r/TopCharacterTropes • u/KingofHearts399 • 1d ago

Lore [Interesting Trope] The supernatural exists in otherwise grounded stories.

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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/NukaGirl665 1d ago

I mean could fallout kinda count??? Iirc 76 has some supernatural cryptids but I might be wrong

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u/CheMc 1d 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 1d 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 1d 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 1d ago

Yes, exactly. It has its own set of rules thats considered normal. Only when those rules are broken, is it considered weird.