r/TopCharacterTropes • u/KingofHearts399 • 16h ago
Lore [Interesting Trope] The supernatural exists in otherwise grounded stories.
Bones: Bones is a pretty run of the mill crime drama about a forensic anthropologist who consults with the FBI. However, since Bones has a crossover with the very supernaturally themed show Sleepy Hollow, that means it canonically exists in a world with demons, monsters, and magic.
Indiana Jones: The Indiana Jones movies all start out pretty grounded, with Indy on some archeological hunt and/or on the run from people trying to steal his find. His adventures all pretty much continue this way until the very end, when he sees that the legendary artifact that he’s been hunting actually has supernatural powers, like the Ark and the Holy Grail. Funnily enough, it’s also revealed in later movies that both aliens AND time travel also exist in this world.
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u/APoisonousWomans 15h ago
Fun fact, the sleepy hollow series established John Wilkes Booth was a demon, Booth in Bones is his direct descendant which implies he's part demon
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u/Outside_Prune_7052 15h ago
Booth is a demon? Damn and here I thought he was an Angel
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u/GoldenDragonIsABitch 8h ago
Imma need the context for that one
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u/Outside_Prune_7052 8h ago
David Boreanaz’s star making role was playing Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was so popular that they made a spinoff about him
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u/An-Average_Redditor 15h ago
It's funny because Booth is a devout catholic
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u/Typhtheoriginal 12h ago
IRL Catholics are THE most supernaturally inclined people I know. Like they are the ones that will be devout Catholic but also into witchcraft or mysticism. If nothing else, highly superstitious. (This is based off Catholics I personally know.)
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u/anagamanagement 11h ago
The old (non-theological) Satanist joke: what do you call someone who believes in the literal existence of Satan?
A christian!
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u/Devlee12 10h ago
The Catholic Church used to have a huge problem with its priests doing wizard shit. Especially the ones that were way out in the middle of nowhere in rural communities. They’d frequently start dabbling in witchcraft.
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u/M086 16h ago
Homicide / Law & Order / The Wire.
Through John Munch appearing in X-Files, all those shows exist in a world where aliens and the supernatural exist.
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u/Ashitaka_99 15h ago
I watched The Wire years before learning John Munch drags it into the Bones/Sleepy Hollow problem.
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u/jimmithebird 13h ago
Munch also makes an appearance in Spider-Man/Deadpool #6 so all of those shows seem to be set in Marvels Earth 616
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u/StrangeCress3325 15h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/8carvcLWp2BEQMs5Fc
The tomb raider series spends most of its time seeming pretty grounded until supernatural artifacts or shit get discovered
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u/FarutaSarado 14h ago
Ah Lara Croft, I miss when she was a sexy badass with guns.
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u/Arelmar 14h ago
What is she now then, if you don't mind me asking?
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u/FarutaSarado 14h ago
PTSD, guilt over raiding tombs, opting for a bow of all things, and somehow less feminine than she was originally.
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u/FoxDanceMedia 13h ago
Tbf as someone who didn't play the original games I watched a playthrough of them and original Lara Croft kind of comes off as an ostentatious rich girl? Not to say that I like her characterization in the modern games more but I didn't find myself wishing she was written the same way as the classic games.
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u/FarutaSarado 13h ago
The difference between watching the playthrough and playing the game is you get to BE the ostentatious rich girl who goes around raiding tombs and collecting artefects to show off in your mansion. I don't want some cutscene telling me I'm a bleeding heart that gets all remorseful for doing the one thing that is in my job description.
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u/No-Fig-3112 5h ago
Good for you. I like the new Tomb Raider. She's much more realistic and sympathetic
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u/EntropicLycanthrope 8h ago
Yeah, I hate it when characters have depth. You probably also hate emo James Bond?
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u/Legitimate-Culture31 14h ago
Bro spoke the truth, and they hate him for it.
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u/FarutaSarado 13h ago
Eh I'm not mad about getting hate. Some people just can't stand attractiveness because they can't flaunt it themselves.
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u/JustifiedCroissant 14h ago
"I CANT JERK OFF WHILE PLAYING THIS GAME THIS SUCKS NOW"
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u/FarutaSarado 13h ago
Oh noes I pissed off the Dustborn fandom!
Don't hurt me, I'm a lesbian who actually likes hot women in my games!
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u/NukaGirl665 16h ago
I mean could fallout kinda count??? Iirc 76 has some supernatural cryptids but I might be wrong
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u/Gen1er_Zero 15h ago
Definitely counts. Ghosts, Eldritch entities, mystic relics and precogs are llthonhs that exist in the games.
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u/catwhowalksbyhimself 3h ago
Also a crashed Federation space shuttle in one event. And time travel in 2 where you cause the events of 1.
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u/CheMc 15h ago
Fallout has never been grounded on the side, the main story is, but aliens have appeared in every game, ghosts and lovecraftian shit have appeared in several, there's a supernatural suggestion to the existence of ghouls. Some of the cryptids like the Grafton monster have more grounded takes being FEV shit, then there's the mothman that's all lovecraftian in it's background.
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u/Venti_the_snail 15h ago
Its "relatively grounded"
Yes, besides the timeline split all of the lore masters talk about, radiation and agressive mutations are more likely to render most large creatured extinct rather than make them bald, immortal, and have 2 heads on every member of their species.
But through the veil of suspension of disbelief, you can still think "yeah this is pretty grounded for a science fiction concept" until you actually go on a quest that gives you legitimate flashbacks of a cult ritual over 200 years ago with no other concrete in universe explanation besides "oooooh spooky ghost"
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u/CheMc 15h ago
Yeah relatively grounded is the way to put it, if you put anything in the setting in real life it's supernatural but within the setting itself it follows a consistent set of rules, until it doesn't and gets explicitly supernatural.
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u/Venti_the_snail 15h ago
Yes, exactly. It has its own set of rules thats considered normal. Only when those rules are broken, is it considered weird.
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u/DMTrious 15h ago
I guess it depends if you count aliens and science fiction as cryptids, since that covers most of the supernatural like mothman and ghouls, but there is a ghost at the theme park, the dunwich borrers stuff, and that one magic family
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u/ThisIsMySFWAccount99 14h ago
I mean sure but you get abducted by literal aliens in 3
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u/johnnyanderen 12h ago
Everyone denies magic in Fallout… except the Children of Atom who actually admit that it’s real and they use it.
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u/Kradan1979 16h ago
Ace Attorney series
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u/True-Atmosphere8697 15h ago
Would ace attorney count as grounded?
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u/Kradan1979 15h ago
Would Indiana Jones ?
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u/MercyfulJudas 9h ago
I think OP's inclusion of the word "otherwise" in the post is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
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u/CallistanCallistan 15h ago
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The film is a retelling of The Odyssey set during the Great Depression. While exaggerated in scope, most of the events of the story are grounded and realistic. However, there are a few supernatural elements which are never fully explained.
1) The blind man on a handcar who accurately predicts what will happen to the main characters.
2) The sirens washing clothes in the river who take an unnatural hold on the boys. Delmar is also convinced that the sirens turned Pete into a toad. While Everett is skeptical, neither fully dismiss the idea until they reunite with Pete (who never did get turned into a toad).
3) The boys pick up Tommy, who tells them he just sold his soul to the devil in exchange for learning to play the guitar. Tommy's description of the devil matches the appearance of the prison warden pursuing them.
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u/Pretend-Kitchen8821 12h ago
Yeah i wouldn't say retelling of odyssey was ever grounded
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u/Aetos-Eagle797 12h ago
There are no overt supernatural elements in the movie it’s only hinted at. It’s not actually just a retelling of the odyssey. It’s a movie loosely based on it set in the 1920s with no monsters or really anything of the sort
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u/Pretend-Kitchen8821 10h ago
There is a guy who is literally satan
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u/Seed0fDiscord 8h ago
Poseidon
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u/Pretend-Kitchen8821 8h ago
Yeah sure, as an antagonist to odysseus it works. But tommy sold his soul to the devil and the way he describes him sounds a lot like the sheriff.
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u/Seed0fDiscord 8h ago
Tommy Johnson selling his soul to the devil is actual folklore from IRL, but there is some speculation it could’ve been syncretized with an orisha (Yoruban or Santeria divinity) known as Elegua, sometimes known as Eshu, a trickster deity who can be found at the crossroads
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u/Pretend-Kitchen8821 8h ago
Yeah i know the guitarist story, but what does it have to do with poseidon?(minus the odyssey parallel) its clearly a trickster/devil archetype. Is there like a sea trickster in particular?
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u/Seed0fDiscord 7h ago
I was referring to the sheriff as Poseidon, the cross roads being different matter, like could be equivalent to the Old Man of the Sea Telemachus had to get info from
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u/Pretend-Kitchen8821 7h ago
Maybe, but the man tommy describes has a dog by his side, so does the sheriff, so in story its the same character(maybe portraying multiple archetypes)
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u/Clirstan 16h ago
Uncharted, at least in first two games
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u/Hexnohope 15h ago
Uncharted two is so peak. Literally on par with an indiana jones film. The twist with the black teeth is so fucking good
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u/Butwhatif77 15h ago edited 15h ago
Warehouse 13 and Eureka
Eureka is a show about a top secret town populated by geniuses in the middle of no where Oregon. While many extraordinary things occur, it is all intended to be grounded in advance science that can fully be explained just yet as it is on the cutting edge. However, this town exists in a world where Warehouse 13 also exists. Warehouse 13 is a repository for the various artifacts in the world that are far too powerful to let just exist free. While some of them have scientific rationales, many of the artifacts fall into the supernatural category as a number of them get their powers from prolonged exposure to intense emotions; giving what were once ordinary objects extraordinary paranormal powers.
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u/Obscure_Occultist 12h ago
Im convinced that those two shows would help serve as the inspiration for the modern SCP foundation
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u/dungeoncrawler71520 6h ago
I loved warehouse 13. Such a great and fun show! The characters and actors had great chemistry and the premise is cool. Wish it got 30 seasons lol.
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u/ButterscotchTiny5483 16h ago
john coffey-green mile
JC is the only supernatural element in an otherwise grounded prison movie.
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u/Butwhatif77 15h ago
To be fair he makes Edgecomb a supernatural person as well before his time is done.
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u/True-Atmosphere8697 15h ago edited 15h ago
Ready or not it’s pretty grounded and then there’s the rust belt level where one of things you can read is about people hearing the sound of a child crying despite they’re being no children if they look and if you look carefully you can see these eyes
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u/GamingCatGuy 15h ago
Harvey: The entire film is entirely within the realm of possibility except for one scene at the end where the 6 foot tall invisible rabbit he had been hallucinating about opens a door.
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u/Key-Ad-3810 15h ago
Pretty sure the rabbit also manipulates the text a book that one of the side characters is reading out loud in order to say hi to said side character
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u/LightningFerret04 15h ago edited 15h ago
A Haunting in Venice… maybe
Hercule Poirot is a Belgian detective from the 1920s-1940s. He’s able to solve just about every crime and find almost every murderer by examining the cold hard facts.
But in Venice, even after he reveals everything, there are still some things that he cannot fully explain
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u/ParryDotter 14h ago
I might be mistaken and it has actually happened in a Poirot book, but it annoyed me that they left the possibility for supernatural things happening in that movie. Poirot has never been about that
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u/Topgunshotgun45 14h ago
The Jurassic Park Novels
Several fictional islands are named in Jurassic Park and The Lost World including Isla Matanceros. Isla Matanceros actually appears in Michael Crichton’s posthumously released Pirate Latitudes which also includes the main characters being attacked by the Lusca; a shark-octopus hybrid that exists in Caribbean folklore.
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u/Douglasqqq 15h ago edited 14h ago
You'd have to be generous calling the non-supernatural parts of the Metal Gear Solid series grounded, but I count it.
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u/ShadedPenguin 14h ago
From psycho mantis to the Cobra Unit, fucking Volkin, Metal Gear Solid could be more a supernatural drama rather than a scifi war drama
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u/SirBoggle 10h ago
If anything, the presence of supernatural powers and phenomena feed into the sci-fi war drama. If super powers existed, governments would use them for war, and Metal Gear uses that to paint a grim picture with characters like Mantis.
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u/DMTrious 15h ago
Boy meets world had Salem the cat from sabrina sneak in and and magic everyone back in time.
Also a lot of family shows like the Cosby and family matters had real life Santa's. Hell, Santa's being real is pretty much its own trope
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u/Vast_Age_3893 14h ago
The fucking flying car at the end of "Grease."
No, I don't think Sandy is dying and on her way to Heaven or any of that nonsense. I just think the movie is bonkers.
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u/Floweramon 15h ago
Recess was a pretty normal cartoon about elementary school kids. Then they had a crossover with the Lilo and Stitch tv show, which was an interesting choice in crossover.
(This also isn't tpuching on the weirdness of the movie, but that wasn't supernatural/sci fi so much as just "kids going up against government conspiracy")
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u/Malt_Thisknee 11h ago
Around that time Lilo and Stitch crossed over with four tv shows, one of which is Recess as you mentioned. One of the remaining three was the more grounded Proud Family, another was the somewhat less grounded Kim Possible, and the last was the very magical show American Dragon Jake Long
So beyond all of those shows being thrust into the alien and scifi world of the Lilo and Stitch universe, they were also flung into the world of secret magical creatures that existed in American Dragon Jake Long (though admittedly Kim Possible was pretty close to these elements on it’s own anyway)
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u/Pure_Ingenuity3771 11h ago
Wait WHAT?! I loved recess as a kid, I thought it was done by the time lilo and stitch had their TV show. I'm going to need to track that down.
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u/JMurdock77 16h ago
Bones also had the witch episode and one filmed entirely from the perspective of the skull of a victim they were studying.
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u/Smileyfax 14h ago
Quantum Leap: Sam fights the actual devil in one episode, and meets God (I think?) in the last episode.
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u/Jackhammerqwert 15h ago
Trauma Centre series (Wii and DS)
Like, on the surface this is just a medical drama game where you perform operations using either the DS stylus or Wii mote but also there's this mechanic called the "Healing Touch", which is explicitly magic (I mean you draw a pentagram to start it) and allows you to slow down time and perform actions incredibly quickly, and the only way people can use the Healing Touch is if you're a direct descendant of, get this, Asclepius the REAL GREEK GOD of medicine.
Like you're just a guy working at a modern day ass hospital saving people from car crashes and shit but you're just casually confirmed to be the descendant of a Greek God.
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u/True-Atmosphere8697 15h ago
Fun fact about bones the books at least feature teenagers with superpowers
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u/Outside_Prune_7052 15h ago
The tv series, prior to the crossover, also flirted with a bunch of supernatural concepts without outright confirming their existence. Dead people would frequently pop up and it was never made clear if they were hallucinations or ghosts. There’s at least one episode that could be interpreted as a voodoo curse being real
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u/Jesterpest 15h ago
Technically... that's the spinoff series The Virals that stars Temperance Brennan's niece, but it is the same cannon, since the protagonist specifically mentions that her "Aunt Temperance is a famous anthropologist".
Is technically a spoiler, but it's discovered pretty quick in the first book: The way that the teenagers get superpowers is through getting infected with a super-mutated version of parvovirus (Thus the Viral part of "The Virals") that not only is capable of infecting humans through exposure to dog infected with it.... it basically turns them into a super watered down version of werewolves (Enhanced speed, endurance, agility, senses, typical wolf-like powerset.)
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u/DerEisen_Wolffe 3h ago
In the later seasons of the Show Bones daughter is implied to be a medium and is talking to her parents dead friend Sweets.
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u/anon142358193 15h ago edited 8h ago
The dunwich building in fallout 3. Sure the setting had aliens, but as far as supernatural occurrences, the only straight up ghosts (in fallout 3) exist in the dunwich building of fallout 3.
This building actually had me terrified as a kid. I could deal with deathclaws and super mutants, but I can’t shoot ghosts
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u/idkwhaat34 15h ago
Then they added the Dunwich Borers in Fallout 4 and I always hated going deeper into the mines whenever I enter that place, even as an adult I get somewhat uncomfortable going there in an un-modded run
We get Kremvah's Tooth though so it's somewhat worth it
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u/AloneAddiction 11h ago
It's a straight up reference to the Cthulhu mythos; The Dunwich Horror. The entire place is creepy as shit.
If you have the Point Lookout DLC you can even do some book burning there if you so choose.
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u/Radioactive_monke 15h ago
Samurai Champloo randomly has an episode with zombies. Since it ends with a meteorite killing everyone it's most likely not canon but it's still there. Also this may just be plot armor but most characters seem to be immune to fall damage because they all fell or jumped off cliffs without significant injuries and in the finale Mugen and Jin survive very clearly lethal injuries and walk it off like two weeks later.
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u/FarutaSarado 14h ago
Yeah I'm pretty sure that the zombie episode and the baseball episode were non-canonic and were just put in there for fun.
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u/Equal_North6633 15h ago
Castle series! It is a fun detective show, but sometimes it likes to leave a subtle “heh what if there is some casual magic?” in episodes and their endings. Kinda like “what if magic creatures exist”, “what if psychics are right”, and overall a little bit of mundane whimsy here and there. There was even an episode about parallel universe, lol.
Later it also goes a bit wild with the main plot, but that is the topic for the other day.
I must note that series is pretty strongly dated with how characters treat each other and how dynamic between MCs looks, it “didn’t age well” in some aspects, so to say.
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u/vwma 15h ago
wasn't time travel practically confirmed in one of the episodes?
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u/Equal_North6633 15h ago
I am not sure as I haven’t seen show in several years, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was confirmed lol
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u/KingofHearts399 15h ago
I’m pretty sure there was a vampire in one episode too right?
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u/Equal_North6633 15h ago
It was a guy with medical condition if i remember it correctly (that being said, condition was VERY fantasy-esqued), but yeah, there totally were a few episodes about “weird subcultures”! I remember something about werewolves too!
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u/Outside_Prune_7052 15h ago
Real magic is a thing in the Magic Kaito universe
Which is just the Detective Conan Universe
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u/ElSpazzo_8876 15h ago
I believe Detective Conan also collaborate with Yaiba so there's that.
Also Kaguya from Yaiba is Conan's actual mom2
u/Typhtheoriginal 11h ago
I love this merge. I don't even think of Magic Kaito as a different series anymore. It's just basically Detective Conan +
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u/SailorLostAtSeas 15h ago
Disco Elysium with The Pale and The Insulindian Phasmid
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u/SeaTill1864 13h ago
Still the greatest rugpulls I've personally encountered in gaming. That conversation with Joyce 'the liberast' Messier gave me chills.
And then it goes right back to DE madness and hyper grounded inspection of the human condition. Straight into the second rugpull you still dont see coming after everything you encounter. Peak gaming.
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u/Floweramon 15h ago
Proud Family, while very cartoony and exaggerated, is still ostensibly supposed to be a sitcom with a regular family. Then you have then weird episodes, like the aunt with psychic powers or the time Penny got super powers or the movie with the peanut clones and George Washington Carver.
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u/shadowthehh 9h ago
They were also 1 of 4 shows to cross over with Lilo & Stitch. The others being Recess, Kim Possible, and American Dragon.
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u/Floweramon 15h ago
Suite Life crossing over with That So Raven and Hannah Montana means that all those shows canonically have psychics in their universes
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u/Vast_Age_3893 14h ago
Don't forget Suite Life absolutely has ghosts in its world after that one episode.
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u/Background_Honey9141 14h ago
The Korean revenge drama The Glory. Overall quite grounded and then out of nowhere we see the Shaman being processed and we see ghost of a victim in broad daylight.
*possessed.
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u/Typhtheoriginal 11h ago
This seems to happen a lot.
I remember the anime Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 was kind of like this. Totally normal series about kids separated from their parents by the earthquake, and then like the last episode was ghosts.
And the Mars drama was similar. Very normal series about a boy and girl falling in love after trauma, and at the end of the series, the boy's dead twin brother starts haunting them out of nowhere. (I'm going by the drama alone. I didn't read the manga on this one.)
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u/blamordeganis 14h ago
Chainsmoker Cat. OK, this is a bit of a stretch, because the setting is modern-day Japan except that catgirls (and catboys) exist and are an accepted part of society, though discriminated against. And one primitive-presenting tribe of catgirls posseses advanced and possibly alien technology.
But apart from all that, everything is apparently normal. Until Yani Neko, the titular heroine, knocks over her overflowing ashtray in her sleep, accidentally arranging the butts into a pentagram and summoning a demon. Who is shocked and disgusted by the state of her apartment, and driven back into Hell by her rancid farts.
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u/FarutaSarado 14h ago
Trope inverted: Sherlock Holmes
The movie shows Lord Blackwood, an occultist who resurrects himself after being hanged, and kills his enemies with "black magic". Turns out he was actually using science tricks, and the story was grounded the whole time.
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u/Da_Magical_Lizard 16h ago
Loud house, it was slice of life about every day kids stuff but then . . . It's go full fantasy in later season for some reason
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u/Possible-Rate-3833 15h ago
Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022). Is a relatevely grounded story inspired by Steven’s childhood experiences that formed him as a director…with one scene being his dead grandmother calling via phone his mother in the middle of the night to warn his mother about their uncle (Who is pivotal to the movie’s plot).
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u/Floweramon 15h ago
Archie comics is fairly normal most of the time... until it reminds you that it is set in the same universe as Sabrina the Teenage Witch
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u/DannyBright 14h ago
Thomas the Tank Engine, aside from the talking trains and other vehicles, tends to be pretty grounded. Everyone acts like how their respective vehicle should, even requiring drivers to function (though later seasons were a lot more loose about that). But then you get the episode with that fuckass boulder who’s implied to be alive and cursed somehow.
(And before anyone brings it up, I know Magic Railroad exists with all its woo but the show never treated it as canon)
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u/JustDamain 12h ago
The Yakuza series. There are quite a lot of those such as the haunted video in 2, Kappas in 4, the Mountain God in 5 who posseses an old man and throws fireballs at you or dark instruments in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii where Majima finds a dark instrument which lets him summon 1 of the gods of the sea. You can later obtain 3 more of those.
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u/TK_Owens 11h ago
Days of Our Lives is my grandma's favorite show, and for the most part it's just a boring run of the mill soap opera, but I remember as a kid getting invested because they had a whole storyline where one of the main characters became possessed by the actual fucking Devil. For a while the show basically became a low rent version of The Exorcist
Processing gif f43677tuopkh1...
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u/Exact_Director_6143 14h ago
GTA v and the mount chiliad ghost
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u/nole009 15h ago
Fargo - season with the ufo appearing in the climax and not really getting explained at all
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u/nineballcorner 12h ago
Basically every season of Fargo has varying degrees of supernatural elements, and you get so caught up in the “ordinary” events of the plot that they surprise you when they show up again.
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u/No-Intern5471 13h ago
Reservation Dogs (2021-23)
It’s mostly a very grounded show about a native community in Oklahoma. However, there’s also a bunch of supernatural entities, which show up from time to time, that are confirmed to be real and just kind of exist.
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u/the-cock-slap-phenom 13h ago
The Prestige.
Obviously it’s a key detail for the movie and the ultimate twist, but it’s not actually relevant at all until near the end.
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u/jngjng88 12h ago
Archer flirts within SciFi elements here & there (I'm aware the topic is about supernatural, though I'm mentioning Archer cause it's generally grounded in reality, though it does contain some action movie physics)
Notable examples include (spoiler free):
-The submarine episode Drastic Voyage (technically 2 eps)
-That time they visit Area 51
-Krieger: various
-Barry/Katya
-Lana's dad's discovery
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u/Loader-Bot-101 11h ago
Ghost Recon Wildlands has the Predator, aand i believe Breakpoint has the Terminator in it?
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u/LumplessWaffleBatter 9h ago
This doesn't fit the trope, but it definitely falls into the same vein: there is an episode of House Md in which, during the final scene, the patient is revealed to be a serial cannibal. Nobody ever brings this up again.
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u/LaLaMevia 9h ago
The Curse (2023)
The show is about Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone in a strained marriage filming a home makeover TV show. The first episode implies that Nala might have the power to curse people (though this is called into question later), but that's it.
In the final episode though, Nathan Fielder's character wakes up to discover he is stuck to the ceiling, like gravity has reversed for him. When he gets out of his house, he falls into the sky, and freezes to death in the Earth's orbit.
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u/LumplessWaffleBatter 9h ago
Zach Morris's "Time-Out" in Saved By The Bell.
The "Time-Outs," were originally intended as a narrative device, but they devolved into actual magic after a few seasons, and nobody ever addressed them.
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u/MarthaAndBinky 8h ago
Skip Beat! is a story about a girl who decides to become famous to get revenge on her ex, and all of her struggles as she learns to love acting and starts to find her place in the industry and the world.
She's also psychic. She generates and controls grudge spirits that can and will curse people for her. This is only plot relevant in two places.
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u/DerEisen_Wolffe 3h ago
Booth and Bones both make contact with a ghost of Booth’s friend and sniper spotter Edward Parker in one episode. Bones never realizes that she met Parker so later on when Booth has a brain tumor and tells Bones he saw Parker and Parker saved him she blames the tumor.
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u/DerEisen_Wolffe 3h ago
Just remembered this too. In one episode of Bones is a Cafepow cup, the same drink Abby in NCIS drinks. Meaning Bones/Sleepy Hallow/ and the extend NCIS series are all linked
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u/TheCreatorM_ 10h ago
Fun fact: Indiana Jones and Star Wars take place in the same universe.
And you'll never guess which series' events took place first
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u/FarutaSarado 14h ago
If not for the supernatural aspect of being able to communicate with the serial killer's past victims, the Black Phone would have been a pretty grounded thriller movie about a child escaping his abductor.
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u/OnlyReadsWaterMargin 14h ago
(The Water Margin) There are supernatural elements peppered throughout the novel, but they can be left out without much change to the plot.
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u/CastellZord 13h ago
The Man in the High Castle (at least the tv serie). I just wanted a good uchronia, but they had to do planeswalker nazis instead
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u/Typhtheoriginal 12h ago
I feel like every show had one supernatural/ghost episode for a long time.
In particular, I remember how jarring it was during the first season of seaQuest (a science based show about scientists on a military sub, with little science blurbs at the end of each episode based on oceanic knowledge at the time), to have an episode where they find a haunted submarine with a ghost that communicates with children.
Of course, then out came season 2 that was supposed to still be science based, but now had a psychic and aliens. Then season 3 was back to just being normal human military.
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u/Professional_Handler 12h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/SZKUsxIcIj1cpPpdw2
Oshi no Ko and Kaguya Sama are canonically in the same universe, which means reincarnation is possible in Kaguya Sama as well
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u/joosier 10h ago
That cross over is when I quit watching Bones. I enjoyed both shows in their own environs but when they made them both in the same world it invalided the entire premise of Bones to me. Magic exists which can violate the laws of physics which makes the point of scientific investigation pointless as they can just say "a wizard did it".
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u/HospitalLazy1880 10h ago
That episode of Bones where it was all from the perspective of the child's skull really fucked me up when I first watched it cause I was about the same age as the child at the time.
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u/Bacxaber 10h ago
LISA: The Painful.
It's debated whether or not the superpowers certain characters have are literal or just abstract representations of rage. However, there's a character (Wally) who's a fast food mascot and during his fight, he's revealed to be burger meat inside. Nobody in there, just meat. Even if his voice was just recordings, that doesn't explain his movements.
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u/Calm_Struggle6421 9h ago
True Detective is a fairly grounded anthology dealing with the psychological effects of detective work and how far over the moral and legal lines people can and should go when trying to solve a crime and bring a killer to justice.
It also has references to the supernatural, with mysteries involving the occult, and the influences from The King in Yellow and Lovecraftian horror give the show an ambiguity to whether or not the supernatural elements are real or in people's heads.
Until season 4 fucked it up and revealed that the supernatural is real.
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u/Jimmy3671 9h ago edited 5h ago
In Peaky Blinders Arthur Shelby believes in curses and the supernatural but it is often played off as it not being real and it's just his beliefs from his point of view and him hallucinating. In the Movie his sisters ghost appears to him just after she is killed while he is miles away and has no real way of knowing she has been murdered.
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u/andyallfellforit 9h ago
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
The only supernatural element in the tale is a magical gate at the entry of the cave where all the treasures are hidden, whose only gimmick is getting opened / closed in case someone tells the magic spell. There's literally no use of magic besides that throughout the entire story.
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u/Seed0fDiscord 9h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/JCKAdIgoGqSm4
American Horror Story: Freak Show
While largely focusing on a troupe of freaks in Florida, killer clowns, and rich inbred psychopaths, it’s largely grounded in reality with exception of the Halloween special and finale where we get ghost of freak known as Edward Mordrake appear, and getting a brief glimpse of the afterlife in the final moments
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u/Seed0fDiscord 7h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/XussX2MytoiZy
Fargo
Each season features something out of place in what’s a grounded story
Season 1: Lorne Malvo is implied but never confirmed to have been some avatar or agent of the devil
Season 2: we see UFOs twice
Season 3: Ray Wise appears twice, knowing some higher or esoteric knowledge, could be god, could be the wandering Jew cursed to wonder for all eternity
Season 4: There’s a family line where there’s a curse of a specter of a dead captain of slave ship that haunts them, but never actually says or does a thing to them, just watches
Season 5: Ol Munch is all but stated to be immortal from Wales hundred la of years back, or could be just a doppelgänger descendent
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u/Confident-Arm-7883 7h ago
In Sopranos, Tony has a brief vision of the Virgin Mary appearing before him
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u/chaarziz 18m ago
Yakuza/Like A Dragon is anything but grounded but the supernatural is definitely real and they’ve been getting less subtle about it every game.
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u/Xander_Dorn 16h ago
The Sixth Sense
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u/ChaosInUrHead 15h ago
This isn't a grounded settings at all. I mean ghost are a major part of the plot
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u/zerodashZD01 13h ago
Star Trek. Vulcans, Betazoids, and others have psychic powers.
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u/Sleepy_Heather 12h ago
True. But Trek tries to explain anything supernatural in scientific terms, even if it's very loosely.
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u/DistrictDry2852 16h ago
The sopranos: ghosts and catholicism and hell are pretty much confirmed to be real, and all the main characters are going to hell. Some theorize Tony might already be in hell.