Being a Literal Metaphor for this is no fun at all.
Don't bother looking at these tropes...they're not all that important.
See also Apathy Index, Rejection Index, More than Meets the Eye, Obvious Index, The Secret Index, and WOW! are those Distraction Tropes!?
Tropes:
Isn't there something better to do?
- Belated Injury Realization: An injury, often major, goes unnoticed.
- Beneath Notice: Someone disguises themselves as a commoner to drive suspicion away from them.
- Beneath Suspicion: Someone who looks innocent at first glance turns out to have been the culprit the whole time.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A bizarre scene not relevant to the story's plot that is never brought up again after it occurs.
- Bystander Syndrome: They could help if they wanted to, but this doesn't really concern them.
- Cassandra Truth: Some people just can't see the truth, even when it's right in front of them.
- Crying Wolf: When you lie too many times, people will stop listening to you, even when you are telling the truth.
- Devil in Plain Sight: Everyone ignores the obvious signs that this bad person can't be trusted.
- Discouraging Concealment: Hiding something in a place that no one wants to search.
- Disturbed by Not Being Disturbed: When a terrible tragedy or bloody, disgusting horror becomes an Unusually Uninteresting Sight, it may be time to seek therapy.
- Elephant in the Living Room: An obvious problem that everyone is going out of their way to avoid acknowledging.
- Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Players believe the story of the game is more important than the gameplay. Contrast Play the Game, Skip the Story.
- Failed a Spot Check: Someone fails to notice something they should've before it is too late.
- Fanon Discontinuity: Fans choose to ignore episodes or installments of the series that they dislike.
- Guilt Repression: A character feels guilt for their actions, but repress it.
- Handshake Refusal: Someone refuses to shake someone's hand, for one reason or another.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Something/someone is hidden in the most obvious spot possible, yet no one pays it any mind.
- High-Five Left Hanging: A character tries to get another person to high five them, but the other person just leaves them hanging.
- Ignored Confession: Someone makes a confession, but no one cares to pay any attention to them or to take the claim seriously.
- Ignored Enemy: The villain, the character who should be at the heroes' throats the most, gets ignored by the heroes arguing amongst themselves.
- Ignored Epiphany: The villain considers redeeming themselves, but brushes off the thought and continues being bad.
- Ignored Expert: The smart guy's strict warnings about something are blown off by the other characters.
- Ignored Raised Hand: Someone asks for a volunteer, and they pick anyone but the one who's eagerly raising their hand the whole time.
- Ignored Vital News Reports: What? Someone on the news said the government spotted UFOs in the sky? Yeah, ignore it, that's obviously not true...
- Ignore the Disability: Someone's warnings to not insult someone with a physical disabilty (or otherwise peculiar trait) eventually go unheeded.
- Ignore the Fanservice: Someone's attempts to seduce someone else goes totally unnoticed.
- Ignoring by Singing: A character covers their ears and sings to try and ignore a statement they don't like or don't want to hear.
- Ignoring the Doctor: A character ignores a medical expert's or warnings, usually to their detriment.
- I Have No Son!: Parents disown their child because they are ashamed of them or do not approve of the decisions they've made.
- I Warned You: Something terrible has happened, and all that the character who warned everyone else that it was gonna happen can do is say, "I warned you."
- I Was Never Here: Somebody tries to ignore that something bad or weird occured by saying it never happened.
- I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: Someone pretends not to hear something so the other person won't get in trouble.
- In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: Devastated character copes by convincing themselves it is/was just a bad dream.
- Intel-Gathering Bartender: Nobody pays the waitstaff much mind, so nobody expects them to spy on them.
- Invisible to Normals: A fantastical creature of some kind who can't be seen by normal people.
- It Seemed Trivial: Someone withholds important information from another character, but doesn't mention that it's actually important.
- It's Probably Nothing: No matter how much evidence there is to back up an ominous suspicion, someone continuously ignores it until it's too late.
- Jedi Mind Trick: Someone uses mind powers to make others do something that they normally wouldn't.
- Just Ignore It: Sometimes just ignoring the problem will make it go away.
- Kansas City Shuffle: A con-man fools their victim into thinking they're falling for an ordinary scam, but then they pull the rug under them and unveil a totally new scam instead.
- MacGuffin Blindness: Everyone doesn't know where/what the MacGuffin is, even though it's right in their faces.
- Metallicar Syndrome: The more inconspicuous your car looks, the more likely you are to be seen as a bad guy.
- Move Along, Nothing to See Here: A Stock Phrase most often used by police officers to divert attention away from something suspicious.
- No Mercy for Murderers: The killer had a reason for his murder? No one cares.
- The Nondescript: A character who comes off as a little bit too average, to the point where other characters often forget who they are.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Ignoring children when they're trying to warn you about something important.
- Perception Filter: Someone hides their identity by making others around them perceive that they're not really there.
- Play the Game, Skip the Story: Players often pay no attention to the story and believe the gameplay is more important. Contrast Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game.
- Refusal of the Call: The Call to Adventure is (at first) explicitly turned down.
- Refusal of the Second Call: The hero refuses to take up the Call to Adventure again after saving the world the last time, for whatever reason.
- Right Under Their Noses: Someone hides in the place where nobody would ever consider looking.
- Selective Obliviousness: Someone is perfectly fine with acknowledging anything else but that one specific thing, even though everyone else knows it's true.
- Silent Treatment: When you refuse to speak to someone else to show your disapproval.
- Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: Someone bypasses the Silent Treatment by asking someone to relay a message back to someone else.
- That Didn't Happen: A romantic pair negates their relationship by pretending that it never even happened.
- Theory Tunnelvision: Someone still chooses to hold on to their opinions or beliefs, despite all evidence to the contrary.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: A villain who looks too unassuming and innocent to actually be one...and yet they are.
- Too Important to Remember You: Someone of a high authority constantly forgets about the people who are of a lesser status than them.
- Underappreciated Women's Work: The contributions of mom-type people go unappreciated by those around them.
- Unknown Rival: Someone has a rival who is after the same goals as them, but they're unaware that they even have a rival at all.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Characters fail to notice or care about something that should be seen as unusual or weird.
- Visible to Believers: Someone or something only reveals itself to people who choose to believe in it.
- Weirdness Censor: There's a whole bunch of strange stuff going around, but no one seems to notice.
- Within Parameters: A group of scientists are running tests on something, and one of them brushes it off when they start receiving abnormal signals.
- You Didn't See That: Somebody tells someone else to forget that they ever saw something.
What, expecting a witty stinger or something? There's nothing to see here. Scram!
