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Icaro Aveiga
The Empire taking over the world? Giant meteor in the sky? Evil vampire slaughtering people? Clownish madman destroying the world? Eldritch Abomination awakening? They don't care. It's somebody else's problem. It doesn't even seem to faze them beyond the occasional "Wow, that's a big rock in the sky." Sure, occasionally the mayor will ask you to save their town, but that's as much concern as they express. The shopkeepers might sell you the supplies you need to rescue them, but they'll charge full price, because there's No Hero Discount. It's Up to You.
In a film where cities are destroyed, this trope runs as rampant as the disasters themselves. No matter how many warnings the populace has, no matter if there have been fissures opening in the streets for days or giant alien spaceships hovering overhead, there are always a huge number of people who are just there to stare in disbelief right before being obliterated. Unfortunately, this has more than a little Truth in Television. The trope is justified here because seeing an empty city trashed is not as emotional as knowing millions are dying.
Expect these to be one of the everyday inhabitants of a Dystopia or Crapsack World, to highlight the psychological despair of the setting. Justified in these kinds of settings, since the immutability of their misery have made them experience the in-universe equivalent of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. Dystopian governments also prefer their citizens to be apathetic and easier to rule, and might try to deliberately invoke this trope through Bread and Circuses.
This is also used poetically (mostly in fantasy) in making the statement that magical events and miracles takes place all the time and all around us, and people are just too busy, or too distracted to see it. But in extreme fantasy it could be that the citizens ignore the flying horse, disappearing church, or whatever the event, because it is a common-place occurrence in that world. If the apathetic citizen is working as a cashier or store clerk, then it's Apathetic Clerk.
The effect of desensitization is a more nuanced take on this trope, explaining that the reason was that while people in general did care, repeated exposure to similar tragedies over a short period have exhausted their empathy to the point that they stopped caring. Rather than in fiction where people are just ignorant or cruel for no apparent reason.
See also Bystander Syndrome, It Can't Be Helped, Unusually Uninteresting Sight, Suicidal Pacifism, Adam Smith Hates Your Guts, Conditioned to Accept Horror, Stiff Upper Lip, as well as the Just For Fun page Dying Like Animals. If their apathy crosses the line into antagonism, see Ungrateful Townsfolk.
Advertising
- In a Transport Accident Comission (TAC) Victoria ad, the company pay homage to the Jaws franchise, analogizing how people seem to gawk at car accidents while driving on the road, but decide to do nothing about it. In this ad, a young boy is having a great day at a crowded beach while resting on a surfboard, and then cue the music and the shark. He cries for help, but though many look no one responds. It is not just the reactions of the beachgoers that is disturbing, but the fact that we do not even see (or from what we know anyway) his parents or anyone else he went to the beach with, and though we most likely knows what happens, we do not see the aftermath. We do see a father carry his daughter over where the shark attacked the boy circulating around in his blood, but obviously, no one objects to that. It does not help matters the Soundtrack Dissonance that is played throughout this commercial, though it does ease the mood a bit, the disturbing aspects are still obviously there. The incident in this advertisement is plausible, frighteningly, though not likely to occur, but the Nightmare Fuel, Nausea Fuel, and Paranoia Fuel tropes that play in this brief commercial all come into play.
Fan Works
- In Aftermath of a Fallen Star, Twilight's death had little (if any) effect on the ponies who didn't like her. If anything, she's accumulated more hatred since her plans to modernize Equestria are happening no matter what.
- The Dragonball Z Abridged adaptation of the Future of Trunks has a radio station giving what sounds like a weather report on the Androids currently destroying a city and slaughtering its inhabitants. Trunks guesses most people didn't react more due to them being a slow-burn threat.
- In the beginning of Worm/DC crossover Echoes of Yesterday, Kara tracks down cries for help in Winslow High School and finds Taylor imprisoned into her locker as everyone but her bullies is passing by and ignoring her shouting. Later on, when Principal Blackwell asks why a super-hero would get involved in a case of bullying, Kara retorts "[She] was needed, because no one was bothering to help her, even the staff."I won't lie, my blood boiled at the sight. They could obviously hear her begging for someone, anyone to help, and all they did was either watch or ignore her. Several had already broken off with bored looks on their faces. I shoved through a trio of girls a little harder than necessary, and ran up to the locker.
- Ennea Series: None of the civilians walking down the street stop to help a depowered Hawks as he's kidnapped by Kaetsu in broad daylight, despite the victim's obvious attempts to get away from the kidnapper. Any citizens that think something might be wrong decide it's not their problem or wait for a Pro Hero to come help but one never appears.
- In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (DragonRand100), this is averted. After the seven year time skip, Citizens across Hyrule are afflicted in some form from the constant warfare and the constant horrors experienced in all towns and cities in Hyrule.
- My Little Pony in the Sims: Ghosts haunt ponies, buildings spring into existence out of nowhere, furniture mysteriously changes location, the Grim Reaper shows up to collect a soul... and unless it effects them directly, nopony cares. One YouTube reactor discussed this, wondering how common it must be for buildings to mysteriously appear while time has stopped.
- Persona: The Sougawa Files: Justified. Shadows intentionally steer attention away from their unusual occurrences with a perception filter; only Persona users can see through this.
- Purple Days: Joffrey is the only one to call for a Maester when he poisons Tyrion at his wedding, meaning that his family (besides Jaime, who ran to his side), multiple noble houses, and the citizenry present did nothing but watch as a member of the royal family died right in front of them.
- Quicken: Invoked. When Emma shooed away an enforcer that was harassing Lisa, Lisa was grateful because a lot of people saw her and just walked by. And Emma didn't.
- In Sonic Origins (Ri2), this is the problem with the denizens of Solana. They were so caught up in their own problems even the threat of Helheim couldn't bring them together.
- Two Letters: One of the reasons why Marinette decided to stop being Ladybug is because she grew tired of feeling as though she was the only one actually trying to deal with the akuma. The Mayor completely ignored any suggestions she made about putting preventative measures into place, and people seemed perfectly fine with leaving her to handle everything. Some even let themselves get akumatized over and over again! Oh, and they also combined this with Ungrateful Townsfolk, quick to criticize her for any perceived slip-ups while still expecting her to save the day without any support.
- The residents of Oakey Oaks from Chicken Little are, quite frankly, complete jerks, who only give Chicken Little the time of day if he wins a ball game for them.
- In the anime movie Howl's Moving Castle, two of the main characters, Howl and Sophie, walk across the street in mid-air while the street below them is crowded with nearly hundreds of townsfolk dancing. Perhaps they simply never looked up?
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part: The people of Apocalypseburg chide Emmet for letting the gang be captured but will do nothing to help him rescue them.
- Penguins of Madagascar starts with a long row of penguins who are blindly marching in line (for a brief dip in a pool) and unconcerned about a runaway egg rolling past them.
- All over the place in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which can be justified in that, a) it's New York, and b) it's a New York that has been a playground for superheroes and supervillains for over a decade. By this point, the natives have truly Seen It All, and only react when something weird even by Spider-Man standards starts happening. One of the best examples is when, briefly after Miles gets bitten by the radioactive spider and is swinging through Brooklyn, he and Peter B. accidentally crash and land right in the middle of a crowded crosswalk, both in full Spider-Man costume. He nervously says, "You can just go around," and everyone, without even blinking or acknowledging him, takes that advice, some even going over them.Miles: (getting stepped on by a passerby) Great. Thanks, New York.
Music
- One bystander to the Kitty Genovese murder (see Real life, below) was a guy called Allen Lanier, who had only moved to New York City from upstate New England a fortnight or so previously. A few years later, he wrote a song called Screams In The Night about the incident, which appeared on his band's first LP.
- The citizens mentioned in Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" cares little for the eponymous character's And I Must Scream situation. This leads to him losing his mind and the subsequent Roaring Rampage of Revenge when he does get free later.
- "Dark Ages" by Jethro Tull has hints of this. With civilization on the brink of collapse, humanity is more concerned with their own well being than those of others.
- "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" by Phil Ochs. The first verse is quoted up top.
- The citizens in The Protomen's albums are this across both acts; Protoman even calls them out for just waiting for a hero to save them.