection is ultimately why humanity as a whole is winning against the Others; in the time that it takes Others to lure a hundred people to their deaths, ten thousand more have been born, and because Humans Advance Swiftly, they've spread light to many corners of the globe-there are that many fewer shadows for the Others to hide in.
  • Mundanes in The Shadowhunter Chronicles. In The Mortal Instruments, anyone who has no knowledge of Downworlders or Shadowhunters is a mundane or a "mundie" (Clary is included in this because even though she is a Shadowhunter, she knows nothing about their world), and the term takes on a negative meaning, the Shadowhunters using it with bad connotations. In The Infernal Devices, it's more friendly, meaning not sacred, ordinary versus divine.
  • The Sister Verse and the Talons of Ruin has the citizens of the fifth sphere, who systematically kill off anybody with unnatural abilities, even at the expense of thousands of civilian casualties.
  • The Twilight Saga: A lot of strange things happen around Forks and Phoenix (Vampires, werewolves, vampire's wars ...) and the humans in the book never realize anything is out of the ordinary; at worst they think it's just normal daily murders. None of them get to do anything special or contribute to the plot, not even by accident. To this day if you ask any of them about Bella Swan, they will say something along these lines: "Bella? The daughter of Chief Swan? Nice girl, a little weird, lived here a short time, liked to hang around the Quilletes, made good friends with the weird Cullen kids and married right out of high school to one of them... she was probably pregnant." If they actually remember her at all.
  • In the Xanth books, non-magical... pretty much everything, but mostly humans, are referred to as "Mundanes" (As in from "drear, drear Mundania" {Read: outside of Xanth). Looking around on this page will show you that "Mundane" is quite a common term.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Babylon 5's Psi Corps uses the term "mundane" for the non-telepathic population; its usage varies from slightly offensive to virtually spat out as an insult (generally by Psi Cops). The "mundanes" themselves tend to use the term "normal", and good if not perfect way of divining a telepath's support or antipathy for the Psi Corps is knowing which term they use in conversation with other telepaths. Here is the Psi Corps "ranking" system: psi cops, other members of the corps, telepaths who take pills, "blips" (rogue telepaths), and mundanes. That's right, normal humans rate lower on their scale than traitors. An episode shows the fate of a human who kills a "blip" — he's Thrown Out the Airlock in hyperspace.
  • Bewitched:
    • Neighbor Gladys Kravitz is a type of muggle. She witnesses odd goings-on at the Stephens' house, but her husband doesn't believe her. She typically treats Samantha with coolness and suspicion because she knows there's something off about her but can't figure out what. Though Samantha is friendly to her, she has learned to be careful around the nosy Mrs. Kravitz.
    • Non-witches/wizards in the series in general are called mortals.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, pretty much the entire population of Sunnydale aside from the main cast and the bad guys could counted as muggles. People are aware that Sunnydale is a dangerous place but never seem willing or able to make the leap to accept that it's because the town attracts all manner of supernatural beasties. Lampshaded in one episode where a football player tells his friend that they could go to state this year "as long as we don't have as many mysterious horrible deaths". However, some later episodes imply that people are halfway aware of Sunnydale's unusual nature, and that Buffy helps keep them safe, but they don't (want to) know any specifics. Buffy's graduating high school class probably knows, considering they all fought a giant demon snake and his army of vampires on graduation day.
  • Normal people are often referred to like this in Doctor Who. For example, in the 1996 movie, when a newscast explains away recent strange events occurring because of the Doctor's adventure as "normal" weather events, the Doctor remarks something close to "I love humans, always seeing patterns that aren't there". Of course, a recurring theme in Doctor Who is that there are no real muggles. Anyone who's smart or brave can help the world. This is why 90% of the Doctor's companions are otherwise normal people whose meeting and travels with the Time Lord lets them achieve extraordinary things, even after they've parted company. On the whole, there are far less muggles, in the sense of people with no idea what's going on, after the masquerade officially breaks. Now aliens existing is just a fact of life for planet Earth.
  • In Free Spirit (1989), muggles are called "mortals" (as in most pre-Harry Potter works).
  • In Grimm, normal humans are known as "Kehrseite" by the Wesen. A Kehrseite who knows the truth about Wesen is known as a "Kehrseite-Schlich-Kennen".
  • In Hero Corp, those without superpowers are called "Civilians". The superheroes are quite dismissive of them, and don't want any in the village for fear they'd discover their secrets. Their bigotry is constantly portrayed as quite silly — and ironic, considering that for the outside world the villagers would look like a bunch of inbreed morons.
  • In Heroes, the Bennet family's dog is named Mr. Muggles, likely a reference to this and the fact that, with one exception, the family is normal. Well, two exceptions.
  • In Mighty Med, Muggles are referred to as "Normos".
  • Motherland: Fort Salem: In the alternate US, witch soldiers have resulted in such an association with the military that non-witches are usually just referred to as civilians. Most seem like normal people, sometimes disdained by witches, though usually left alone. However, some are massacred by the Spree, a witch terrorist group. On the flip side, a fanatical group among them, the Camarilla, are murderous witch hunters intent on killing all the witches.
  • In Sabrina the Teenage Witch, as in Bewitched, mortals play basically the same role as muggles.
  • The Changelings from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine call all those who cannot shape-shift "solids" and consider them low-value. A "solid" is at best a pawn, and otherwise an enemy to be annihilated.
  • A club of psychics in That's So Raven use the term "Normies".
  • In The Tomorrow People (1973), homo sapiens are frequently called "Saps". In Britain, the use of "sap" as an insult is rare, and "homo sapiens" is pronounced "homo sap-iens" rather than "homo sape-iens". In consequence, hardly anyone let in on this secret takes offense at the term.
  • In Wizards of Waverly Place, Justin and Alex had to make plenty of explanations for the people who accidentally witnessed their magical antics.

    Radio 
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1978) mentions the Hagunennons, a "super-evolutionary" species that constantly evolves into different shapes. Hagunennons look down on other species, calling them "Filthy rotten stinking samelings".

    Tabletop Games 
  • Continuum has the vast majority of humanity (and pre-human civilisations) made up of Levellers (as opposed to Spanners/Spinners for those with the capacity for Time Travel). No mention is made in the rulebook about the potential confusion with a 17th century English political movement, or a late Capricorn-era folk-punk band, although they do discuss the implications of their own name as used as an insult.
  • The Dresden Files has the "Pure Mortal" category for characters who absolutely, positively have no supernatural powers. It's not all downside, though — pure mortals can still be highly competent in their various "mundane" skills and get a +2 refresh bonus (increasing their supply of fate points) to reflect their extra reserves of human free will.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has special, low-powered, "NPC classes" for people who are explicitly not heroes; the weakest of these, the Commoner class, can easily be outmatched by a normal housecat. Then again, by the rules, a lot of things can be outmatched by a housecat (including 1st level PC wizards).
  • "Mundane" is used in GURPS Technomancer as a "mildly impolite" term to refer to people who aren't chimeras and don't have the Magery advantage.
  • In Nomine uses "mundane" to refer to normal humans that don't possess Symphonic Awareness and thus the ability to consciously use Essence.
  • Trinity Universe (White Wolf):
    • In Aberrant, regular humans (those without superpowers) are referred to as "baselines", often in a derogatory fashion by the more arrogant of the superpowered Novas. Those Novas who subscribe to the Nova-supremacist Teragen philosophy prefer to call them "zips," which is always a Fantastic Slur.
    • In Æon, the sequel to Aberrant, people without psychic powers are known as "neutrals".
  • Unknown Armies has all people who aren't in the Occult Underground being this way. Use of Magick, or Avatar powers, in front of them... well, the core rulebook talks about 'waking a sleeping tiger'. Let's just say it's never, never pretty. But then, not much is in UA, so.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Psykers are humans with psychic powers that are swiftly hunted down and taken to Holy Terra for indoctrination, with Navigators going blind but developing a Third Eye that lets them see the Warp. As a result, most of them are as insulting and abrasive towards non-psykers (they "consider us as little more than orks with table manners", to quote Ciaphas Cain) as non-psykers are towards people who could at any moment explode into a daemon-vomiting portal to the Warp.
  • The World of Darkness:
    • In Mage: The Ascension and Mage: The Awakening, the Muggles are called "Sleepers", and actually make magic more dangerous when present because of their normality. The reason why differs between the two games:
      • In Ascension, belief defines reality, and Sleepers are the majority. While "coincidental magick" can be passed off as luck or accident, using "vulgar magick" — magic that obviously defies the consensus definition of "reality" — causes dangerous Paradox as reality tries to snap back to obeying physics. Meanwhile, in Awakening, when Atlantis fell and the Abyss was formed, Quiescence worked its way into the minds of mortals. Unless one is directly confronted with the true nature of the universe, any faint evidence of magic will feed the Lie, and thus the Abyss. And Paradox is how the Abyss enforces the Lie.
      • In Ascension, the Technocracy calls Sleepers "the Masses". Depending on a given Technocrat's view of why they impose order on the world, it can be paternalistic or contemptuous.
    • Changeling: The Dreaming uses a similar concept though the Banality mechanic. It is apparently not enough to just be a mundane, non-magical muggle in a Crapsack World filled with monsters that view you as commodity as best and speed bump at worst, your muggleness itself ensures nothing could ever be done to possibly make things better.
    • In the Chronicles of Darkness game Promethean: The Created, Prometheans possess a life force that... annoys Muggles. Stay in one place too long, and the Muggles get out the Torches and Pitchforks, so the Promethean has to hide and move a lot to keep all the normals around him from erupting into riots.
    • Vampires in Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem tend to refer to mortals as "kine", an archaic word meaning "cattle". Masquerade vampires sometimes used the phrase "Children of Seth" if they were feeling poetic (in that setting, vampires descended from Caine, humans from Seth). These are not to be confused with the Followers of Set, a Clan of almost Always Chaotic Evil snaky vampires.
    • In Genius: The Transgression, "mortals" are often the bane of Geniuses, as they can cause Wonders to go horribly wrong by trying to use or analyze them (in early editions of the game, it could happen simply by "mere mortals" looking at them). For Geniuses, the Masquerade is enforced by the circumstances of their powers rather than an organisation, since, besides the problems of Havoc, the things they make generally can't be recreated and don't quite run on scientific principles. Further, a large-scale revelation of just the mere existence of the Genii would cause widespread Inspiration among regular folks. Since none of the Genius organisations would be able to deal with that number, it would lead to massive amounts of Unmada and Illuminated walking the earth, which would in turn almost certainly mean the end of the human race as a whole.
    • Hunter: The Reckoning:
      • Player characters always start as normal humans. The contrast between Muggle life and the horrifying truth is one of the central themes of the game.
      • Subverted in the case of the player characters, because they are very, very insistent that they are humans but very, very clearly only mortal in the sense that Mages (who number among their targets) are technically mortal.

    Video Games 
  • Humans in The Alliance Alive cannot use Sorcery, which places them at the bottom of the social ladder below the Sorcery-using Beastfolk and Daemons. All races can use Signimancy, another form of magic, but only if they are holding a special type of item known as an Etheract.
  • Normal humans in Darkstalkers are called "C-Class Entities". "C-Class" also refers to the slave underclass of Makai.
  • In First Encounter Assault Recon, although Muggles are not an integral part of the plot, and the games themselves make no distinction, they're of note... for this being perhaps the only time their All of the Other Reindeer status works to the hero's advantage. The main character is the member of a special ops team devoted to response to paranormal incidents. He's teamed with a normal special ops squad that don't take this seriously, and thus send him off on a meaningless errand to open the gate, something which it would've made more sense for one of them to handle... because of this, he's not in the area when the killer ghost hiding on the other side of the gate decides to liquefy the entire squad, leaving only charred skeletons. This is then averted with Team Dark Signal in Project Origin. Though they don't know what's going on at first, they very, very quickly catch on to just how serious the supernatural shit they are dealing with really is, and by the middle of the game they're accepting the presence of psychic phenomenon and undead ghosts.
  • Golden Sun: Muggles are such a part of Weyard's population that in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, they are mentioned along with the Adept and master-craftsman ancestral races. However, their ancestral name is also an insult, suggesting the other races were Smug Supers during the so-called Golden Age of Man.
  • The Matrix: Path of Neo has Muggles who either need to be protected on Escort Missions, are ignored or get turned into Agents.
  • The OSA recording in System Shock 2 uses the term "Mundane" to refer to the non-psi talented.
  • In Ultima VII Part II, the mages of Moonshade refer to non-mages as "mundanes". As soon as you get a new spellbook, though, they seem to forget they ever called you a mundane.

    Webcomics 
  • Blip is a series starring a muggle — the Masquerade is in full effect, and the protagonist, K, is completely out of the loop. She lives a life that seems completely ordinary; but just out of sight, Heaven and Hell keep constant watch over her, and her best friends have to deal with demons and misguided vampire hunters. Her best friends are a witch, a vampire, and a Ridiculously Human Robot. She just has no idea that they are.
  • In El Goonish Shive, all humans have the potential to learn magic but relatively few actually do. Those who don't have access to any of their own spells are said to be sleeping. By contrast those who do have access to their own spells are said to be dreaming or to have awakened depending on the degree of magical attainment.
  • In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, Bob Smithson spent most his life as a Muggle to the nth power and was quite content being such... until his life took a turn for the peculiar.
  • The Kingfisher has no truly important human characters. Fortunately for these muggles, they are often seduced and left alive by the vampire characters.
  • A Magical Roommate has a fairly even distribution and variation of muggles, whom the author treats with surprising equality to the magical people. They run the whole gamut, from those who deny magic exists to, recently, one who has plans to open a magic school for muggles because there is no reason not to. That's not counting the difference between nobility and peasantry or the number of Secret Keepers that formed their own little Masquerade around X...
  • In morphE, as per the Mage: The Awakening universe that it is set in, non-magical citizens are known as Sleepers and have the potential to awaken to magic abilities under the correct circumstances.
  • In Schlock Mercenary, Kevin refers to his allies who don't understand wormwhole physics as "mundanes, heathens, muggles... armed" and then insists they accompany him into a science conference anyway.
  • Sleepless Domain takes place in a world where Magical Girls are commonplace, and typically receive the Dream and awaken their powers around the age of 13. However, despite magical girls making up the majority of the main cast, most girls will never experience the Dream at all. It's also possible for a magical girl to burn out her powers by pushing herself to the limit; one of the main characters does so as part of a First-Episode Twist and afterwards has to readjust to life without her powers.
  • In Sluggy Freelance, Zoe's family and college friends seem to be this, with no supernatural weirdness in their lives except for what follows Zoe around. The subject of Muggledom is used for many laughs during the Story Arc "Torg Potter and the Giblets with Fiber".

    Web Originals 
  • In the Colour Divide series on Scratch, those tested to not have any color powers are thrown out of Aurora and left there to be eaten by monsters outside. As revealed in the second episode, people without any color have grouped up and are led by a half-color person.
  • Destroy the Godmodder: Allusions are frequently made to the unfortunate inhabitants of whichever world the Godmodder (or Descendants) is currently terrorizing. They never do much, and the (extremely) rare events where they appear, they're C-List Fodder who never manage to do anything other than die and aren't even put into the End of Turn Battle. Supposedly, they are being terrorized off-screen by the various things that didn't quite make it to the battlefield.
  • In the Epithet Erased universe, individuals with epithets (the series equivalent of super abilities) are known as "inscribed" while those that do not have an epithet are referred to as "mundies".
  • The students and faculty of Monster High refer to ordinary humans as "normies". The term also comes into use for shapeshifting monsters while they're in human form.
  • Orion's Arm: Depending on whether you accept Clarke's Third Law, all people who have not breached the singularity barrier can be counted because they are all muggles compared to the Machine gods.
  • The Saga of Tuck: At one point, Tuck refers to a group of female underclassmen as "Homo Mundanus". Tuck and his (male) friends are extremely contemptuous of most of the people who surround them at school.
  • In the Whateley Universe, those who are not mutants are 'baselines' (or 'normals'). The baselines have far more creative names for the mutants.

    Western Animation 

    Real Life 
  • Otherkin, otakukin, and similar groups tend to refer to other people as "mundanes". This seems to be falling out of popular usage, though.
  • The term "mundanes" is also used by fandoms to describe those outside the fantasy and science fiction communities. Fans also use "muggle" in a similar way, particularly Harry Potter fans. Similarly, Whovians refer to non-fans as "the Not-We" in reference to the 1982 serial Kinda.
  • Even hackers use the term "Muggle". It has an entry in The Jargon File.
  • Non-SCA folks are called "mundanes" by members. Mundanes are also the clothes you wear in everyday life. (Same goes for Amtgard and (some) Renaissance Faires)
  • People who do not participate in Geocaching are called Muggles by Geocachers. When a geocache is removed, stolen, damaged, or vandalized by someone who is not a Geocacher, it has been "muggled."
  • In the autistic community, the term "allistic" are used to refer to the dominant/most common brain type, due to the negative implications of calling nonautists "normal", as that would imply there being something wrong with autism in general. Said terms are sometimes used in a joking fashion in order to demonstrate the silliness of much of the pathologization of autism. In more general terms, "neurotypical" is used to refer to people without any mental condition in generalnote  because, again, the term "normal" comes with very Unfortunate Implications.
  • Non-military and non-police personnel, also known as "civilians." In Russia, most youth subcultures (punks, metalheads, goths, otaku, LARPers, etc.) use the term "civilians" (tsivily in Russian) to refer to people outside their subcultures.
  • Many religious groups have a specific term for people from outside their faith — some derogatory (heathen, infidel, kaffirnote ), others more neutral (gentile, goyim, cowan), and some that can go either way (pagan, unbeliever, nonbeliever). Many have different terms for ex-believers who "became Muggles" by leaving the faith (e.g., apostate) and may treat them more harshly than those who never believed to begin with. Ostracism and even violence are not uncommon among certain faiths.
    • Before Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome, the word "Pagan" (Latin: pāgānus) had a meaning that could be interpreted as either "civilian" or "rural person". The latter "rural person" theory hinges on the idea that most Pagans in Christian Rome lived in the countryside, and the word had a meaning like "hick". The former "civilian" theory hinges on the idea that Christians saw themselves as "Soldiers of Christ" (Latin: milites Christi), and thus borrowed a Roman military term for civilians and used it as a general word for outsiders (not too different from the above-mentioned Russian subcultures).
    • Members of the neopagan community will sometimes call non-members "Muggles," replacing the earlier term "cowan," which has the same meaning. "Mundane" is also used in this context, largely due to the high degree of crossover between neopaganism and the SCA. Some neo-pagan groups also use the term "Profane" (see below) probably because of the very common overlaping between neo-paganism and Western Esotericism.
  • Masons call non-Masons "Profane" (and the term Profane is also commonly used for other Occultist in reference to non-Occultist people). Cowan is also used, but it refers to a non-Mason who pretends to be one.
  • BDSM practitioners refer to non-kinky sex, as well as people who prefer it, as "vanilla" (after the plainest, most common flavor of ice cream).
  • Some conspiracy theorists use insults like "sheeple" to refer to nonbelievers.
  • Elizabeth Hurley is on record as referring to people who don't live her sort of glamorous celebrity lifestyle as 'civilians'.
  • The term "normies" can be found in many parts of the internet to refer to sites (or parts of certain social networks) that don't really have their own distinct internet subculture.
  • Romani people (popularly, albeit derogatorily, known as "Gypsies") use several terms in reference to non-Romani, including gadjo and payo.
  • Plural people (People with DID or OSDD-1b) generally use the term "singlet" to refer to people who aren't systems.
  • People who are LGBTQIA+ (or Gender And Sexual Minorities) generally use the term "Cishet" or "Cisgender" to refer to people who are not LGBTQIA+.



Alternative Title(s): Muggle, Mundanes

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