Selective Obliviousness - TV Tropes

"It's not denial. I'm just very selective about the reality I accept."

• Another:
  • The students of Class 3 manage to force and subvert this trope, in an effort to stop the calamity that kills off members of the class and their family members. Due to the calamity being caused by one person in the class actually being dead, it can be averted if the class ignores one person in the class and pretends they don't exist... which only works sometimes, and it's hinted to only work if they pick the right one, which is pure chance. They originally choose Mei Misaki, until the protagonist ends up talking to her, having not been briefed by the class on how to behave. This appears to start the calamity all over again, and the students even resort to ignoring the protagonist himself, with no success. Irony, because the calamity had actually started before — with someone related to Mei, so she couldn't tell them because they were ignoring her.
  • Also present in that the one dead person in the class is impossible to detect, since everyone in the class and town and even the dead person themselves have no recollection of their death — at least, that is, unless someone kills them, in which case everything goes back to normal and everyone, except for the person who returned them to death, remembers them for how they really died, and has no recollection of their ever being in the class.
• Case Closed:
  • Ran has had suspicions about "Conan"'s identity, but not nearly as often as she should have, all things considered. (In one instance, Conan was terribly ill; he reverted to his normal appearance while nobody was watching him thanks to a drink he had been given by Heiji, then solved the mystery. He had a conversation with Ran, while obviously still very sick, then fell down the stairs and vanished in a puff of smoke. She heard Shinichi scream from nearby, and when she investigated, she found Conan instead. And somehow, she didn't figure it out.
  • Satou's very much aware of Takagi's affection for her at least relatively early on, and she definitely reciprocates it. What she isn't aware of is how much nearly every other male detective in her department is crushing on her (well, except for Shiratori, but that was only because she got stuck in an omiai with him), to the point where she never seems really aware why the Absolute Defense Line keeps making things difficult for the hapless Takagi. She doesn't even realize that any ring on her left ring finger will typically symbolize engagement! On the other hand, considering that the last officer she was attracted to died at a mad bomber's hands...er, explosives...she may just be subconsciously tuning out anything that could lead her into that sort of devastation again. Takagi's genuine love for her is the only thing capable of getting through that membrane.
• A Certain Magical Index: One constant across the series is that Touma Kamijou never realizes that at least half the female cast either have a crush on him or love him. Later novels imply he knows this, but chooses to ignore it because (a) picking one girl would hurt the others and (b) his life is already complicated enough without the girlfriend part.
• CLANNAD: Upon learning that his daughter, Nagisa is pregnant, Akio is torn between denial ("A stork brought it, right?"), joy at becoming a grandfather and wanting to strangle Tomoya for getting her pregnant. He does eventually (grudgingly) accept it. This is a rather extreme case, as Nagisa and Tomoya have been married for several months at that point and to make matters worse, he himself had been ribbing Tomoya about the possibility mere seconds before.
• In Cromartie High School, no one (except Kamiyama, Hayashida, and the Doctor that performed the school physicals) seems to notice that Mechazawa is, in fact, a robot. The same for the student gorilla.
• A Cruel God Reigns:
  • Ian Mind Rapes Jeremy. Which only helps to fuel Jeremy's Broken Bird, Sanity Slippage, and Trauma Conga Line syndromes.
  • Sandra also falls into this trope. She refuses to believe that Greg has been raping Jeremy.
• Death Note:
  • Misa is fairly intelligent, and professes to be talented when it comes to romance (and might well be), but refuses to see that her beloved Light actually hates her. She's perfectly capable of realizing when Light is fake-dating other girls just to use and manipulate them, but somehow never figures out he's doing the same with her. Admittedly, even if she did know, she still wouldn't care.
  • Light Yagami is utterly incapable of seeing that his actions make him just as bad as the criminals he kills, if not worse. When Ryuk point-blank tells him that once he kills all the evil people in the world, he'll be the only evil person left, Light brushes him off, remarking, "I don't know what you're talking about.
• In Dragon Ball Super, Goku is completely oblivious to the fact that Monaka is not actually a strong fighter, to the point of mistaking Beerus in a badly-made costume (which gets torn up during the fight) for him, and thinking that he can split himself into copies when he sees the real Monaka alongside the fake one.
• Played for Drama in Dr. Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist's "Gyoza Ears" arc, where the patient's ears transform into gyoza to absorb any sound that she doesn't want to hear, namely any mention or suggestion that her older son, Yuu—whom she is hallucinating—is actually Dead All Along.
• As a Running Gag in Eyeshield 21, Mamori continuously misses the signs that Sena is Eyeshield 21, despite Sena practically Clark Kenting. She knows Sena has the same build as Eyeshield 21, that Sena joined the football club, never saw Eyeshield 21 without his mask and Sena always seems to disappear when Eyeshield 21 shows up. She thinks "Every time Eyeshield 21 shows up... Sena never seems to be around. Maybe they... don't get along well?" The justification is that since she still sees Sena as a little kid who cannot stand up for himself, she simply cannot think of him as a successful football player. It's even lampshaded by Hiruma: "Preconceptions are harsh..."
• Sousuke from Full Metal Panic!. In the beginning, it looked more like he sincerely never notices when characters are in love with him. However, as the series goes on, it starts becoming more and more obvious (as his suitors become more and more direct) that he's actively turning up his obliviousness. This is no doubt due to his atypical upbringing, he probably has no idea HOW to react to such affection. His relationship with Tessa comes to mind, in particular. Numerous times, she makes incredibly aggressive advances on him, which he actually notices enough to feel nervous and scared. However, when people are later referring to her feelings for him, he's shown to react in a very oblivious manner, many times completely dismissing it. She's his commanding officer so he would have a good reason to do this.
• Kyon of Haruhi Suzumiya very deliberately ignores any hinting that the Chessgame of Life may have a King (who decides the game) as well as a Queen (who has the power in the game); he refuses to acknowledge Tachibana flat out telling him that he has the power to transfer Haruhi's power as well as Tsuruya's telling him that he and his friends really need to work on their Masquerade better. And then there's just his ignoring Haruhi's feelings for him; over which she's willing to rewrite the whole of reality over. Even Itsuki is starting to get annoyed.
• Nearly the entire cast of Hayate the Combat Butler has this about one subject or another (Sakuya, for example, believes her destiny is to become Japan's greatest comedienne, with Nagi as her partner).
• In Hetalia: Axis Powers:
  • England doesn't seem to comprehend what colonial America meant by "Go to hell, England". Even in the present, he thinks of how cute of a kid America was. Since it was a very early strip it seems to have been retconned since then, and all later strips show the relationship between England and little America as genuinely warm and fluffy, with little America pretending to enjoy England's cooking even though it's horrible, being happy to receive presents from England, and crying when England goes home.
  • Spain has this, especially in the strip where he proposes to Romano. He merely asked for three meals a day without the slightest hinting to either option, but Spain automatically takes it as rejection.
  • America also fits in this, as Word of God states that he "refuses to read the atmosphere". In other words, he can literally choose whether to remain oblivious to an event or finally pay attention to it.
  • Russia seems to think that other nations actually want to live with him. When one of them rebels and he does have to face the fact that they all hate him except for Belarus, he doesn't seem to have a clue why.
  • More recently, Denmark has been hinted to do this as well, ignoring aggressive social behaviour and maintaining a cheery demeanour. He never gets it whenever Norway insults him, and during the 2011 Halloween event, when Belarus throws a hanger at him and declares that Russia's team will win, he simply wished her luck.
  • Then there's Japan's reaction after he and Greece had sex: "IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM! I'M SO GLAD IT WAS JUST A DREAM!"
• Is It My Fault That I Got Bullied?
  • Everybody in Shiori's class chooses to completely ignore the bullying she receives by Nagumo, even when it's right in front of them.
  • Once Shiori slaps Nagumo over the drawing of her mother’s attempted suicide with her watching, the bullies make it look like she’s a bitch and chant at her to apologize, with the rest of the class joining in.
  • After the Gang of Bullies gets Convicted by Public Opinion, the class turns on the bullies and try to apologize to Shiori, but she rightfully calls them out on this.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Inverted and enforced in Golden Wind. When Illuso's Man in the Mirror affects only one person out of a party, the person Illuso's specifically is targeting will be the only one able to see Illuso in a mirror's reflection.
• Poor Asuka Jr. in Kaitou Saint Tail has to cling onto this to get by after the Mid-Season Twist: he's starting to fall in love with his classmate Meimi, but a certain incident has also gotten him to suspect that she's actually the Phantom Thief Saint Tail (whom he's been chasing as the detective assigned to her cases). The questions that would naturally come out of this are so uncomfortable to think about that he latches onto every bit of Plausible Deniability and tries not to think about it too hard, instead channeling his energy into catching Saint Tail in the hopes of confirming her identity that way. After a while, even that runs dry when he starts sensing that she gives off the same aura, making him unable to not think about the issue and forcing him to confront his feelings on the subject for real. Ultimately, he decides that his love for Meimi comes first and starts a relationship with her, hoping that he can get his answers one way or another and mentally categorizing them as separate people for the time being; unfortunately, the Arc Villain forcibly reveals her identity to him and drags him away from her, leaving him with all of the uncomfortable questions and none of the answers he wanted until she comes to get him four days later.
• Yurika in Martian Successor Nadesico tends to do this, insisting that Akito is head-over-heels in love with her, even though he's never shown any signs of it and tends to get pretty annoyed when she tries to get close to him. But it's possible that her obliviousness is all part of a master plan to make Akito fall in love with her. if so, it works.
• Monster (1994): Eva manages to overlook the fact that she had mistreated Tenma in the worst way - and when he tells her, nine years after she had broken off their engagement, that he is flattered but uninterested in reconciling, she chooses to turn a deaf ear and threaten him with telling the police that he had killed her father should he really decide to continue his life without her.
• In Moyashimon, Aoi Mutou used to work hard at part-time jobs so she and her boyfriend could afford a place together. But one day, she arrived at his apartment only to find he had moved out, taken the money they had saved and left a note saying he had found someone else. Mutou preferred to believe that he had been abducted by aliens, which is how she fell in with the agricultural university's UFO Club. Any attempts to bring up the obvious truth simply drive her to drink.
• Ikuto in Nagasarete Airantou is this to anything supernatural, dismissing it as his imagination or putting it into logical reason, despite living on a daily basis with talking animals and a kappa. When Ikuto's sister is introduced it's revealed that she is actually a youkai and that he has been cursed to prevent him from realising.
• Naruto:
  • Naruto didn't realize Hinata had strong feelings for him, something many of the other ninjas were easily able to figure out. He also doesn't realize that Sasuke really doesn't want to come back to the village, even after Sasuke impales him and almost kills Sakura and Kakashi.
  • Naruto's not the only one with a tendency towards this trope when it comes to Sasuke - Sakura's just as bad, always believing that eventually Sasuke will come back to them no matter how many times she is proven wrong - she still keeps her love for Sasuke even when he actively tried to kill her. Eventually he does pull a Heel–Face Turn for good and they have a daughter together, but even then Sasuke chooses to Walk the Earth to atone for his previous deeds.
• Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion does it as part of her Belligerent Sexual Tension with Shinji: while she never misses an opportunity to berate his perceived weaknesses and constantly calls him an idiot, pervert, etc., whenever he demonstrates evidence to the contrary, she makes a pointed effort to ignore it due to her severe intimacy issues. This becomes even stronger as the series goes on, eventually contributing to her mental breakdown when she realizes it's not working anymore.
• Ouran High School Host Club: Tamaki persistently interprets his attraction to Haruhi as paternal affection; hilarity, naturally, frequently ensues out of the dissonance. Aside from Haruhi herself, no one else is fooled, and in later volumes the other members of the Host Club speculate that Tamaki subconsciously refuses to acknowledge his feelings for Haruhi because he doesn't want anything to break up the surrogate family he's created in the Host Club the way his parents' love caused his own family to be broken up. The funny thing is, Tamaki's "paternal love" obsession goes a bit far when he realizes he's romantically in love with Haruhi. He thinks of himself as a "perverted lech" preying upon his "daughter" and feels horrified about committing "incest".
• Penguin Revolution: It takes Ayaori six manga volumes of rooming together and, finally, actually seeing Yukari naked (with his contacts in, for a change) before he realizes that Yukari is a girl pretending to be a boy instead of a boy pretending to be a girl. Sure, he's Blind Without 'Em, but Yukari pretty much stops trying to keep the act up around him before the first volume is over.
• In Ranma ½:
  • The bombastic Tatewaki "Blue Thunder" Kuno refuses to believe that the hated Ranma Saotome and his beloved "Pigtailed Girl" are one and the same, even when Ranma changes right in his arms. After a while, one wonders if he isn't fully aware and just forcing himself not to think about it. His sister has a similar ailment, but she isn't confronted with the evidence quite as often (and in the anime, never) and actually tried to figure out what happened before getting sidetracked. Kuno might also be purposely ignoring all of the blatant evidence that neither of his "love interests" actually even likes him, let alone lusts after him... although this may be less Selective Obliviousness and more a cocktail of Casanova Wannabe grade lechery (Kuno is debatably a Handsome Lech) and whopping ego.
  • Akane Tendo is often accused of this regarding the fact that her pet pig is actually the cursed form of one of Ranma's rivals for her affections. It's got to be the biggest problem she brings to the relationship, even worse than her insecurity. That's not to say that Ranma doesn't contribute his own flaws, faults, and problems, but when she's been shown to consciously ignore Ranma's attempts to explain how a situation wasn't what it looked like, to the extent that the manga version of Akane ignored Ranma's outright telling her why he was trying to grope Hinako, coupled with showing her the pressure point chart he was using, in order to support her own belief that it's because Ranma is an uncontrollable lecher. In the anime canon, this flaw is actually the explicit reason why Akane is a Lethal Chef; she refuses to follow the recipe and adds extra ingredients that she believes will make it even better (and then adds the wrong wrong ingredients, due to not looking at what she's grabbing), and refuses to admit her cooking habits are why nobody will ever eat her cooking unless forced. In one episode, she spends the entire night trying to make edible cookies and continues to repeat the same mistakes over and over even though each and every batch turns out terrible. When Ranma finally allows himself to be guilted into eating her latest batch, and promptly takes to his room with severe stomach pains, Akane idly declares that the recipe must have been faulty.
  • Kasumi Tendo calls people who are actively trying to murder Ranma his "friends". Often flanderized in Fan Fic into one of her defining traits.
  • Mousse could be called Selectively Oblivious in regards to Shampoo. He refuses to admit that the girl he's been chasing since they were three has never shown any sign of reciprocated interest, at best ignoring him and more commonly hitting him whenever he made one of his "romantic" gestures/speeches. By the late manga, she's perfectly willing to let him die just to be rid of him. Instead, Mousse blames her lack of interest on her (willingly given and clearly backed by genuine emotion, at least in the anime) engagement to Ranma and frequently assaults the Japanese boy, accusing him of seducing Shampoo or otherwise keeping her away from Mousse.
• Reborn! (2004): Yamamoto Takeshi is the poster boy for this trope. He has seen talking infants wield guns, come very close to dying at least three times, traveled forward in time to stop an Omnicidal Maniac from destroying the world, and, depending on your interpretation of his character, still thinks the mafia is a role-playing game that Tsuna and Gokudera cooked up. After being specifically told this isn't a game multiple times.
  • Lambo at least has basic awareness that he's in the mafia, but being a five-year-old, he is unable to grasp that the major events in the series are serious mafia business, instead believing that he is being taken along to play. This results in at least two occasions of a rude awakening after he ends up injured.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena was interesting in that it didn't portray the girl (Shiori) practicing Selective Obliviousness in a positive light. One can also argue that Utena starts indulging in this after episode 31.
• In Skip Beat!, Kyouko is completely oblivious to the fact that Ren is in love with her, even after his assistant blatantly told her.
• In Snow White with the Red Hair it is implied over time the Mitsuhide's apparent unawareness of Kiki's feelings for him is more something he's playing up as he would rather not address it. To a different degree it is eventually confirmed that his apparent obliviousness to the crushes and flirtations of most of the female staff in the castle is just his way of dealing with unwanted potential romantic attachments until such things get to the point where he needs to actually say that he has no interest.
• Souichi of the Boy's Love manga The Tyrant Falls in Love doesn't seem to realize that he's making an awful lot of exceptions to his homophobia in regards to his gay companion Morinaga, not even after he says outright that he doesn't want Morinaga to leave him and that he can have sex with Morinaga only. That must be one hell of a balancing act between "I hate hate homos!" and "I can't let Morinaga leave my side, even if he likes me that way!" in Souichi's mind.

• Asterix:
  • Don't bother to ask the Gauls about the location of Alesia, the place where Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix and annexed the Galia into the Roman Empire (with the exception of a small village that resists, then and ever, the invader). The Gauls will react with a mixture of berserk screams and aggressive denial. (The Historical In-Joke being that, at the time the books were written, people really didn't know where Alesia was. These days archeologists are pretty sure it's Alise-Sainte-Reine.)
  • Another example from the same comic strip: the very obvious obese Obelix is always in denial that he is "fat". Whenever characters refer to him as "fat" he is either blissfully unaware they are referring to him or he just gets angry and shouts: "I'm not fat!"
• Batman:
  • It's implied that, if Commissioner Gordon wanted to, he could figure out Batman's identity, but he deliberately chooses not to, and has, in fact, refused to look when Batman offered to reveal who he really was.
  • In Batman: Year One, Batman, out of costume, just saved his infant son's life and hands him the child. Even though he's personally met and spoken to Bruce Wayne, Gordon blames the loss of his glasses for his (claimed) inability to recognize the man he's talking to and standing two feet away from.
  • In the No Man's Land arc^note , Batman tries to get the understandably-abandoned-feeling Gordon to trust him again, and takes off his mask. Gordon immediately turns away, stating that if he wanted to know Batman's identity, he could have figured it out years ago, and even cryptically saying, "And for all you know, maybe I did."
  • In the Dick Grayson Batman era, it is repeatedly all but stated that Gordon knows who Batman is and more importantly, who he was.
  • In the New 52, Batgirl offers to take her hood off in front of him. He doesn't want to know. In the pre-52 continuity, he tells Barbara that he already knew about her being Batgirl when she comes clean to him, just never let on about it. There's a different take on this in Booster Gold, where Booster's sister poses as Batgirl, and Jim is clearly eager to seize on this as evidence that Barbara isn't Batgirl, without admitting to himself that's what he's doing, because that would be admitting the possibility had occurred to him.
• Emma Frost: Hazel refuses to believe her daughter's claims of Winston's infidelity even when confronted with clear evidence. Not even Emma telepathically sharing the memory of her witnessing Winston's affair is enough to convince her.
• Fantastic Four: It's painfully obvious that Doctor Doom, being a supergenius and all, should be able to realize that Reed Richards had nothing to do with the malfunction that caused Doom's experiment to blow up in Doom's face, and was only trying to explain to Doom that the experiment was flawed. However, Doom apparently can't stand the idea of Reed being smarter than him, so he steadfastly refuses to see reason and continues to try to destroy Reed's life in "revenge". It's hinted he does know this full well deep down though, as whenever Reed calls him out on this bullshit, he tends to fly into a homicidal rage, and at least once started beating Reed into a bloody pulp while screaming at him to admit he sabotaged the experiment "or else!"
• Like with Doom above, Loki has this problem, though some of it does depend on how sympathetically he's being portrayed. While many writers acknowledge that Loki was The Un-Favourite, how much of this is his own fault varies.
  • Also, Loki often claims things like "everyone hated me" which is untrue. While most of Asgard does indeed dislike him, Thor himself often references that he and Loki were happy together as children, and Loki just seems to block that time out so his Freudian Excuse is more credible.
    • Loki returned to childhood age, with only those memories, and guess what? He's happy and knows that Thor loves him like the little brother he is and cares for Thor in return He also doesn't get why everyone seems to hate him since he doesn't remember all the things he did as an adult, which lends credence to the idea that Loki was editing his own self history to make it so he was "always hated" so his excuse held up.
    • Now he does know since many people of Asgard pointed it out for him that his scheme led to The Sentry bringing Asgard crashing down. However, they are also unwilling to tell him almost anything else (like who people are, what is happening at the moment, etc), since they still want to off him the second they think Thor won't care. The only exceptions so far seem to be the Warriors Three, who seem to do so very grudgingly (unless the story is funny or makes who Loki used to look bad).
    • Loki is a young adult once more, with their past-selves memories and abilities but their child-selfs morality and sense of right-and-wrong, and in the first issue of their own series it quickly establishes that at least some part of Loki's past hatred is justified, as Thor admits that he did use to be quite a bully to Loki when they were younger. After he's briefly returned to his previous cruel, alcoholic bullying self, he apologises for making Loki the way they once were, while Loki themself forgives him now that they're both heroes. Cue awws from the audience.
• Sins of Sinister: In "Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants" #2, Destiny tries talking Mystique out of doing something she disapproves of on the grounds it's "not you". Mystique shoots back that it is, it's just a part of Raven Irene's never liked.
• Spider-Man:
  • J. Jonah Jameson generally frowns upon "costumed vigilantes", considering them usurpers of law and order. But he is willing to give the devil his due when it comes to true acts of heroism and is considerably lighter on those he feels have "paid their due" — like Captain America. Of course, there is a big Spider-Man-shaped blind spot in this P.O.V. — which, Depending on the Writer, can range in severity from Running Gag (Robbie Robertson constantly having to talk Jonah down from some of his more libelous headlines and editorials) to outright insanity (the newly-elected mayor of NYC Jameson gleefully watching a S.W.A.T. team open fire on Spidey without provocation). Robbie Robertson occasionally hints that he knows perfectly well who Spider-Man is, but that he can't acknowledge it. If he "knew," then he'd be morally and professionally obligated to tell his best friend and boss J. Jonah Jameson.
  • Spencer Smythe, the creator of the Spider-Slayers, fell victim to this when he sent his second Slayer after Spider-Man and found the wall-crawler emerging from an apartment. Smythe was so certain that Spider-Man was a criminal that he immediately assumed that his target was robbing the location, when if he had actually checked Smythe might have realised a vital clue to Spider-Man’s secret identity (the apartment was Peter Parker’s, Spider-Man having gone there to relax after a stressful few days).
  • In the 2000s, Aunt May found out Pete was Spider-Man and called him out on not telling her, pointing out that she had survived the death of his parents and Uncle Ben. She also said that for a while, she had thought he was gay. Peter burst into laughter.
  • After One More Day saw all public knowledge of Spider-Man's secret identity being erased from the wider world, a side-effect of the spell includes a "psychic blindspot" that basically imposes this kind of view on other people concerning Spider-Man's secret identity. As long as the spell behind the blindspot was intact, even if others were faced with a stack of evidence pointing to the fact that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, people were unable to put the pieces together; as an example, when Norman Osborn found a camera fitted with a motion detector focused on a tracker in Spider-Man's suit, Osborn concluded that Spider-Man took pictures of himself and used Peter Parker as his front man to sell the photos, unable to make the more logical deduction that Peter and Spider-Man were the same man.
• Superman:
  • One story has Lois Lane admonishing the Man of Steel for "that creepy Clark Kent impersonation." (Indeed, one might make a claim that the whole Superman mythos embodies this trope, as it would seem painfully obvious that Superman is just Clark Kent without glasses.)
  • Lex Luthor can be a particularly bad example of this, overlapping with Evil Cannot Comprehend Good. Despite his genius-level intellect, several times he's discovered the secret identity of Superman, but disregards it as a mistake since he cannot fathom that a Physical God could be living a normal life as the meek, mild-mannered Clark Kent.
  • Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet. During the Batman: Hush storyline, Batman surmises that Perry may be well aware of Superman's secret identity (being "too good of a reporter" not to see it), but chooses not to let on that he knows. However, the New 52 version is unaware of the truth, and takes it very badly when Superman's identity is revealed to the world in Superman: Truth, believing Clark was only working at the Planet to "sell his story", and firing him not long after. The Rebirth version also seems to have been unaware, but takes the reveal better.
• Suske en Wiske: Lambik is very vain, yet never realizes he's not as clever, powerful or great as he thinks. In "De Dromendiefstal" a villain tricks him into leaving him unguarded and then escapes. As Lambik returns and finds this out he first says: "How stupid of me!" But then he immediately corrects this to: "Stupid? No, he just took advantage of my confidence."
• Tintin: Professor Calculus, who is obviously stone deaf, doesn't wear a hearing aid, because "he's just a little hard of hearing, that's all."
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Under Marston's pen it's questionable whether or not Gen. Darnell is just clueless about Diana Prince and Wonder Woman being one and the same, but Steve Trevor acting like he doesn't know "Di" and his "Angel" are one and the same is highly suspect, given he can recognize her by voice, can recognize her with her hair up, can recognize her with glasses on, regularly teases her about the similarities between the two and seems to love catching "Di" wearing part of WW's outfit and so on, but maintain plausible deniability by never actually confronting her or confirming his "suspicions". Under later writers Steve seems to be legitimately clueless.

• Krazy Kat, convinced that the psychopathic mouse who throws bricks at his head every day does so only as a sign of undying love. When Officer Pupp arrives to nab Ignatz for his crimes and toss him in jail, Krazy just thinks they're playing tag, like the good friends that they are.

• A particularly black comedic example comes from the Danish film Adam's Apples with the story's Deuteragonist, Ivan. After a life that seems like nothing but one endless streak of extremely horrible things happening into him (his mother died in his early childhood, his father was both violent and sexually abusive, his beloved sister was Driven to Suicide, his son was born severely disabled, his wife also committed suicide, and finally he was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor) this behavior has become pathological to him, to point where almost everything he says are Blatant Lies (though he fully believes them himself), such as claiming his son is a completely healthy and normal kid, and his wife is still alive and "around somewhere", and the criminals in his care are all reformed even though they clearly still frequently engage in their old crimes. Ultimately though, his obliviousness is what keeps him sane and alive.
• The baker in The Baker's Wife insists that his wife left to visit her mother, even when it's clear to everyone that she left to be with another man.
• Dr. Strangelove: When Gen. Turgidson is confronted with the refusal of president Muffley to attack Russia first with nuclear weapons (because a limited American nuclear attack is already in progress due to unauthorized orders, and would inevitably spark retaliation from the Russian), he insists that it's the smartest thing to do, because by striking first American casualties would be way smaller than otherwise. He seems to be completely unable to grasp that American casualties assessment is not really the point at stake because Muffley does not arguably want to kill millions of Russian citizens because of one American general who went nuts.

  Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war.
  Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say: no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops! Uh...depended on the breaks.

• Godzilla vs. Kong: Mark Russell's entire role can be summed up as this trope. He's just as blind as Team Kong and the rest of the world to the suspicion that should be falling on Apex Cybernetics in light of Godzilla's attack on their factory, but he takes it a step further. He irrationally descends into denial that there's any cause or reason for Godzilla's seeming hostility save for Mark thinking that HE is reliving a repeat of what previously happened with his Fallen Heroine ex-wife Emma in the previous movie. As a result, Madison is forced to give up trying to talk sense into her idiot father. This gets somewhat subverted in the novelization, where Mark and Guillerman investigate Godzilla's attack and don't hesitate to suspect Apex. Also, despite noting Madison's bravery, independence, and wisdom beyond her years, Mark chooses to ignore them and treat her like a naive and helpless child who doesn't know any better and needs coddling.
• This is what the title of An Inconvenient Truth refers to (specifically, being unwilling to observe something because your job depends on you not observing it).
• In Lone Star State of Mind, Jimbo's father keeps trying to set him up on dates with pretty girls, even though Jimbo has been out of the closet for years and everybody else knows. Jimbo even screams, "I'm gay!" to him, to no avail.
• In The Kindergarten Teacher, Grant Spinelli doesn't seem to notice or care much that his wife's growing obsession with Jimmy or her dissatisfaction with life.
• Mars Attacks!. Art Land is so intent on selling the investors on building his casino that he ignores the all-out alien attack going on outside.
• Charlie in Me, Myself & Irene is very willfully blind to the fact that his three sons are very obviously not his, even after his wife left him for her lover. The scene where they're born implies he realized something was amiss as soon as the first was born, but then aggressively chose not to accept it.

  Eric: Charlie, did you ever notice your kids have sort of a... year-round tan?
  Charlie: Uh, yeah, well, my great-grandmother's half-Italian, so...

• The Superman example is lampshaded in Mystery Men. The Shoveller refuses to believe that millionaire Lance Hunt is really superhero Captain Amazing. He points out to Mr. Furious that Lance Hunt wears glasses, while Captain Amazing doesn't. Mr. Furious ripostes that he takes off his glasses when he transforms. The Shoveller responds "That doesn't make any sense! He wouldn't be able to see!"
• A creepy example in Shutter Island. An asylum inmate subconsciously created an elaborate illusion of residing in her neighborhood and treated other patients and staff as neighbors or delivery men, flatly refusing to admit that she's been committed for murdering her children. Then the unfolding story reveals that the protagonist suffers from that very delusion, and that he created a far more elaborate illusion that placed him in the shoes of a federal marshal investigating the escape of the aforementioned inmate from the asylum and secretly searching for another inmate that killed his wife. In fact, the nonexistent escaped inmate is his wife, who murdered their children and thus drove him insane and the nonexistent killer is himself.
• In Some Like It Hot, Jack Lemmon, masquerading as "Daphne", gets a marriage proposal from Osgood, an elderly millionaire. Daphne tries to talk him out of it:

  Daphne: Well ... in the first place, I'm not a natural blonde.
  Osgood: Doesn't matter.
  Daphne: I smoke! I smoke all the time!
  Osgood: I don't care.
  Daphne: I have a terrible past! For three years now, I've been living with a saxophone player!
  Osgood: I forgive you.
  Daphne: [tearfully] I can never have children.
  Osgood: We can adopt some.
  Daphne: You don't understand, Osgood ... [ripping off wig] I'm a man!
  Osgood: Well, nobody's perfect.

• In Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren knows his hero and grandfather Darth Vader was also Anakin Skywalker, who embraced the Light Side of the Force before dying, but ignores Anakin and worships Vader's legacy.
• Young Frankenstein: Eigor the hunchbacked assistant is totally unaware that he has a hump. Yet, as Fronkensteen later points out, Eigor's hump seems to move places so Eigor must be aware of it somehow: he just denies its existence.

• This is the cornerstone of Nineteen Eighty-Four's Doublethink. Bonus points for the requirements that obliviousness must not only be selective but also A) instantly switchable, as in you must completely and sincerely forget whatever you vehemently believed in a moment ago and, if necessary, switch back the next moment; and B) recursive, as in you must forget that you've just forgotten something, forget having forgotten that, et cetera.

  The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak.
  He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions — 'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' — and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them.
  Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

• "And Not Quite Human": The major symptom every ailing crewmen reports is intense nightmares, which shouldn't be possible because Arcturians are bred and conditioned not to dream. The doctor therefore acts with disdain towards the patients but when he finds himself unable to solve the medical crisis and stress drives him to his breaking point, the doctor finally admits to himself that he too has been suffering nightmares.
• Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest: Volume 10 reveals that Suzu saw all the red-flags in Eri's behaviour after they arrived in Tortus, she just ignored them because she didn't want to think the worse of her friend.
• The Butcher Boy: Francie pretends not to notice how dysfunctional his parents are. Later he just can’t accept that his father has died because of his alcoholism and goes out of his way to convince himself that he is just sleeping a lot because he's drunk, and that the foul smell everybody complains about (and which he pretends not to notice) must be from a dead animal.
• The City & the City: Two European cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma, exist on the same spot at the same time, interwoven with each other. Citizens of one city are trained from a young age to "unsee" the other city and its citizens, under dire penalty from a peacekeeping force known as the Breachers.
• Discworld:
  • Twoflower is besotted with the idea of Rincewind as a Great Wizzard (sic), and refuses to realize that he's completely incapable of doing magic. This is far more prominent in Interesting Times, though, as he does seem to exhibit something approaching realization in The Colour of Magic.
  • The Duck Man refuses to realize that he has a duck on his head, regardless of how many people tell him so in no uncertain terms.
  • Lord Rust is well known for, as the author puts it, "Erasing unwelcome sights and sounds from his personal universe". This causes problems for him when people like Detritus and the Dean of Unseen University are apparently too large to erase, and Hilarity when Vimes takes advantage of it to swear at him without him noticing. This appears to have at least some effect on reality; for instance, he's so confident that a Gentleman isn't in any real danger on the battlefield that arrows will arc around him and hit someone else.
  • In Making Money, Mr Bent prides himself on his impeccable perception and eye for detail (he can spot a miscalculation with just a glance from across the room) but is oblivious to a female coworker's open infatuation with him. Presumably it's not so much self-denial as it is an inability to expect anyone to have those feelings for him.
  • Nanny Ogg will never see her cat Greebo as anything other than a sweet little kitten, as opposed to the one-eyed, battle-scarred multiple rapist that everyone else knows and fears.
  • Monstrous Regiment: Lieutenant Blouse has the "officer's ability to erase unwanted sights and sounds from existence". In this case, it's Igor volunteering to be his batman, so he goes with Polly (who did not volunteer at all) instead.
• The Doctor Who New Adventures novel Death and Diplomacy had the Doctor respond to a blatant come-on by a female villain by saying he made a point of being entirely oblivious to such things or getting them noticeably wrong, because it saved a lot of trouble.
• The Dresden Files: Dialogue implies that Harry is aware of Molly's feelings for him, but attributes them to trauma and chooses to ignore them, cutting out the parts of his narration that mention them.
• Foreign Affairs: Virginia aka "Vinnie" is a professor doing a study of children's rhymes. A little girl approaches Vinnie and starts reciting racist, obscene rhymes. Vinnie is not only personally uncomfortable, as she is a quite prim and starchy woman, she also realizes that the girl's rhymes undermine her thesis. So she decides to forget them.
• Harry Potter:
  • The Ministry of Magic chooses not to believe that Voldemort is back in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix despite the overwhelming evidence. They lead the public to believe that all is well and constantly berate Harry and Dumbledore as liars. It's explained that they have a contrived denial caused from how horrible Voldemort's previous reign of terror was. It was explained by the protagonists that the Ministry suspected Dumbledore of using Voldemort as a scapegoat to explain his own screw-ups at running the school. The Minister of Magic Fudge, on the other hand, believes that Dumbledore is trying to usurp him as Minister of Magic. It came back to bite them in the butt when Fudge got kicked out of office and public opinion of the Ministry plummets when it was discovered that Dumbledore and Harry were right.
  • In Book 4, it's briefly mentioned that Petunia, who could spot the tiniest imperfections that could be used for gossip fodder, refused to see that Dudley's obesity had reached dangerous levels (in the book he's compared to a young killer whale). She only sees reason after Dudley's school nurse sends her a letter about it since the school doesn't stock uniforms in Dudley's size.
  • Hermione refuses to listen to anyone who tells her that House Elves have different values than humans and enjoy serving wizards more than freedom (and that's including the House Elves themselves).
  • Snape refuses to see Harry as anything other than an egotistical rule-breaking show-off, in spite of any and all evidence, such as basic observation of Harry's behaviour might produce (okay, the "rule-breaking" part is kind of true, admittedly). That this is also his view of Harry's father, who bullied Snape when they were at school, has a lot to do with this - Snape just sees James Potter whenever he looks at Harry, and Snape refused to see James' better parts as well. Dumbledore has to actually tell him that Harry's personality is more similar to his mother's than his father's, something Snape just chooses to ignore.
• Heralds of Valdemar: The residents of Valdemar have a magically-induced blind spot when it comes to the existence of magic and the true nature of their Companions. For example, the scholars of Valdemar insist that the ballad of Kerowyn's ride, an account of more or less contemporary events, is meant to be interpreted metaphorically even after the real Kerowyn shows up in Valdemar and becomes one of the Queen's best-known advisors.
• In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (at least the novels), Zaphod is literally selectively aware of his own motives, due to having both of his brains surgically altered so that certain thoughts wouldn't be detectable by the brain scans he needed to undergo in order to become President of the Galaxy.
  • This is also in the movie. It's more of a Hand Wave of Zaphod's two heads because they don't go into specifics.
  • The basis for the Applied Phlebotinum of the S.E.P. field. Making something invisible is incredibly difficult and requires massive power; a S.E.P. field is easy to make and can be run off a single battery. People can see things under a S.E.P. field, but they don't notice them, because whatever it is, it's Somebody Else's Problem.
  • Mostly Harmless features a species of bird that is oblivious to every strange thing that happens, like ignoring a fiery spaceship crash. However, they are always shocked by perfectly mundane things. For example, "...And sunrise always took them completely by surprise."
    • Their train of logic is that an unusual thing only happens once, so it's not worth noticing, as it'll probably not affect them. On the other hand, something that happens every day will affect them, so it's worth noticing.
• IT: The entire town of Derry is afflicted with this, because IT is subtly manipulating them into complacency until IT chooses a scapegoat for them to slaughter. Practically all of Derry sees Beverly being abused by various people and none of them help, one man even calmly going back into his house rather than even scold her harassers. At one point, a man walks into a bar and dismembers a group of men playing cards with an axe. The rest of the patrons don't so much as ask him to leave... but when it's all said and done, they personally storm into the police station, nab him, and lynch him.
• The King's Avatar: Despite all the evidence that says otherwise (knowing Ye Xiu is a retired professional player, having played Glory for ten years, is exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable about the game and Ye Xiu flat out telling her who he really is), Chen Guo simply does not realize that her newest employee is the infamous Ye Qiu.
• Lady Chatterley's Lover: Clifford manages to be shocked when he finally learns that his wife has been having an affair with another man. His maid recognizes that he subconsciously knew about his wife's infidelity from the start, but just didn't have the courage to face it.
• In the Hercule Poirot novel The Murder on the Links, it is noted that Poirot's rival investigator, Detective Giraud, is so focused on his own perspective and ideas that he ignores certain key evidence that doesn't fit his theory that the murder victim was killed by his son, Jack Renauld, in order to secure his inheritance. However, Giraud's theory doesn't explain a piece of lead piping found by the body (which was (intended to disfigure the originally-planned fake corpse after death to hide its true identity). His theory also fails to properly explain why, if Jack Renauld killed his father for his inheritance, he would have bothered trying to bury the body afterwards; obviously he wanted the body found swiftly so that he could claim the inheritance, which meant that trying to hide it would be stupid at best.
• Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey is such a Gothic novel fan she tries to read the plot of one into her stay at the Abbey and the late Mrs. Tilney's death, imagining a terrible and sad murder story. But she casts herself as the heroine, while completely missing that Eleanor Tilney hits all the notes of a classic Gothic heroine: dead mother, overbearing father, living in effective isolation, and with a secret forbidden love.
• A short story "Perfectly Adjusted" by Gordon R. Dickson has a space traveler land on a planet. He encounters a village with two populations, where persons of one population are oblivious to anyone in the other. They dress very differently, so the main character can distinguish between the two. Representatives of both populations see him because his dress is ambiguous. There is at least one hint that the obliviousness is pretended: Children sometimes interact with children from the opposite population. Parents often find an excuse to spank those children. The main character resolves the issue by turning on a ray that causes everyone's clothes to melt.
• Part of what makes Molly a Base-Breaking Character is because of this trope in the Realm of the Elderlings Farseer Trilogy, where she constantly gets angry with Fitz and accuses him of toying with her when he tries to explain to her multiple times that the reason they have to keep their relationship secret and why he can't spend all his time with her is because of his position at court, since he's secretly an assassin for King Shrewd (something he is forbidden to tell anyone about—even Burrich doesn't know). Molly continues to refuse to believe he is being honest about the precariousness of his position or how much danger she would be in, even when she's almost assaulted by two armed men on horseback because of her association with Fitz.
• The Secret History: Julian knows every important part of the plot, except for the crucial fact that five of his students killed the sixth one. He wants to believe the best of them, but really, it's not a huge leap to make...
• In the Jin Yong novel Smiling Proud Wanderer Linghu Chong, despite usually being quite perceptive and it becoming glaringly obvious, cannot grasp that his master is a scheming coward who doesn't care one bit for either Linghu Chong or any other of his pupils.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Tywin Lannister is a frighteningly intelligent lord and Hand of the King. He's smart, relentless, brutal and utterly competent — except when it comes to his family, especially his dwarf son Tyrion. Tywin is so appalled by Tyrion's dwarfism — and so angry that his beloved wife died giving birth to Tyrion — he can't recognize Tyrion's worth and the essential fact that his hated son actually has all of his father's intelligence and cunning.
• Starship Troopers: While Johnnie Rico tries hard to paint himself as "just another ape", reading between the lines shows he's pegged as leadership material almost from the start. This comes to a head when he tells his brevet Platoon Leader that he wants to enroll in Officer Candidate School. He's shocked when the man pulls out the necessary paperwork, already filled out, requiring only Johnnie's signature.
• Early on in Quill's Window, Courtney Thane's mother writes to him that she genuinely has no idea why his father cut him out of the will right before he died, and Courtney's sentiment seems to be the same. When we find out the reason for this later in the book, it becomes quite obvious that if either of them had engaged in serious self-reflection they would know the reason behind the father's I Have No Son! moment.
• The Wheel of Time: One of Mat Cauthon's defining characteristics.
  • Born the son of a horse trader in a backwards village, he identifies himself as a simple man who rolls his eyes at the nobles he encounters, only good for gambling with and stealing their coins. Despite that, he throughout the series gains military command, political intrigue, and a taste for fine clothing and drink. It's almost parody when, late in the series, he ends up marrying a foreign princess and him insisting that "just because he married a princess, that didn't mean that he was a bloody noble" with his friends pointing out that not only did that make him a nobleman, it is the very definition of being made nobility.
  • He rescued the young orphan Olver from being whipped after messing with one of his lieutenant's horses. After a couple of failed efforts to unload him at an orphanage, he ended up hiring him to take care of his horse and ended up spending his nights with him, playing games with him; and teaching him about the world. After about half a book of this, his men started to treat Olver as Mat’s De-facto son, something that greatly confused Mat. He was also annoyed that Olver started to pick up some Casanova Wannabe tendencies and cursing, wondering who in the band had corrupted him, with everyone, the reader included, noting that Olver acted as a carbon-copy of Mat himself.
  • He feels nothing but naked contempt for the Dragon-sworn, "those fool men who blindly follow every Word their precious Lord Dragon tells them" while A) technically being the leader of a band of such men and B) Unwaveringly doing whatever his best friend Rand asks him to do (although bitching and cursing every step of the way). His best friend Rand Al'Thor — The Dragon Reborn.

  I'm here because Rand needs me! I will never understand what their excuses are!

• X-Wing Series: Wedge at one point comments about how the Bothans are very proud of the fact their intelligence work and sacrifices were what allowed the Rebel Alliance to learn the location of the Death Star II, and they use that to secure a great deal of authority and influence in the New Republic. The problem? They're ignoring the fact that Palpatine let them get that information as part of a plan to destroy the Alliance, which very nearly worked.
• You (Kepnes): Joe absolutely refuses to acknowledge that his love interests aren't as perfect as he believes they are. He also refuses to acknowledge that there's anything really wrong with his behavior.

• Angel:
  • Wesley managed to be totally oblivious to Fred's feelings for him in Season Five. This came to a head in an episode when he lectured Angel about the latter's failure to notice Nina's interest, while himself remaining totally unaware of Fred's. She eventually resorted to a Forceful Kiss to get the message across.
  • In Season Three, Cordelia was this way about Angel's feelings for her. Fred seemed to be likewise (re: Wesley's feelings for her) until Gunn later casually mentioned that she knew about them.
• Sent up in Arrested Development:

  Tobias: You know, Mother Lucille, there's a psychological concept known as 'denial' that I think you're evincing. It's when a thought is so hateful that the mind literally rejects it.
  Lucille: You are a worse psychiatrist than you are a son-in-law, and you will never get work as an actor because you have no talent.
  Tobias: Well, if she's not going to say anything, I certainly can't help her.

• The Colbert Report: Stephen Colbert (the character version of himself) insists that he is completely straight. Evidence to the contrary is dismissed with convoluted excuses when possible, ignored when not (as with the diagram of his brain in which one area was labeled "Repressed Homosexual Urges").
• In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, this is a major part of Rebecca's issues with mental health - it's almost impossible for her to realise what she really needs to be happy because she's so desperate to cling to the tropes of romantic comedies and Disney movies. A particularly painful example occurs in late season two after she finally gets together with Josh but still doesn't feel happy, and starts to wonder whether there's more to her recurring issues with depression than just unrequited love... only for her boyfriend to immediately come in and propose to her, causing her to instantly forget her realisation and devote herself to marrying him. A smaller scale version also occurs in the first half of the first season when Rebecca tries repeatedly to convince herself that she moved to West Covina because she really liked the place, and not because her ex-boyfriend now lives there, because that would be crazy.

  To be clear: I didn't move here for Josh, I just needed a change. 'Cause to move here for Josh, now that'd be strange. But don't get me wrong, if he asked for a date, I would totally be like "that sounds great!" Did it sound cool when I said "that sounds great?" Okay, how about now: "that sounds great..." Yes I heard of West Covina from Josh but I didn't move here because of Josh. Do you get those things are different? (No hablo inglés.) ¿Entiendes que son diferentes? Look, everyone, stop giving me the shakedown, I am not having a nervous- ...West Covina!

• Doctor Who:
  • The Doctor about Martha's feelings for him during series 3. "It's right in front of me and I can't see it" indeed.
    • Martha and Captain Jack Harkness both, apparently:

      The Doctor: Oh! I know what it's like. It's like when you fancy someone and they don't even know you exist. That's what it's like. [runs off]
      Martha: [stares despairingly after him]
      Captain Jack: You too, huh?

  • "Gridlock": All the drivers on the Motorway are aware on some level that they haven't seen any signs from the government and/or the people on the surface for over 20 years, but it takes some serious prodding from the Doctor before they even begin to address the Elephant in the Living Room.
  • When the Doctor is introduced to Clara's boyfriend, maths teacher Danny Pink, he refuses to accept that a former soldier could be anything else than a sport teacher, and nicknames him "P.E." for all their remaining interactions.
• Drake & Josh: Walter and Audrey consistently perceive Megan positively, despite the very evident signs of her wicked behavior. When incidents occur without clear evidence implicating Drake and Josh, they still tend to trust Megan's account, likely influenced by her status as the younger sibling. Megan exploits this hard in the episode "Peruvian Puff Pepper", getting her brothers in trouble while maintaining her innocence when their parents are around.
• In The Finder when Timo is worried about discussing family business in front of Leo, Leo casually mentions that he's "pretty engrossed in his book."
• Frasier: Daphne is completely unable to notice Niles' blatantly unsubtle crush on her, even when he's saying things like "I adore you" to her face. It takes Frasier being high as a kite on painkillers telling her to get the truth through.
• Friends:
  • Rachel is in constant denial about her true feelings for Ross when she's not with him. On the day before Ross's wedding to Emily, she somehow finally figures it out: "Sure, I like Ross, but feelings are really complicated... maybe I am sexually attracted to him, but I do love him... oh my God." When she demands of Phoebe on why she didn't tell her about her own feelings before, Phoebe replies, "Well, it's so obvious to everybody. It's like saying, 'Gosh Monica, you sure like to clean.'"
  • Ross asks for no strippers at his bachelor party, and after he leaves Joey immediately asks what kind of strippers they should get. Chandler reminds him what just happened, and he replies "Huh. I chose not to hear that."
• Game of Thrones:
  • On top of his book counterpart's general refusal to see positive value in his son Tyrion, Tywin Lannister's last living episode has his daughter Cersei send him to immediate denial mode by confirming certain rumors that he was long aware of but never consciously believed. The rumors themselves should have been obvious and indeed were deduced by Ned Stark - specifically that the Baratheons' black hair is nigh-universally dominant, as is the case with all of Robert's bastards, whereas all three of his supposed children by Cersei are blond like the other Lannisters.

    Cersei: You don't know, do you? You never believed it. How is that possible? What am I saying, of course, it's possible. How can someone so consumed by the idea of his family have any conception what his actual family was doing? We were right there in front of you and you didn't see us. One look in the past twenty years, one real look and you would've known.
    Tywin: Known what?
    Cersei: Everything they say is true about Jaime and me.
    Tywin: No. No, no, no, no...

    • Per his actor Charles Dance, the way Tywin sees things is that his son Jaime was "the handsome apple of my eye" while the other two children are Cersei and Tyrion the whoremongering imp "who, unfortunately, is brighter than the other two put together", so consciously realizing that the rumors were true would have meant admitting to himself that none of his children were okay by his standards and that all three of Jaime and Cersei's children, nominally sired by Cersei's husband Robert, have no legitimate blood claim to either the Iron Throne or to House Lannister.
  • Shae's jealousy regarding Tyrion's marriage to Sansa despite Tyrion clearly acting as a protector and not consummating their marriage. The fact she feels Varys and Tyrion are exaggerating how precarious her position is, when any passing knowledge of Tywin and Cersei would inform most this is not the case, is very noticeable. Eventually, this refusal to accept how much danger she's in actually forces Tyrion to make a deliberately horrible speech to drive her away and she seemingly takes it at face value.
  • Though he's shown that he is primarily interested in hunting, whoring, and gambling, Robert is not a stupid man — as evidenced by his Hidden Depths and his occasional status as a Royal Who Actually Does Something — yet in a world where blood so often makes people Colour-Coded for Your Convenience, he is unable to see that Joffrey and his other children bear no phenotypical resemblance to the Baratheon family and in fact have traits that are exclusively Lannister. This could possibly be forgiven if it were the case with only one child and the coloring was evenly spread amongst his other two children like the Starks, but ALL of his children are blond.
• Grace Under Fire: In one episode, one of Jimmy's relatives tells to Grace he's gay — but the family insists that he's just shy. This time, he goes so far as to directly tell Jimmy's mother he's gay, but she disagrees and tells him he's just shy.
• Played with in Hannah Montana; Miley mentions that she's kissed before, and quickly backpedals prompting Robbie Ray to say "I love our relationship, you pretend you don't kiss boys, and I pretend I believe you."
• A very common theme in Hoarders, where people don't seem to notice they're living in squalor. One episode featured a woman who had a lot of dolls. At one point she picks up a small doll that's the size of a soda can and declares that it doesn't take up any space, completely ignoring the 8-foot-tall mountain of toys in front of her.
• Hogan's Heroes:

  Sgt Schultz: I see nothing. NOTHING!

• Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother is almost totally self-deluded; not only is he a compulsive liar who believes his own lies, he constantly twists his perception of reality to paint himself and his life as "awesome", no matter how pathetic he actually is. For example, he will invent arbitrary social rules to justify his behavior and claim historical precedents for them, and continually insist they are true, despite their obvious falsehood.
  • This apparently stems from childhood, when Barney's mother chose to lie to Barney and conceal from him anything that might damage his sense of self-worth. For example, when no one came to his birthday party, she forged a letter from the Postmaster General, claiming he had lost all the invitations. This made Barney unable to accept anything that might damage his overinflated ego. Once, when he amicably broke up with Wendy the Waitress, he chose to believe she had gone crazy and was trying to murder him, rather than face the fact she simply didn't mind not being with him.
  • Everything you need to know about Barney can be seen in an episode in the sixth season: Zoe sets Ted up with her attractive cousin "Honey", and Robin and Barney both relate their own versions of the date to Marshall; in Robin's presumably more truthful account, Honey is fascinated by Ted and blatantly flirts with him, while Barney desperately attempts to hit on her and she politely ignores him. While eventually, Barney does leave with her, it's only because Ted is much more interested in Zoe and lets him; in Barney's version, Ted bores Honey by droning endlessly about architecture, and she is virtually ripping off Barney's clothes the whole time. When Marshall points out the difference in the accounts, Barney angrily insists his is true.
  • The entire group is guilty of this and later seasons have them confront this as part of their Character Development. Barney finally acknowledges that Bob Barker is not his father and actually seeks out his real dad. Ted and Robin realize that they do not have a future as a couple and that by remaining roommates they stifle any chance of having serious romantic relationships with others.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia practically runs on this trope as the four younger members intentionally ignore their flaws and shortcomings:
  • Dennis refuses to admit that he runs a failing business, he isn't as smart as he thinks, and in general that he is just as much of a loser as the others.
  • Dee refuses to admit the fact that she is a terrible actress and is a rude, crude, and white trash alcoholic waitress.
  • Charlie refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Waitress hates him and will never love him.
  • Mac is probably the biggest example of this trope. He refuses to acknowledge the fact that his mother couldn't care less about him, he is terrible at karate, he isn't a badass, he isn't heterosexual, his friends openly despise him, and that he isn't as devoutly religious as he believes himself to be.
• Kamen Rider Gaim: After the Inves Plague breaks out the people of Zawame City turn against the Beat Riders while worshiping Bravo as a hero, while conveniently forgetting that Bravo himself was responsible for one of the biggest Inves rampages. This is sadly justified thanks to mob mentality and the fact that Kaito sent out some Inves when he got called out by the mob.
• Hyacinth in Keeping Up Appearances remains oblivious to the fact that everybody wants to avoid her because she's totally obnoxious. She does this not only in the face of people practically running away from her — her Lack of Empathy extends to not noticing any kind of social cues other than ones related to class snobbery — but even filters it out totally when Emmett goes so far as to tell her a part of his opinion about her with Brutal Honesty. It may be he only dares to do so because he has some idea she won't process it.
• In Lie to Me, Gillian readily accepts her husband's feeble excuses about having to work late, even though her job is based around the ability to tell instantly when someone is lying. It is later revealed he was going to AA meetings and the woman was his sponser.
• In a first-season episode of Mad Men, gorgeous Joan's female roommate makes a very obvious sexual come-on. Joan pretends that she doesn't get it, the roommate pretends that Joan isn't pretending, and the incident is forgotten about.
• In The Mighty Boosh, whenever Vince says or does something suggestive towards Howard (which is quite often) Howard will either walk away or awkwardly change the subject, totally ignoring it.
• In Peaky Blinders, Tommy (of all people) undergoes this whenever Grace is involved, seemingly ignoring or pretending to forget that she was originally The Mole who sold him out to his worst enemy. Polly calls both him and Grace out on it, informing the latter on her wedding day that even if Tommy has chosen to forgive Grace, the rest of the family have not forgiven or forgotten what she did and it's only because they love Tommy they're willing to pretend for his sake, with the implicit threat that if she ever tries it again, Polly will deal with her.
• Guy of Gisborne from Robin Hood chooses to ignore the mounting evidence that Marian is in cahoots with Robin Hood. By the final episodes of season two, he's in complete denial.
• Gul Dukat on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His imagined friendship with Captain Sisko escalates to ridiculous levels throughout the series, to the point where he chides Sisko for being so obtuse about his feelings while on the opposite sides of a battle line or in the middle of a no-holds-barred hand-to-hand fight. In fact, you could probably form a whole section on all the things Dukat pointedly ignores. (Although, from what little has been revealed of the Cardassians, that may be how they express friendship, or he may be doing it just to annoy Sisko.)
• In Strangers with Candy, the homophobic Principal Blackman is the only one who doesn't know that Chuck and Geoffrey are lovers. At one point he catches them in the school basement and happily accepts the explanation that Chuck is showing Geoffrey the furnace system, even though Geoffrey has his trousers round his ankles.
• In The Suite Life of Zack & Cody movie, Zack not only blatantly ignores two signs, he reads out loud what he wants them to say.

  Research facility sign: No unauthorized personnel. Absolutely no admittance!
  Zack: "Come on in. All are welcome." Perfect.
  Loading bay parking sign: Absolutely no parking here.
  Zack: "Absolutely no parking here except for Zack."

The last one comes back to bite him as a cargo crate is dropped in the exact spot he's parked in the second he leaves the car he pestered his brother for, crushing it horribly.

• Elena from The Vampire Diaries is a darker example of the trope. While she may view Damon as a Jerkass Woobie, Damon has done actions that cross the Moral Event Horizon to her friends including trying to kill Caroline and Bonnie, killing her brother Jeremy (he got better), killing Lexi, turning Vicki into a vampire who had to be staked, and forcibly turning Bonnie's mother into a vampire. Basically, even if you ignore the large number of random people he's killed and continues to kill when he's in a bad mood, he's done enough to the people Elena is supposed to care about that her fondness for him requires mountains of this trope.
• Vicious uses this as a Running Gag regarding Stuart's sexuality; he still keeps dropping hints that he's gay to his oblivious mother despite being in his early 70s:

  Stuart: Well, I hoped she'd have figured out our situation by now. I have been dropping little clues.
  Freddie: Yes. Like living with a man for 48 years.

• What We Do in the Shadows (2019): Despite being a vampire himself, Lazlo refuses to believe that ghosts are real and mocks his wife Nadja for believing. When put face to face with a ghost he pointedly ignores it for as long as he can.
• You (2018): Joe absolutely refuses to acknowledge that his love interests aren't as perfect as he believes they are. He also refuses to acknowledge that there's anything really wrong with his behavior.

• Bonnie Tyler: During the video of the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart", it isn't until Bonnie encounters the one boy at the end with Glowing Eyes that she gets a sense that something is wrong. Considering the surreal vibe and setting, it's surprising that it takes her so long.

• The beholders in Dungeons & Dragons are like this by design. They have two brains. One is responsible for higher logic. The other hosts emotions and instincts, and is responsible for interpreting the data input from the senses. Thus, if something is against the beholder's beliefs, it will never get far enough to be considered on logical level. Too bad their genetic memory gives them the beliefs of rampant, murderous racists. The only reason they manage to survive at all with such a mindset is that their creator have also found it fitting to grant them massive amounts of innate firepower.
• Amongst the Warhammer 40,000 fandom, Games Workshop is portrayed to have this reaction to any evidence of the existence of the now RetGonned Squats. Best illustrated here◊

• Cyrano de Bergerac:
  • At Act I Scene IV, Cyrano fails to notice that the buffet-girl is a Smitten Teenage Girl with him. He is so convinced he cannot be loved, that Le Bret must point out to him this fact (see Oblivious to Love).
  • At Act II Scene III to IV, it seems that Ragueneau fails to notice that his friends, the poets, are with him only to eat his pastries and that his wife is having an affair with a musketeer. He knows the truth about the poets (see Establishing Character Moment), but refuses to acknowledge Lisa’s infidelity.
  • At Act II, Scene V, Cyrano bribes Roxane’s Duenna to leave them both alone at Ragueneau’s bakery, and greets Roxane with a I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me Stock Phrase… that she doesn’t catch… at all, because Cyrano is an Unlucky Childhood Friend whom Roxane thinks of as a brother. And from here, From Bad to Worse: Roxane will never catch any clue for years.

• ANNO: Mutationem: C spends most of the story acting fully in ignorance that his master plan to obtain the Ancient Artifact would be a success. Overtime, he steadily starts to undergo Sanity Slippage as his associates constantly remind him that he was present when The Consortium's previous attempts had also ended in failure, to the point he completely denies anything that's said to him by the endgame, even as he's attempting to take over the organization for himself.
• BlueSkies 2: In Moonlit Forest, Ophelia notes that Rhetz's narcissism made him vulnerable to Matria's manipulations, since she makes him feel important in order to gain his unconditional trust. As a result, he fails to realize her true demonic nature even as she summons a demon army and orders him to slaughter innocents and ignores all the obvious evidence that she's lying out of her ass about creating a utopia.
• In the Borderlands 2 DLC "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep", Tina is the Game Master for a Dungeons & Dragons expy. In the game, she pretends that Roland is still alive and still just as heroic as ever after Roland had been shot dead by Handsome Jack during the game's Wham Episode. Throughout the adventure, the Vault Hunter players all nervously dance around addressing Tina's delusions, until they finally get fed up with playing along and start trying to address it directly, which Tina poignantly ignores as best she can. After the final boss is defeated, Tina finally breaks down and admits she knows she's lying to herself, but it's her story and she just wants to pretend for a while. Her giving Angel a Historical Villain Upgrade is also this. She dismisses it simply by saying that no one would have died if not for her, completely ignoring that Angel had no choice in her actions and rebeled against her evil father as much as she could, even defying him with her dying breath. In Tina's world, she's just as bad as Jack is.
• Role-players in City of Heroes (and presumably other games) almost require this trope for certain scenarios to take place. For example, there's certain to be more than one (or more than fifty) characters running around who all claim to be the same specific character from mythology (popular examples include Thor, the Devil, and even Santa Claus). If you accepted that all these characters' stories are true, even though they clearly contradict each other, they'd go insane. Also tends to be a vital tactic in other areas of roleplay: text-based combat (rather than in-engine PVP) oftentimes breaks down into "Bang bang! / OH I dodged! / No, I shot you / no you didn't!" levels of quarrels; Selective Obliviousness is oftentimes the only way to resolve a situation before ending up needing to get mods involved.
• Junichi in Da Capo is actually perfectly aware that Nemu likes him and has for years. He wasn't just completely dense. On the other hand, she's his adopted sister, which makes things kind of awkward, so he simply did his best not to think about it.
• The Detective in Disco Elysium engages in this on a number of topics, with his brain downright shutting down leads and refusing to acknowledge things like the Ex-Something, or his former co-workers. You are even allowed to add more to the list, such as (if you fail one particular check early on in the game) refusing to acknowledge a mounting pile of evidence that your name probably isn't "Rafaël Ambrosius Costeau".
• Dennis from Double Homework, who is so good at manipulating people, can’t seem to tell when a girl is so repulsed by him that she wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.
• Dragon Quest VII: The Praector of Gorges/Aeolus Vale acts unaware of how Firia/Fidelia is being bullied by her sister and the other kids in the village for not having wings. It's eventually revealed that he's afraid to intervene, not wanting to reveal that she's not an orphan, but his child by blood, whom he disowned without completely abandoning her. His own mother is aware of the whole situation, and really rips him a new one when he continues to deny the truth even when the BlissRock is stolen and Fidelia's lineage makes her the only one capable of helping the heroes save the day.
• Evering: Jovla is researching the fall of the Kingdom of Llooan because he's actually an immortal survivor of that country. It's obvious that Onnya is the country that conquered Llooan, since almost all of Llooan's old territory now belongs to Onnya. However, Jovla doesn't want to accept that because the search for the answer itself is the only purpose he has in his immortal life, and he knows he wouldn't be able to change the outcome of the war anyways.
• Shirou in Fate/stay night seems to have a slight awareness of Sakura's interest in him, but considering he's in denial about his own attraction to her, she's made nearly no progress in over a year and a half of trying. Similar things happen with Rin and Saber, although the life-threatening situations they find themselves in during the Holy Grail War force him to confront those feelings up front during the three routes.
• The Fruit of Grisaia: Amane doesn’t want to find out what Yuuji does for a living, because she senses it is something she's probably not supposed to know, so she doesn't.
• Shirogane Sakuya in Hatoful Boyfriend refuses to accept or understand that his brother Sakazaki Yuuya loves him and wants him to be happy, and he interprets everything Yuuya says in the most negative and insulting way he can. Partly this is because his backstab-happy aristocratic upbringing has him suspicious of good intent, partly because Yuuya is a "mongrel" half-breed and he's been taught to hate those of impure blood. Partly it's because Yuuya appears cheerfully oblivious to insults and continues to be friendly just to irritate him. Late in BBL, Yuuya makes a Heroic Sacrifice and reveals all, and Sakuya can no longer be oblivious.
• Kingdom Hearts: Throughout the game, Riku repeatedly ignores all the obvious evidence that Maleficent lied to him and Sora not only didn't abandon him and Kairi for the Keyblade, Donald, and Goofy, but has been spending his every waking moment trying to find them. It isn't until he's possessed by Ansem, as well as Sora's Heroic Sacrifice to save Kairi, that Riku finally realizes the truth. It seems to be the influence of the darkness, for the most part, that's twisting his mind and making him delusional.
• Mass Effect 3: On the mission to Thessia, Liara refuses to acknowledge the fact asari development was clearly influenced by the Protheans, like how the earliest visual depictions of the goddess Athame look less like an asari and more like a Prothean. And by more we mean exactly. She does this even if Javik, an actual Prothean, is in the room pointing this out to her. If the player just has Javik's DLC included but hasn't brought him along, the other party member will get increasingly exasperated (or just plain irritated) by Liara's denial.
• OMORI plays this to discomforting effect. After taking certain actions in the Hikikomori Route, Omori will fully repress Sunny's memories of Mari's piano. In the real world, this means he can still enter the piano room and detect the piano's collision, but the narration will deny that anything is there. Similarly, all throughout the game, Sunny has the closet under the stairs repressed, so the player can't even see the door. The closet contains the remains of his broken violin, from the day of his recital. Finally, in one of the neutral-bad endings, after Sunny witnesses the aftermath of Basil committing suicide, the door to Basil's room will immediately disappear before the player's eyes, and the narrator will remark that nothing is there.
• Prayer of the Faithless: At the bottom of Purgatory, Aeyr gets told the truth of his mission, that best friend Mia sent him to kill Gauron, the one who turned him into a Revenant, knowing that this would be a suicide mission. This plot should have been obvious, since killing Gauron will cause him to lose his Revenant powers and die to Fog exposure, and one reason why he might not have seen it is said as "...Or maybe you knew the truth from the start, but you chose to ignore it." This indicates he was in denial because he wanted to believe Mia would never go as far as to get him killed.
• Masayuki refuses to see the bad in people in A Profile or to distrust his friends. He simply won't notice such things.
• In [PROTOTYPE] soldiers who react to the display of the protagonist's Lovecraftian Superpowers or explicit hostility but super-fast runs, super-high jumps, running up a wall or falling from the sky and punching a crater in the pavement will be ignored. Without this trope the game would be much more difficult to play.
• Rave Heart: Ellemine admits that she suspected Eryn of being a traitor because of his Anti-Psi device, but didn't want to believe her brother was capable of turning on the Rave family.
• Reiji actually does realize how Kyoko feels in The Shell. He just thinks it wouldn't be right to start a relationship with her.
• This trope gets lampshaded in Tales of Symphonia by Zelos when the party seem to repeatedly fail to notice that Mithos isn't all he seems to be despite constantly-mounting evidence, at one asking himself how they can trust him so easily.
• This is actually a pretty strong plot point in Umineko: When They Cry. Battler refuses to believe that a witch murdered everyone. Straightforward enough. However, he also refuses to believe that any of the eighteen people trapped on the island murdered everyone. Not only does he refuse to believe it, he actively rules out the possibility based on the fact that he doesn't want that to be the outcome, even when he acknowledges that the evidence points in that direction. Can you say "cognitive dissonance"? This being Umineko, the truth of what's going is a bit more complicated.
• World of Warcraft: In Battle for Azeroth, Rexxar claims he rejoined the Horde to wage war against the Alliance because "Jaina Proudmoore couldn't forgive them for Theramore" and that she has "killed too many". That Jaina was the poster child for peace between the two factions and was betrayed multiple times seems to escape him, with Rexxar even dismissing that the Horde started the current war, saying he doesn't care. During his quest chain in Stormsong Valley, Rexxar rallies horde soldiers to "Drive these alliance scum from our lands", ignoring that said lands belong to Kul Tiras and the horde are the ones invading.

• In 8-Bit Theater, Thief constantly denies the existence of dragons. Despite the Light Warrior's direct interaction with several of the mythic lizards, Thief maintains that dragons are extinct. When Red Mage calls him out on it in a later strip while they are being confronted by yet more dragons, Thief explains that it's "wishful thinking". He just wishes the horrible lizard monsters trying to kill him don't really exist.
• Arthur, King of Time and Space: In the fantasy and future timelines, Arthur immediately resorts to Ignoring by Singing when the subject of Lancelot and Gwenevere's cheating comes up.
• Demonseed Redux!: When Rhoda first reveals herself as a succubus and offers him to become a king of a demonic harem (turns out to be a lie), he thinks he's dreaming and goes outside to get fresh air.
• El Goonish Shive:
  • Melissa is so madly in love with Justin, she keeps asking him out even after it is revealed that he is gay. Justin, needless to say, finds this extremely irritating, especially since she is the one who (either directly or "indirectly") blew the secret.
  • Earlier in the series (though chronologically after Justin was outed), Elliot pretended not to notice Sarah's feelings towards him, because he was afraid that a romantic relationship with her would destroy their friendship; he may have had Justin and Melissa's ruined friendship in mind, since he'd known Justin for some time at that point.
  • Until Tedd directly told him, Elliot was genuinely oblivious to the fact that his anime-style martial arts, and his enthusiasm for using them to stop bullies and fight monsters (not to mention that he was always the one who encountered the monsters in the first place) meant the rest of the school did not see him as an average, borderline anonymous student. It's possible his lack of understanding as to whether things that happen are strange was inherited from his parents, who cheerfully accept just about everything.
• In Fans!, club president Rikk is utterly oblivious to fellow member Rumy's painfully obvious attraction to him. When third member Katherine gets fed up with this and tries to inform him directly, he exhausts every other member in the club, Katherine included, as potentially having a crush on him. Not once does he even consider Rumy.
• Randy, the tame fox in Faux Pas, is so naïve about sex that it's impossible to think this trope isn't going on. This alternately frustrates and amuses the wild vixen who wants to be his mate. We find out later that Randy does know about "the birds and the bees." But what he knows comes from human television, so anything that strays from Hollywood ideals of dating and romance leave him lost.
• In Flipside, Blithe Spirit Maytag has a complete and utter lack of any sense of modesty^note . And an equally complete and utter lack of understanding it in other people. To the point where she's openly baffled when everyone else is upset when their carriage driver is caught using x-ray specs to peep through their clothes. Given the grasp of human nature she shows when she's in Manipulative Bitch mode, this is almost certainly self-justification for her own exhibitionist ways.
  • Semi-confirmed later on: Turns out that as a child she had almost literally no emotion, barely even reacting to pain. Through conversations with her mother and one or two people that basically "forced" friendship on her, she eventually decided that she wanted to experience life more fully and essentially gave herself Multiple Personality Disorder on purpose; years down the line, she's finally come to realize that the emotionless her, the "shy" her and the "Maytag" her are all equally "her" and — after her costume was sabotaged and she was left naked on stage during a comedy competition — she literally went into exposition mode and explained this to both the audience in the theater and the readers. The whole reason she's "baffled" over other people not living life as "fully" as she does, is that she believes them to be in unnecessary states of self-denial.
• In Girl Genius some of those living in the hidden cities beneath Paris insist that surface dwelling civilizations are all a giant hoax despite the fact that they get newspapers and products from the surface and their societies have diplomatic relationships with surface kingdoms and empires and they regularly get students from Paris running through. They complain loudly that any surface dwellers they come across are just people wearing costumes.
• In Girls with Slingshots, a Running Gag has been made of Hazel's inability to grasp that lesbian sex isn't just "taking turns with a strap-on." Her lesbian friends have tried to clue her in, but it never seems to stick.
• High School Lessons: Mrs. Wilson is blind to anything out of the ordinary, even when being mauled by vampires.
• Homestuck:
  • Jake is an interesting example. He pretended to be unaware of his friends' feelings for him so he wouldn't have to give a response before he knew how he felt, but then accepted it without question when Jane claimed that he'd gotten it wrong and that she didn't have feelings for him after all, even when she acted very strangely about the whole thing. However, when he talked with a subconscious manifestation of these thoughts taking the form of Dirk in a dream bubble, thought!Dirk seemed doubtful that Jane had been telling the truth, an idea Jake waved away uneasily, indicating that deep down he probably is aware but just doesn't want to have to deal with it on top of everything else right now, especially after the way he reacted to everything.
  • Karkat admits late in Act 5 Act 2 that he is aware of and has been deliberately ignoring Nepeta's crush on him. The guy's a romantic expert, there is no way he didn't notice it. He says he's ignoring it because there are just too many other things going on that he doesn't have time to think of a way to let her down gently. The situation resolves itself when she dies without ever speaking to him.
• In Misfile, Doctor Upton can hardly have failed to have noticed that his "daughter" appears to have developed some rather severe identity problems, especially considering that it was shouted out at full volume at one point. Despite this, the issue is never raised.
• Pixie Trix Comix: Aaron is clearly somewhat attracted to Julian (who, for added fun, he hasn’t realised is gay), but thinks of himself as straight, to the point of homophobia. This leads to increasingly frantic and sweaty attempts at denial to himself.
• Capt. Tagon and Sgt. Schlock from Schlock Mercenary: Tagon tends to have a one-track mind and has a hard time dealing with things that don't conform to "shoot it/run from it/run, come back with reinforcements" (at least without someone there to wield a clue bat). Whereas Schlock tends to mentally spin anything he's told into what he wants to believe. (So his orders tend to be simple and specific).^note 
• Sidekick Girl: Superherione Illumina goes into a Lustful Melt when she meets superhero Maelstrom, somehow missing that his secret identity is the boyfriend of her secret identity. (In all fairness, he's just as clueless as she is.)
• Skin Horse: Unity does this to just about anything that doesn't involve blowing things up, especially specific instructions not to blow things up. At one point she cheerfully admits that her idea of logic is to start with what she wants to be the case and then work backward. Sweetheart, meanwhile, has a major blind-spot regarding her own feelings for Unity, which occasionally manifests as full-on homophobia.
• Ruby of Sticky Dilly Buns suffers from a comedic Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality, and tries to deny that she has any interest in sex, or at least to claim that she can repress any interest in the subject. However, it soon becomes clear that she has a full set of (actually quite vanilla-heterosexual) sexual inclinations, which are triggered and stimulated by the various attractive men she keeps encountering. Her denial is Played for Laughs, and her justifications for things like acquiring a stack of Yaoi manga become increasingly baroque and transparent to anyone except her.
• Van Von Hunter is sworn to destroy anything evil that he encounters. However, he "doesn't notice" that Ariana Rael, the Child Mage tagging along with him is ungodly evil. The fact that she could destroy him with a thought has nothing to do with why he's not picking a fight with her...
• An interesting version from White-Hat Guy in the xkcd strip "Wrong". He can't admit he was wrong, but instead of denying the facts, he denies that he ever believed otherwise; his actual point was another level of abstraction up. This is a common rationalization.

• In Bleach (S) Abridged, Ichigo is generally more on the ball than his canon self, but he is an incredible blockhead on two things: romance, and Zangetsu. Despite his Inner Hollow outright telling him multiple times that he's the real Zangetsu and the Old Man is a fake, it never gets through.
• In Death Note: The Abridged Series (kpts4tv) when L tells the taskforce that Light is Kira. (With solid evidence to back it up this time!)
  • Also Misa refuses to acknowledge that Light is gay.

    Light: Now I need a place to stay.
    Misa: You want to move in with me? Yay!
    Ryuk: Ha!
    Light: I... [Sighs] this is the worst day ever!

• Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "big white face", an e-mailer asks why Strong Bad is so mean to "the guy with the big white face and grey body", referring to Strong Bad's Butt-Monkey brother Strong Sad. Strong Bad goes through literally the entire cast aside from Strong Sad, before concluding that the e-mailer was looking at a picture of the Poopsmith in grey-scale, and Hilarity Ensues.
• The Nostalgia Critic is extremely good at denial over things he doesn't want to admit are happening, only reacting when they're explicitly pointed out to him. His Distaff Counterpart, The Nostalgia Chick, is exactly the same.
• In Red vs. Blue Reconstruction, Sarge is unable to understand that Grif is now the same rank as him. Grif actually suggests that he is physically incapable of comprehending that fact. Considering that he attacks one of the Reds who was trying to kill Grif (for attacking a superior officer e.g. Grif), Grif is probably right.
  • Seems to have grown out of this by the Chorus Trilogy, where he just reacts with extreme annoyance when Grif tells Sarge that he now outranks him (Grif was promoted to Captain at the beginning of the Season). Doesn't stop Sarge from asking the Federation of Chorus to promote him to Colonel, so that, once again, he outranks Grif.
• RWBY:
  • Emerald idolizes Cinder as a savior and views her as a mother figure, voluntarily helping her commit all manner of atrocities while refusing to acknowledge or admit that her boss is a ruthless, abusive, sociopathic narcissist who has never shown genuine concern for anyone but herself. Her denial runs so deep that in "Lost," when Mercury tells her point-blank that Cinder has never cared about her and sees her as nothing but a tool, Emerald flies into a rage and attacks him. Emerald finally loses this after Cinder isn't thankful for Emerald saving her after one of Cinder's plans nearly ended with herself being killed, which is the Last Straw that finally breaks Emerald's faith in her.
  • RWBY Chibi:
    • In Episode 18, Ruby and Nora fail to notice all the obvious signs that Cinder and Emerald are villains engaged in an Evil Plan, to the point of easily falling for Cinder's half-assed cover story about making a cake recipe for a kitten charity; they even think nothing of Mercury entering the room and talking about using a bazooka to kill kittens, which he aptly calls the "Kitten Killer 9000." Emerald even lampshades it:

    Emerald': They're messing with us, right?

    • In "Director Ozpin", Ozpin dismisses team RWBY's concerns that sabotage is occurring during the title sequence. As they talk, Mercury hits Ruby in the head with a boom mic; Ozpin notices the apology, but not that it's fake. Emerald pushes a spotlight that Blake has to save Yang from and which just barely misses Ozpin, but he doesn't notice. As he walks off screen, Cinder visibly pushes the giant Chibi logo on top of him and cannot believe he thinks it fell by accident.

    Ozpin: [muffled] Hello? Can I get some assistance? This giant rose seems to have fallen on me, completely by accident!

• The Amazing World of Gumball: Gumball and Darwin are completely incapable of understanding that Mr. Robinson is a cantankerous old man who can't stand them or their family, even when the evidence is right in front of them — at least until the end of season 6. Even then, they still choose to admire him in the end.
• American Dragon: Jake Long: In the episode "The Ski Trip", Rose starts letting hints to her identity as Huntsgirl slip. Jake, however, spends much of the episode refusing to realize that he's dating his archnemesis, even when Trixie and Spud point it out to him. To quote Spud, "Denial, party of one, your table is ready." It isn’t until near the end of the episode when Jake finds out that Rose and Huntsgirl have the same Birthmark of Destiny, that he realizes what’s really going on.
• Bob's Burgers: Despite Bob Belcher stating many times before that he is not fond of her family, Linda seems to believe that he loves them deep down inside. To be clear, Bob has legitimate issues with his wife's family. Her sister Gayle is a borderline psychopath who is lazy, overemotional, and dependent on Linda to the point of making her go out of her way to help without any concern for inconveniencing her or her family. Her mother is even worse, as she's very loud, controlling, and ungrateful when she makes Linda do her favors or steal her daughter's cell phone charger while insisting it's her's. Her father, while not intentionally terrible, is often sick and hard of hearing. Linda cannot at all grasp that Bob outright hates being around any of them.
• Chowder:
  • Panini doesn't understand the meaning of the words "I'm not your boyfriend."
  • Chowder himself in "Hey Hey It's Knishmas". He honestly believed Gazpacho is Knish Krinkle, despite everyone telling him he's just in costume. When Gazpacho has a meltdown and takes off the costume in front of him, Chowder frames it as "Knish Krinkle threw up Gazpacho and is now dead". Panini lampshades how he isn't even listening to her spelling it out to him.
• In Dexter's Laboratory, Dexter and Dee Dee's parents do not know about the lab, despite having witnessed the odd results of Dexter's experiments, as, for instance, the talking dog. It simply doesn't occur to them that this might be unusual.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Timmy's parents, while already pretty unintelligent, can never comprehend that Vicky is a Babysitter from Hell.
  • Subverted in Channel Chasers, where they begin to get suspicious and start investigating the matter, eventually receiving a detailed dossier on Vicky's behavior towards pretty much everyone from Deep Toot (i.e., Vicky's younger sister Tootie using a voice changer). They chew her out for everything and fire her, only for Timmy to push the Reset Button, reasoning that while he'd love to have Vicky out of his life, she's worth putting up with if it means he can spend more years with his fairies.
  • It gets worse in later episodes where Vicky doesn't even make any attempt to hide her evilness. In "Vicky Gets Fired", where Timmy is trying to get her fired (don't worry about that last example), Timmy even shows his parents incriminating evidence of Vicky torturing him, but they don't even bat an eye. Which he knew would happen, so he included footage of her erasing their reality show audition tape, which does manage to horrify and disgust them.
• Family Guy:
  • In the episode "The Fat Guy Strangler", Lois' brother, Patrick, is revealed to be the eponymous Fat Guy Strangler. Lois refuses to believe Patrick is the killer, despite the several glaring pieces of evidence that point to Patrick, including a half-dead fat guy lying in Patrick's room who outright states that Patrick tried to kill him until Lois sees more and more damning evidence piling up and Brian screaming at her to wake up.
  • The Griffins, except for the children and Brian, never seem to be aware that Stewie is highly intelligent for a baby his age. Every time he talks they never exactly react to what he says. In the episode "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", Lois meets with Stewie's preschool teacher and she shows Lois several drawings Stewie made, which shows Stewie killing Lois in various horrible ways. The two women then have this exchange regarding the images:

    Teacher: Notice anything unusual in these pictures?
    Lois: You're right, his father isn't in any of them!

• Fanboy and Chum Chum: The titular protagonists are prone to fall into this, most noticeable in the first episode "Wizboy". When a real wizard named Kyle comes to their class, they somehow believe he's only pretending to be a wizard, to the point of Fanboy dressing up as one to convince him that they're wizards, too. What doesn't help is most of his effects are far more realistic than seen on a magic show, such as materializing out of smoke, generating a dome of privacy with no assistance, and floating in the air without a harness. They grow out of it in later episodes.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Mr. Herriman can fall into this. He can spot the tiniest speck of dirt, but he can't, say, tell a crudely made decoy of Eduardo from the real Eduardo or when Bloo is dressed up like a ghost.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Jeff the Spider imprinted on Billy when he hatched and only wants Billy to love him like a son... and is completely incapable of understanding that Billy hates spiders, including Jeff himself, to the point of madness, despite the fact that Billy regularly beats him with anything he can get his hands on.
• Invader Zim has three examples:
  • Zim himself is completely incapable of processing any evidence that he's not a great hero of the Irken Empire. No matter how much he destroys on his own side, how blatant the Tallests' contempt for him is, or how obviously they try to get rid of him, he always bounces back just as convinced of his own greatness as before. He realizes that the Tallests aren't coming for him in Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus... for a few minutes before he rationalizes it away and is back to his old self.
  • Dib, Zim's Arch-Enemy, believes that exposing Zim as an alien will change how his family and peers think of him, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. In the above-mentioned movie, at least his family shows they care about him.
  • Prof. Membrane is an expert in all fields of science, but absolutely refuses to believe that there is alien life no matter how much evidence is shown to him. Even when trapped in an alien prison, he just thinks it's a hallucination.
• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown: Linus believes in a nonexistent Santa Claus figure called the Great Pumpkin, who rises out of the pumpkin patch with a sack full of toys; every year on Halloween he waits in the pumpkin patch outside his house, hoping he'll show up. When he does not show up and is left alone outside, Charlie Brown tries to reason with him the following day, but he accidentally calls him "stupid" for waiting in a pumpkin patch for someone who obviously doesn't exist, launching Linus into a long rant throughout the credits that the Great Pumpkin will come next year and he'll be waiting.
• Justice League Unlimited:
  • Professor Hamilton worked with the Cadmus project and attempted to take down the Justice League all because of Superman's invasion of Earth while he was Brainwashed and Crazy and subsequently threatening him, referring to the events of the finale of Superman: The Animated Series. While that is true that Superman threatened him, it's only because Hamilton was being a total prick and refusing to help him save a badly wounded Supergirl because he was more concerned about saving his own ass by not consorting with someone who was considered a felon rather than helping a man he'd repeatedly given aid to in the past no matter the circumstance.
  • Superman falls prey to this exact same trope in the same Cadmus storyline. Despite later giving his "No More Holding Back" Speech in a different episode, at no point does Superman apologize to Hamilton or acknowledge that a human might have panicked at the reminder that his friend is an immortal alien with laser beam eyes. It later takes Green Arrow AND the Flash to point out that to most people, the difference between a Kryptonian superhero and a Kryptonian alien monster is a matter of how careful the Kryptonian is about damaging things. Like relationships, buildings, and people.
• In King of the Hill, despite being an extremely paranoid Conspiracy Theorist, Dale Gribble is completely unaware that his wife is having an affair, even though it should be glaringly obvious to anyone who meets "his" son Joseph and isn't blind. The only people other than him who don't know are Joseph and Peggy (who had to be told by Hank). Nobody has the heart to tell him about it.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Daffy Duck often uses selective obliviousness, especially to facts that damage his ego. Chuck Jones told in an interview that when they first thought up Daffy's voice, everyone was sure that they would be fired when their producer, Leon Schlesinger, would hear it because he would probably immediately realize that Daffy's lisp was based on his own. Strangely enough, Schlesinger never noticed this and even complimented the staff on creating such a wonderfully unique voice!
  • Porky Pig exhibits this at times. He refuses to believe in Daffy's imaginary friend, even when he is being carried in his invisible pouch. He will also never heed Sylvester's attempts to warn him about danger, not even when a monster is looking him square in the eye (that tall green Martian is obviously a friendly Native American).
• Mr. Magoo not only can't see past the end of his nose, but more to the point, refuses to acknowledge that there's something wrong with his eyesight. Even when he's told he's mistaken, he either misunderstands or dismisses it, stubbornly sticking to his guns rather than admit he's wrong. Only in two cartoons ("Fuddy Duddy Buddy", where he's told that he's mistaken a walrus for his old friend Bottomley; and "Magoo's Check-up", where's he's flat out told to get his eyes checked) is he confronted with the reality of his nearsightedness, and yet both times he pulls himself up and continues on as always (he takes the walrus out again because he genuinely likes his company, and he mistakes a TV repair shop for the ophthalmologist's office and thinks he's been given a clean bill of health). Word of God states that even if he did wear glasses, as bullheaded as he is, he would still make the same kind of blatant mistakes.
  • Interesting bit of trivia, there actually is an extremely rare condition in real life that causes people who are blind to think that they can see, called Anton–Babinski syndrome or Anton's Blindness. People with this condition can't be convinced that they are blind despite any evidence.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Fluttershy's introverted tendencies throughout her life result in a tremendous lack of self-awareness, to the point that she considers herself "a loudmouth" when others sometimes strain to hear her. In "Putting Your Hoof Down", this carries over into her resolve to stop being such a pushover (a status which she needed her friends' objective input to realize), causing her to fail to notice just how far in the other direction she's going until she notices how monstrous her reflection has become.
  • Scootaloo is stubbornly oblivious to the fact that acquiring a cutie mark actually requires personal introspection and self-discovery, instead simply trying whatever random activity or skill she can think of in hopes that this will prove to be her special talent. The other two Cutie Mark Crusaders, Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, follow her lead.
  • Pinkie Pie isn't fond of Mudbriar's stoic attitude and mannerisms, despite her sister Maud's own personality being similar to his. Case in point, when Maud and Mudbriar take out their pets to play, they marvel at the fun they have together. Pinkie, however, whispers to Maud that Twiggy is just a stick even though Boulder itself is just a rock. When Starlight points this out to her, Pinkie retorts that Boulder has "ten times the personality of some random stick!" Similarly, Pinkie thinks Starlight is joking when she points out that Maud is just as undeniably awkward and strange just as Mudbriar is.
• In The Oblongs, Helga Phugly thinks she is loved by all, especially the Debbies.
  • Regarding a tea party with the Debbies:

    Helga: I’m sure my invitation got lost in the mail.
    Milo: You live in a fantasy world, don’t you Helga?
    Helga: What was that? I was thinking about my hundreds and hundreds of boyfriends.

  • When told point-blank that the Debbies can't stand her, Helga covers her ears and starts humming loudly and stomping.
• The Owl House: Amity Blight does this when she first met Luz, she disregards and/or ignores the majority of what she says, when she confronts Amity for nearly getting her killed, being mean to her and her friends or trying to have a friendly conversation, thinking that anytime Luz is around or tries to have any kind interaction with her, it automatically bothers Amity or gets her in trouble or humiliated, being mainly occupied with her problems and ignoring the harm she inflicts.
• Robotboy: Tommy Turnbull is smart and has an unrequited crush on Bambi yet he never gets the hint that Lola Mbola, who is one of his best friends, has a crush on him, despite how unsubtle she is about it.
• The Simpsons:
  • Marge Simpson can sometimes adopt this philosophy in addition to being a Stepford Smiler. One example is her saying that Homer used to be a fat, immature slob before they dated and now he's an entirely different person. There's also this.

    Bart: I've got to go teach some kids a lesson.
    Marge: I choose to take that literally.

  • It turns out that Jessica Lovejoy's Bitch in Sheep's Clothing act was pretty transparent to her father Reverend Lovejoy, who knew about her crimes and expulsion from boarding school but just chooses to cover his ears whenever it comes up.
• South Park:
  • Eric Cartman is so wrapped up in his own ginormous ego that he will ignore anything which contradicts his glorified self-image, and what he cannot ignore he will twist in his own favor. The best example is, of course, claiming he's not fat, but "big boned", but there are other examples too. On one occasion he frantically tries to avoid a fight with Wendy who's mad at him, because if he loses to a girl, nobody will think he's cool anymore. When he's forced to fight Wendy anyway and loses, the other kids tell him that not only did they never think he was cool, but they couldn't possibly think any less of him than they already did. Cartman thinks that they're just saying it to make him feel better, meaning they care about him, meaning they STILL think he's cool.
  • Cartman's tendency toward mental gymnastics for self-aggrandisement is directly called out in the episode "Fishsticks", where he takes more and more credit for Jimmy's joke, until even at gunpoint because of it, he has convinced himself he came up with the joke all by himself. His actual input entirely consisted of eating snacks on Jimmy's couch.
  • "Asspen" finds Stan spelling out the fact that he's not interested in competing against the resident Jerk Jock of the ski resort, only for the latter to take every single word as a challenge.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "A Pal for Gary" SpongeBob not only completely ignores the words of warning a woman gives him about the Gremlins-like creatures she sells, but also ignores when it turns into a massive killer eel in favor of chastising Gary for "bullying" it even when he is in its mouth and about to be eaten.
  • What really sells SpongeBob SquarePants as this is the fact that he just cannot seem to comprehend the obvious fact that not only is Squidward not his best friend, but in fact hates him to the point of madness, even though Squidward has flat-out told SpongeBob to his face that he can't stand him on at least one occasion. This is best shown in "Little Yellow Book", where we're shown a scene of Squidward chewing SpongeBob out; while in reality, Squidward was furious at SpongeBob for letting Gary into his home and Gary chewing up many of his possessions, complete with Squidward screaming "horrible words that should never be used around strangers" in his face, SpongeBob sees it as Squidward giving him "his profound opinions on how to properly raise and care for a household pet."
  • Squidward Tentacles is oblivious to the fact that he's not that good a clarinet player. It's implied that even SpongeBob knows it, but doesn't have the heart to tell him.
• On Total Drama World Tour, Cody. Courtney a bit too, though she was at least suspicious that Duncan was cheating with Gwen behind her back; when Cody found out he seemed completely shocked, despite the fact that in-universe it's been a common theory they liked each other going back to season two.