Aunt Wu: Your future is full of struggle and anguish, most of it self-inflicted.
Sokka: But you didn't read my palms or anything.
Aunt Wu: I don't need to. It's written all over your face.
Sokka: But you didn't read my palms or anything.
Aunt Wu: I don't need to. It's written all over your face.
The Fortune Teller is often an old Magical Romani woman, though mechanical ones are not unknown. May reside at the local Creepy Amusement Park, The Freakshow, or Circus of Fear. Expect an Eastern European accent, Tarot Cards, a Crystal Ball, a cup of tea and some sort of prophecy involving the words "I see..." They sometimes use the phrase "Cross my palm with silver" when they wish to be paid. They are very often refered as "Madame X". They have also been known to lead a Spooky Séance.
There are also fortune tellers who have Caribbean or Cajun accents. Their tarot cards and fortunes will be powered by Hollywood Voodoo. East Asian stories have their own variations, which may be based on local religion or magic, and/or on imported Western concepts.
Compare the Phony Psychic and the Astrologer.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Uranai Baba in Dragon Ball, who is also Master Roshi's sister.
- Lucky Star's final episode centers on preparations for the School Festival, with Konata, Tsukasa and Miyuki's class running a fortune telling booth. Miyuki uses tarot cards to tell fortunes, Tsukasa attempts to do shape readings but is utterly hopeless at it, and Konata cosplays as Yuki Nagato from Haruhi Suzumiya and imitates Yuki's extremely exact predictions.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
- Konoka Konoe is an odd example in that her fortune telling is used so rarely, we never see if she has an premonition or not (though she will make blatantly fake prophecies for laughs).
- There's Negi's Unlucky Childhood Friend, Anya, who was tasked to be a fortune teller in London to complete her training. Negima Neo (the alternate manga) says she's bullseye accurate.
- Kana Altair from Soul Eater Not!, using tarot cards to predict the future and predict the compatibility between weapons and meisters.
- Chrono Crusade: A fortune teller serves to further the plot of a gag episode where Chrono gets a fever...and to foreshadow the anime's Downer Ending.
- xxxHolic has a chapter where Yuuko demonstrates the difference between "popular" fortune telling and "real" fortune telling. The fake uses information sheets, leading questions, simple common sense, and has no sense of the supernatural (she didn't notice Mokona at all, or of Watanuki's real problems). The real fortune teller notices Mokona right off the bat, proving her supernatural sense, and only asks Watanuki his name for the sake of conversation easier before using a sand dish and her own sensing powers to pinpoint his problems exactly.
- In Twin Princess of Wonder Planet, the princesses seek out a fortune teller so that they can get a reading on the resident Bad Boy. Said fortune teller milks it for all she can, despite not being a fraud.
- One Piece:
- Basil Hawkins, one of the more powerful Supernovae, uses cards to tell the future... or rather, probabilities. Bonus points for his Devil's Fruit giving him Voodoo-like powers.
- Madam Sharley the mako shark mermaid from Fishman Island is a fortune teller who uses a crystal ball.
- At the start of Persona -trinity soul-, the main character runs into a fortune teller who gives him a rather dire prediction. The fortune teller then lifts his head, causing his hood to fall back and showing the audience it's Igor, a recurring character in the Persona games.
- In CLANNAD, Ryou Fujibayashi practices fortune telling (using playing cards) as a hobby. Most of the time, she's not too accurate, but she takes comfort from this, explaining that it would feel constricting if the future was set in stone. In the visual novel, she can get a deck of actual tarot cards, at which point she suddenly becomes more accurate...
- Strike Witches has Eila Ilmatar Juutilainen who uses her magic in battle to predict enemy movements, but also uses Tarot cards. She keeps them in her pockets and tells people's fortunes.
- The Tatami Galaxy has an old fortune teller who shows up in every episode to give the same speech for an increasing fee.
- In Tamako Market, Choi works as this in her island with the aid of Dela. She also does this in front of the market community in episode 7.
- An elderly fortune teller is featured in one episode of The Story of Cinderella. Cinderella finds out that he is actually an orphaned teenage boy named Yan who is disguising himself as an old man so he can retrieve items to sell for money.
- Sonica of Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force acts as an ordinary palm reader as a front. In reality, she's an invaluable interrogator for the underworld since she has the ability to read people's biological data and memories through physical contact, though the price for the information she gathers is very steep.
- Rigen of Mikado no Shihō works as this, even though his predictions are often horribly incorrect.
- Day Break Illusion has the main character work as a fortuneteller, alongside three others. They all use tarot, because tarot is kind of the show's thing.
- Lupin III: Dragon of Doom has Genzai disguised as one in an attempt to kill Goemon. He fails.
- Sailor Moon: Sailor Mars/Rei Hino's counterpart in the second arc of the manga, Koan, impersonates one of this for a school festival, reading only horrible, doomed futures, contrasting with a similar stand run by Rei, a girl with actual future seeing abilities. In the last season of the anime Rei herself pretends to be one for another festival, but in a more positive fashion since she offered more of moral support and helpful advices rather than inventing stuff.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- One of the early stories in Yu-Gi-Oh! had a student claim he could see the future (by way of pre-written fortunes hidden under his cloak). When defeated, we see the kind of prediction he gave out, such as "There will be an earthquake". In Japan.
- Sartorius/Saiou fromYu-Gi-Oh! GX is a genuine example, using a Tarot themed deck to accurately predict the future.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
- Stardust Crusaders: Mohammed Avdol of worked as one in his hometown of Cairo before meeting Joseph Joestar. He doesn't do much fortune telling in the story itself, but it helps set up its use of Tarot Motifs.
- Golden Wind: Doppio encounters a fortune teller while heading to Sardinia, who predicts why Doppio has arrived. However, the fortune teller becomes confused by Doppio's appearance and starts becoming persistent that his prediction was accurate until Diavolo emerges and kills him for wallowing too much into his identity.
- Kaguya-sama: Love Is War:
- Yume Atenbo, the president of the occult studies club, runs a fortune telling booth during the culture festival. She's scarily accurate for a setting that lacks any supernatural elements.
- Shirogane's father is shown working as a fortune teller during the New Game arc, though his work is more along the lines of relationship advice based on keen observation and personal experience.
- Chikage in Asteroid in Love practices geomancy, a form of divination that involves interpreting the patterns of thrown rocks, and is insightful on the hidden meanings of gemstones. This is rather different from her sister Mikage, who studies stones scientifically and only use the mystical side in increase public awareness.
Asian Animation
- Lamput: A palm-reading fortune teller is important to the plot of "Future Tense". Slim Doc has him tell his fortune before Lamput passes by, and the doc chases after him, with the fortune teller predicting various misfortunes aimed at Slim by reading his palm-prints (such as an imprint of his hand in cement and a print of his hand in a foggy window) and coming to rescue him.
Audio Plays
- At the end of I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus, the entire story turns out to have just been a vision seen in a Gypsy Fortune Teller's Crystal Ball. (Or was it?)
Comic Books
- Batman: Black and White: "Fortunes" features a Phony Psychic who uses all the traditional trappings, including gypsy-ish outfit, tarot cards, and a crystal ball (which gets used as an improvised weapon).
- Corto Maltese's mother was one of these, and so is his friend and ally Golden Mouth.
- Maus: Anja visits a fortune teller, portrayed as a gypsy moth.
- The DCU: Charity, the Horror Host of Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion, who later became Mason O'Dare's girlfriend in Starman.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Amy does this as an activity while the girls are around the campfire, drawing cards to give out some predictions to Jewel, Tangle and Belle.
- The title character of Iznogoud goes to see Kmeer the psychic in the story "The Magic Calendar". She is drawn to look like a stereotypical Romani traveller, complete with caravan and anachronistic horn-rimmed glasses to emphasise her ability to see into the future. She anticipates everything Iznogoud says before he says it (to his ever-growing frustration), and when she agrees to sell him the title artifact (which allows the user to travel forward and backward through time by tearing off and gluing on pages), she gives him three dirhems in change, telling him their haggling session will result in their agreeing on a price of 500,397 dirhems, and he will hand over 500,400 dirhems. Iznogoud decides not to argue and simply hands over the money.
- Supergirl (1984): Before meeting Nigel and delving into black magic, Supergirl's enemy Selena was a fortune-teller who made a living by reading tea leaves at Lake Tahoe.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: In #29 some "Irish Gypsies" come to town and the Holliday Girls go to have their palms read by the traveler's fortune teller.
Comic Strips
- Shoe: Madame Zoo Doo reads a crystal ball and other divining tools for the other Treetops residents, all of them birds like herself.
- The Bramhall's World political cartoon for November 13, 2016 featured a Democrat donkey seeing a fortune teller about his future following the surprise victory of Donald Trump in that year's Presidential election.
Fortune Teller: Win back the common man, or you don't have one.
- The Far Side did a few gags with this trope. A typical example has the fortune teller staring into her crystal and seeing a semitruck about to crash into her tent, even as behind her the truck comes over a hill.
- The Fortunes of Flossie: Superstitious Flossie loves to have her fortune told, so she seeks out any and every palmist, crystal ball gazer, card reader, tea-leaf diviner, seer, oracle, and mystic who passes through town. Some of the fortune tellers are blatant conmen, others are boardwalk carnies, and some few claim to have legitimate mystic insight (but are totally willing to accept bribes to alter their readings).
Fan Works
- In this
Avatar: The Last Airbender fancomic, we see an extended version of the scene between Aang and Aunt Wu. He starts out unsurprised... until she starts calmly detailing all the things that will happen to him when he reincarnates as Korra, most of them horrifying.
Aunt Wu: This is all before you fight the giant robot. - Child of the Storm goes with the theory that Professor Trelawney is a much more gifted seer than she or anyone else realises — not only is her Second Prophecy completely accurate, her Tarot Reading in chapter 66 of the first book has similarly come to pass and referred to as significant well into the second book, and remains important into the third. Her main problem, as Draco observes, is that she not only tries to force her gift, but pickle it. While some of the cards and their interpretations could simply be smart cold reading, some of them are disquietingly accurate, greatly disturbing Harry.
- Calvin's parents come across one of these while visiting a carnival in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, and she dispenses some eerie exposition.
- In the Horseshoes and Hand Grenades prequel Who Decides?, Ryusei meets up with a fortune teller known as "Madame Pollux". It's his dear friend Mei Shirakawa possessed by a Serpent. In Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, Mei is dressed in this garb when she confronts Haruto and Yayoi. Interestingly enough, in SplitxEnd, Yayoi is given an outfit like this but she doesn't get involved in any fortune telling herself. Unless of course you consider her retrieving a tarot card as a personal weapon.
- In Gypsy Caravan a woman working for the circus Harry ran away to join tells a newly-escaped Sirius that according to last week's tarot reading "the rat you need is living with the ginger clan."
- Legendarily Popular: Ash consults a Natu that can use a ritual to turn its Future Sight attack into actual predictions. However, Ash's interaction with fate is so ridiculous that the Natu's fortune-telling machine blows up in a flood of papers, each reading "You may already be a winner."
"I think that's going to have to be a rule for the future," Misty considered. "Don't try working out what Ash's future looks like."
- OSMU: Fanfiction Friction: The Morrigan, an old woman living in a secluded house on the island of Hy-Brasil, is one of these, as she reads Omar's palm and gives him a sparkly pale rock that helps in summoning Orla and Oswald to him and Opal when the former two get lost. She also eats humans and can get poisoned if she eats the pure heart of one, as shown when she mutters to herself that should Omar die on the island, he would make a lovely meal.
- Rocketship Voyager. On entering the Array, Ensign Kim finds himself waylaid by an alien with multiple eyes on stalks that claims to see his future.
"I see the many paths of your future! Seven years of torment await you! Pain, disease and death—lots of death! You shall suffer the agony of unrequited love, the machinations of deceitful women, and you won't get promoted either!"
- The vocaloid fanfic Rotting Camellias features Mew as one of these, and she appears to know more about the past and the future than any of the other characters. However, her proclamations are of limited help, because her brain is constantly untethered from the present, making it hard for her to focus long enough to give information to anyone.
- The Untold Tale has Shen Yuan picking "Fortune teller" as his class job when he gets to transmigrate within an Imperial China setting, since it would give him a huge influence over the superstitious, powerful ruling elite. He mainly relies on his meta-knowledge when reading Luo Binghe's palm — since the man was the protagonist of his favourite novel — but he does receive genuine visions in his dreams.
- where the dandylions play has Bruno using tarot cards and crystal balls in order to make a living with his Seer abilities. He actually doesn't need the trappings since his power is real, but his customers want the experience and the mystic of fortune-telling, so he rolls with their expectations.
- Vow of Nudity: The circus Spectra works for has a half-elf wisewoman who casts identify to discover the properties of Spectra's mysterious new crystal.
Films — Animation
- In Kung Fu Panda 2, the goat Soothsayer of Gongmen City, who served Lord Shen's parents, narrates the opening of the film. She also delivered the warning that, to her horror and regret, led Shen to commit genocide against the pandas, killing Po's mother (though not his father, as it turned out). Throughout the film, she maintains to Shen that her warning that his doom will come at the hands of "a warrior of black and white" (Po) will come true if he keeps on his current path. Unusually, she keeps trying to persuade Shen to turn aside and redeem himself, preventing the prophecy from coming about, and honestly cares about him (she's implied to have been his nanny, too — something which probably explains why Shen puts up with her Servile Snarker tendencies).
- In the animated Disney version of Robin Hood (1973), Robin and Little John masquerade as Romani fortune tellers (complete with crystal ball) to trick Prince John.
Films — Live-Action
- Blood Ransom: Jeremiah and Crystal go to see a fortune teller about how to cure Crystal's vampirism. The way is to have Crystal drink holy water with Roman's blood mixed into it.
- Our Miss Brooks: In The Movie Grand Finale, Mrs. Davis uses playing cards to tell Miss Brooks' fortune. She's actually using fortune telling as a guise to blab secrets trusted to her care.
- Mallrats: Brodie and T.S. visit a topless fortune teller in a flea market after being banned from the regular mall. T.S. (who went in skeptical of the entire thing) plays the scene totally straight, accepting her wise counsel. Brodie (who dragged his friend in so he could ogle the topless psychic) can't take his eyes off of her superfluous third nipple which freaks him out.
- In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Tia Dalma is introduced as a sangoma of some renown, able to sense people's destinies and tell the future by casting crab claws.
- Death of a carnival fortune teller sets out the rampage in The Funhouse.
- In Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Herbie rampages through a Gypsy camp. A Gypsy fortune teller tells a client horrified into paralysis, that "Darkness is about to fall on you." The next instant, Herbie hits the tent, collapsing it.
- Magadheera has a scene with a tantrik (Indian medium) who can see into the past, that serves to narrate the heroes' previous life where their forbidden romance from 400 years ago is to continue in present-day.
- Ray Milland has his palm read by a fortune teller in Ministry of Fear. It turns out she isn't really a fortune teller, but a Nazi spy, and after he accidentally says the Trust Password she gives him the countersign that leads to him accidentally picking up the MacGuffin.
- Pee-Wee Herman consults one in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, asking for her help in locating his lost bicycle. She steals his wallet and sends him on a wild goose chase to the Alamo.
- The five basketball players whose skill is stolen by the alien bugs in Space Jam try a number of things to find out what happened, including consulting one of these. She has a stunningly accurate vision of Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny playing basketball against the aliens, but the players don't believe her.
- Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows gives us a Gypsy and ass-kicking fortune teller named Sim. She's fairly open about the fact that it's all fake, snarking that you're meant to tell people what they want to hear when Holmes turns it back on her, using the tarot cards to lay out what he knows about her, both through what he already knew and the classic Sherlock Scan to get under her skin.
- In the first movie, Holmes bribes a fortune teller to tell Watson that he shouldn't get married. Watson quickly tumbles to what's going on and is not amused.
- Live and Let Die. Solitaire has the ability to see the future by reading tarot cards, but only so long as she retains her virginity. This causes problems when Bond does his usual thing and seduces her.
- Scanner Cop: The primary bad guy's Dragon and fanatical supporter Zena is a mystic who can tell people's futures with tarot cards.
- In Before Sunrise, Jesse and Celine are approached by a very stereotypical fortune teller, and while Celine finds it charming, Jesse explains in detail why he thinks it's a load of crap.
Jesse: Just once, I'd love to see some little old lady save up all her money, you know, to go to the fortune teller, she gets there all excited about hearing her future, and the woman would say "Uh-huh... Tomorrow and all your remaining days will be exactly like today."
- The opening of The Saddest Music in the World has a fortune teller warn Chester about his moral conduct and how it may become his downfall. He shrugs it off but in the end the prediction comes true.
- Kull the Conqueror: Zareta is a diviner who used tarot-like cards to predict Kull's future.
- In 1927's Napoléon, Joséphine de Beauharnais visits the famous clairvoyant Mlle. Lenormant, who foretells that she will be Queen one day. She'll end up close enough, empress that is.
- Madame Morovia, the gypsy fortune teller in Transylvania 6-5000 who keeps delivering Jack and Gil totally unhelpful messages about subjects they're not interested in before falling asleep.
- Rather than contenting himself to hide in one of the abandoned huts on the moor to observe proceedings as he does in the novel, in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983) Holmes disguises himself a Gypsy fortune teller and capers around offering to tell various characters fortunes. This gives him an excuse to examine Beryl Stapleton's hand and perform his usual Sherlock Scan (her perfume is jasmine, which also scented the warning note sent to Sir Henry, and a pale band on her ring finger indicates that she was wearing a wedding ring until recently). He then gives her a prophecy that she must "choose between life and death", causing her to run off in distress as she's being forced to help her husband in his murderous plot.
- Feast of Love: Chloe visits a psychic to learn what the future holds with Oscar. She predicts Oscar will have a negative outcome, reading both her palms and Tarot cards too. It appears to come true when he dies suddenly from a heart defect after marrying her.
Literature
- A Series of Unfortunate Events: Madame Lulu in The Carnivorous Carnival. Later on, it turns out that she is a Phony Psychic, and the book deconstructs both tropes.
- Charlie Wilson's War: Greek-American CIA agent Gust Avrakotos is freaked out when he stops at a random Mediterranean beach and meets a old Gypsy woman who tells him he's in danger (Gust was being targeted by a left-wing terrorist group at the time). The old woman makes him a good luck charm that the secretly superstitious Gust carries with him wherever he goes.
- City of Bones by Martha Wells: There's no shortage of them in Charisat, burning carved bones in order to see visions of the future for anyone willing to cough up a few trade tokens. Most are thought to be charlatans, but at least a few are genuinely divining the future.
- Madame Akkikuyu from the Deptford Mice trilogy, although she is a phony who possesses no real magical powers.
- Discworld:
- Mrs. Gogol from Witches Abroad is very New Orleans-ish voodoo lady who makes a big production out of predicting the future based on the flavor and position of the ingredients in a bowl of gumbo, but this is a front.
A voodoo woman was reduced to all sorts of stratagems in order to appear knowing, but she felt slightly ashamed of letting an honest woman believe that she could see the future in a pot of gumbo. Because all you could see in a pot of Mrs. Gogol's gumbo was that the future certainly contained a very good meal.
She'd really seen it in a bowl of jambalaya she'd prepared earlier. - There's Mrs. Cake from Reaper Man, a strong-minded little old lady who doesn't dabble in the occult so much as "stamp into the occult and demand to see the manager." Most conversations with her are an exercise in frustration because she forgets to turn her precognition off, and answers questions before they're asked. She insists people ask them anyway, as she gets a headache otherwise.
- The Wee Free Men explains that witches in fact make for unsuccessful fortune-tellers. "Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what's going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular."
- Mrs. Gogol from Witches Abroad is very New Orleans-ish voodoo lady who makes a big production out of predicting the future based on the flavor and position of the ingredients in a bowl of gumbo, but this is a front.
- In The Divine Comedy, fortune tellers are shown to be among the worst sinners. They are sent to the eighth circle of Hell, which is for Frauds. As with the other sinners they are punished with a form of irony. For the sin of trying to see the future they are forced to walk around with their heads on backwards, unable to see what is in front of them.
- The trope is briefly mentioned in Emma. Harriet Smith was scared by wandering gypsies and heroically saved by Frank Churchill. Emma sees the incident a beginning of their romance.
"[Emma] could not but hope that the gipsy, though she had told no fortune, might be proved to have made Harriet's."
- Mother of Mifune from The Garden of Sinners is famous across the city for predicting the future with extreme accuracy, including foreseeing the death of SHIKI, Shiki's male personality, in the flashbacks. She actually is a psychic, possessing one of the setting's recognized precognitive abilities, although she seems to lose most of it with age.
- It's something of a Running Gag in the Harry Potter books that Sybil Trelawney models herself on this stereotype. Characters like Firenze tend to be very scornful of her "fortune telling" (with good reason, as out of thousands of her predictions, only two were true prophecies). Trelawney's abilities are — understandably — mocked for both her theatricality and her small number of prophecies made; she turns out to be The Cassandra and the prophecies she made came true. It's also hinted throughout that a lot of her lesser prophecies are, when stripped of their theatricality, actually quite accurate, suggesting that she really does have a gift, she just has a tendency to try and force it (or, in later books, pickle it). In the films she's more of a Granola Girl or The Ditz.
- Haruhi Suzumiya: Yuki Nagato reuses an old witch costume and runs a fortune-telling booth for the School Festival. Considering she's a drywall alien computer, the fortunes all turn out to be completely exact foretellings of what the person will do that day and when—accurate down to the second. The poor girl she is predicting for looks thoroughly freaked out.
- In Jane Eyre, a group of gypsies came near Thorfield, and the party of Mr Rochester guests wanted to see them. However, one old gypsy woman came to the mansion and offered to tell fortunes to unmarried ladies. It's actually disguised Mr Rochester himself who likes playing with people and is not above manipulation. The ladies did not discover him, and he broke his character only in front of Jane.
- Kane Series`: Boree from Dark Crusade is a part of a carnival troupe. She uses cards and both times we see her trying to tell Erill's fortune, she looks scared and refuses to tell the girl what she's seen—and before the end of each day, something very bad happens to Erill.
- Liquidate Paris, by Sven Hassel. Porta reads the palm of a Vlassov Cossack and foretells he'll spend the rest of his life freezing in a labor camp in Siberia. Which, as Porta points out, any fool could have predicted.
- In an aside in The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul, Dirk Gently recalls how his detective business is bringing in so little money that he's doing palmistry part-time. He could deal with the embarrassment of wearing drag and speaking in falsetto if only all his deliberately absurd predictions didn't keep coming true, which fills him with self-loathing and anger at the cosmos.
- Masquerade: During his travels, Jack Hare comes across the Penny Pockets Lady. In exchange for a penny, she'll let someone choose from the many pockets of her apron and give them a small gift which usually has some importance for their future. Unfortunately Jack, being a hare, has no penny, but she's still willing to answer a question for him.
- Masquerade of the Red Death: Madame Zorza is a Gangrel mystic and seeress, who gives Alicia some cryptic clues as to the Red Death's plot.
- Madame Dorothea from The Mortal Instruments, supposedly; she decorates her apartment with several generic fortune teller themes as a cover-up for her customers.
- Isobel in The Night Circus. Mostly she practices skill at cold reading, but she keeps a special deck of tarot cards (with one card missing) to do genuine readings of peoples' futures. The missing card is Temperance, which she's using as part of a charm to protect the circus; she eventually destroys it because it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It quickly turns out that it was.
- Mother Tia, one of the New Mexican trailer park elders mentioned offhand in The Pale King.
- Shalice of The Pilo Family Circus, who has a nasty habit of brainwashing her customers into altering the future for her own diabolical ends.
- Courtney Milan's Proof By Seduction features one as the heroine, in a Belligerent Sexual Tension rivalry with a scientist who wishes to disprove her supposed "gifts." (She's using her perceptiveness about people, rather than any real supernatural gift, and is portrayed sympathetically even though she later decides to give up her fortune-telling, feeling that she is taking advantage of emotionally vulnerable clients).
- Brian Jacques's Redwall series uses this frequently. Examples include Nightshade from Outcast of Redwall, Groddil from Lord Brocktree, and Polleekin from Martin the Warrior. Invoked and exploited in The Long Patrol, where Midge Manycoats poses as a fortune teller to gain access to the enemy camp. Midge pretends to see Damug's future, but secretly convinces Damug to fight Redwall's army at the Ridge of a Thousand to keep Damug's army away from Redwall Abbey itself.
- the secret lives of Princesses: Princess Claire Voyant can see into tomorrow. But she is usually wrong.
- In the Small Medium series, Chase has the Oracle job, which already gives her the ability to tell the future through skills and the Fortuna deck, but the Medium job gives her more proper Fortune Teller skills including the ability to gaze into crystal balls, hold seances, and stack the deck while doing fortunes.
- Myra from The Story of Valentine and His Brother can correctly predict people's fortunes using cards. She doesn't like doing it because she worries that the power comes from the Devil, and because sometimes she predicts horrible tragedies.
- In the Thieves' World stories, a race of humans are based on Gypsies and have the magic ability to tell fortunes. Only the women of that race tell fortunes.
- Robert A. Heinlein's Lazarus Long commented on the subject in Time Enough for Love:
"A fake fortune teller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved."
- From Time Machine Series: Sail with Pirates has an old black woman who is blind, but oddly knowledgeable black woman who gives the protagonist cryptic hints (and is one of the few persons to know that he is a time traveller, or at least a traveller who tends to disappear mysteriously.)
- Rhonda, a Tarot Cards reader at Court in Vampire Academy, predicts the future in somewhat vague terms.
- Villains by Necessity: Kaylana consults with one. She's an old Gypsy with a crystal ball. However, unlike some of them she genuinely sees the future, seeing glimpses of what will happen to them in the book later.
Live-Action TV
- Our Miss Brooks:
- Mrs. Davis believes tea leaves to be a reliable method of telling the future. Most notably, in "Mrs. Davis Reads Tea Leaves", Mrs. Davis' dresses up as gypsy to read Miss Brooks' tea leaves. Her predictions appear to come true . . . until Hilarity Ensues.
- Mrs. Davis also reads tea leaves in the radio episodes "The Weighing Machine" and "Friendship" to varying results. In "Weighing Machine", Mrs. Davis' reading is prompted by the need to double check a fortune Miss Brooks' receives from a penny weighing machine. Here, the readings turn out to be correct . . . but not in the way Mrs. Davis or Miss Brooks expects.
- Mrs. Davis switches to playing cards in the cinematic series finale. However, Mrs. Davis simply uses the cards as a device to reveal Mr. Boynton's intention to Miss Brooks, in spite of having previously been pledged to secrecy.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Drusilla shows a talent for reading Tarot in one episode.
- Subverted twice by Lost:
- The first two seasons featured Richard Malkin, ostensibly a Phony Psychic, who may or may not have had a real psychic experience reading Claire.
- Season 3 had Hurley going to a more stereotypical Gypsy-like fortune teller, who read Tarot cards and did an elaborate curse-lifting ritual but turned out to be a total fraud hired by Hurley's father.
- Subverted in Legend of the Seeker when Richard is warned of possible impending death by a crazy old crone... who turns out to be a very attractive woman in her late thirties. Apparently she just dons the "crone" look for prophesying.
- Carnivàle has Apollonia, a catatonic Gypsy fortune teller who operates through her daughter, Sofie. Sofie reads the Tarot and has occasional premonitions (sometimes prompted by her mother, as with the flashbacks to Justin raping Apollonia to conceive Sofie, sometimes plot-related visions unique to her own destiny).
- In Charmed (1998), Phoebe once went to a gypsy fortune teller to find out why she has not been getting premonitions.
- In Mahou Sentai Magiranger, each of the five magicians / Rangers had a magical speciality out of costume. This was Urara's, complete with crystal ball.
- The X-Files: The episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" abounds with various real and phony psychics. Madame Zelda the palm reader is of this variant, complete with a fake Russian accent and a crystal ball.
- 'Allo 'Allo! has two male examples:
- A leader of the gypsies reads Madame Edith's palm and thinks she's the Gypsy Queen who was lost as a baby. However, her dreadful singing convinces him he was wrong.
- The resistance wants to organize a gypsy fair, but the gypsies refuse to come because a black cat predicted a bad omen. People from the café play the gypsies. René is the Great Gypsy an tells fortunes from a crystal bowl. Lieutenant Gruber who has a crush on him wants him to tell him his fortune.
- In Psych, Shawn meets another Phony Psychic. She's a young woman, but uses Tarot Cards, a crystal ball, and a made up Eastern European-sounding accent.
- A The Kids in the Hall sketch involved a fortune teller exploiting the belief of his clients (almost all of whom were elderly, female, and from the Old Country) to serve as free workers in his delivery company by claiming the packages—which fell onto his table from above—were signs from the heavens and that by delivering them, his clients could accumulate "positive energy" for their loved ones.
- In a flashback scene in Game of Thrones, we see a teenage Cercei Lannister going to visit Maggie the Frog, who tells her fortune and uses blood magic. What she says makes no sense at the time, but in hindsight, most of it has come true by the story's "present".
- Murdoch Mysteries: In "Blood and Circuses", the circus's fortune teller Lady Minerva delivers a series of cryptic clues via tarot cards. Crabtree is a believer, but Murdoch is more skeptical.
- Schitt's Creek has Twyla reading tarot cards in one episode. She predicts comicly gruesome drowning deaths for most people, but she also predicts propersity and happiness for the Rose family.
- Are You Being Served?: In "The Hand of Fate," Mr. Humphries reveals that he's a palmist, and offers readings to some of his coworkers (as well as a hapless customer whose bad fortune strikes the second he walks offscreen).
- Quantum Leap has one in the circus-set episode "Leaping In Without A Net". She seems to be the real deal; although she doesn't tell Sam much that Ziggy can't, it's implied she sees him as himself, and she comments that he's been "reincarnated" many times. In later episodes a psychic also sees Sam as himself, and an amateur palm-reader comments on his unusually long "life line".
Music
- Perry Como's rendition of "St. Louis Blues" mentions a fortune teller.
I went to the gypsy, to get my fortune told,
Yes, I went to the gypsy, to get my fortune told,
I asked the gypsy, "What does the future hold?"
Gypsy told me, "Don't you wear no black!"
Hmmm! The gypsy told me, "Don't you wear no black!" (No black!)
"Go to St. Louis, and you can win her back!" - Patti Page's "Come What May":
A gypsy with a crystal ball to gaze in
Can look into the future, so they say - Blue Öyster Cult's Shooting Shark, which begins with a visit to an occultist/card reader.
"I can see you do need help, my friend!"I whispered - "Obviously!"
- Lou Christie's "The Gypsy Cried":
Gypsy, oh tell me, what is in your crystal ball
Gypsy, oh tell me, will my tears fall - In the Allen Toussaint song "Fortune Teller", the narrator goes to the eponymous individual asking about his love life.. and ends up marrying her. "..And now I get my fortune told for free!"
Pinball
- Twilight Zone has the Camera.note Making the shot yields a reward, along with a print of what the Camera will reward the next time it is hit.
- There's one in the Bazaar in Jinni Zeala, who gives out random rewards.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- In Ravenloft setting, Madam Eva, a Vistani fortuneteller in module I6 Ravenloft. Her "Fortunes of Ravenloft" card reading is an integral part of the adventure.
- Madame Fortuna (Ravenloft setting) is a good (or at least protective of her own) Fortune Teller that travels with the Carnivale, sacrificing her eyes to be able to speak for her Skurra companions and offer her skills as a powerful fortune teller. (Normally the Skurra are mute thanks to the magical makeup they use to protect themselves from The Twisting).
- The Vistani Fortune Teller later developed as a stock character of the setting.
- Dragon magazine #118 article "A Day at the Faire". One of the attractions at the fair is a Gypsy fortune teller who "...sells the secrets of the future that only she can see."
- In the "The Velvet Circle" adventure of the Second Stormbringer Companion, the elderly fortuneteller Kakata has a horse drawn wagon and conducts a séance with startling results.
- Call of Cthulhu:
- The Fungi from Yuggoth, adventure "Castle Dark". The PCs can encounter a Gypsy Fortune Teller and her son. The woman attempts a reading using Tarot cards but it foretells only death and disaster for the PCs.
- Masks of Nyarlathotep chapter 3 "Egypt". Angela Broadmoor is a medium with the ability to contact the spirits of the dead and use information from them to foretell future events.
- Champions supplement C.L.O.W.N.. Lisa (AKA the super villainess Random) joined a circus and befriended a Gypsy fortune teller who worked there. When the fortune teller died she bequeathed a book that gave the location of a pair of magical dice.
- It Came from the Late, Late Show. The Gypsy fortune teller Extra is knowledgeable about supernatural Monsters and can read palms to see danger in a client's future.
- DC Heroes adventure When a Stranger Calls. While in Romania the PCs will meet an old Gypsy fortune teller named Madame Sosostris who will offer to read their fortunes. If they agree, she will give them information about the object of their search and clues about an upcoming encounter.
- Midnight Circus naturally features fortune tellers among the circus folk; more specifically, the Midnight Circus has a whole trio of them in the form of the Scribunda Sisters. Aurora, Merida and Fata all offer various services to clients, including dowsing, augury, premonition, divination, and even the occasional vision quest; they've even got a set of Midnight Circus-themed tarot cards. Out of all the circus folk, they're among the least malevolent, being among the few surviving worshipers of Cara to remain within the carnival; they're even capable of healing Barbs, which can come in handing if the player's given into the Circus's corrupting influence.
- The female Seer in Res Arcana resembles a fortune teller who uses cards to tell the future.
Theater
- David Mamet opens his play Edmond with one of these, whose prophecy starts the titular Anti-Hero on his journey.
- Shakespeare uses the three witches to prophesy in Macbeth.
- Ride the Cyclone is narrated by the character of "The Amazing Karnak", a mechanical amusement park fortune telling robot. He just so happens to be gifted with self-awareness, fourth-wall awareness, and legitimate psychic abilities that allow him to accurately predict the circumstances of anyone character's death — including his own.
"I was designed to predict the exact cause, time and place of someone’s death. A rather morbid function, I grant you. Which is precisely why I was set on ‘family fun novelty mode’ when sold to the Wonderville Traveling Fairground. Turns out being told the place and time of your death in front of your family, with a mouthful of corn dog at a fairground, is the very opposite of fun."
- One figures very prominently in the second act of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth.
Theme Parks
- From both the theme park ride and the 2003 movie based on it, Disney's The Haunted Mansion features Madam Leota, the disembodied head of a gypsy medium who helps connect the living with the dead. In the ride, her seance circle is what helps the mansion's ghosts "materialize". In the 2003 film, she not only provides the hero with vital clues, she serves as his much needed moral support.
Toys
- My Little Pony has a G1 pony known as "Gypsy". She has tambourines on her flank. In the British comics she lives deep in the forest, can tell fortunes, and can see into both the past and the future. She also has a talent for music. Gypsy is a trusted subject to Majesty (who is essentially the queen and is also magically gifted).
Video Games
- Katrina from Animal Crossing is a fortune telling panther. Her speak is highly obscure and the meaning of her prediction can be quite mysterious.
- ANNO: Mutationem: At Margarita, Ann can meet a fortune teller on the street-side who tells her about the current situation and where she'll proceed next.
- It's possible to visit a fortune teller at the carnival in Baldur's Gate. If you ask her to read your fortune, she figures out you're a Bhaalspawn, gives you a refund, and runs.
- BioShock has the fortune teller machine Epstein the Swami. It usually tells you something unpleasant.
- The mechanical teller at the carnival in Bully is a pretty funny Deadpan Snarker.
- In Chrono Cross, you can visit a fortune teller in Termina, who will have a unique fortune for all forty-five of your possible party members... with the exception of Kid and Harle, who get the same reading.
- Madam Rose, a hack fortune teller, is sometimes an extra character in expanded computer versions of Clue.
- Cyberpunk 2077 has Misty, a Perky Goth who explains the game's Tarot Motifs and runs a fortune-telling shop.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc features a student named Yasuhiro Hagakure whose talent involves fortune telling. Despite having an accuracy of only 30% (which is more impressive than it sounds taking into consideration the abundance of Phony Psychics), a majority of his predictions have come true throughout the game.
- Dark Cloud for the PS2 features a disturbing example dubbed "Pumpkin Panty Fortunetelling" that she performs for the protagonist after you rebuild her home and place of business. The fortune-telling is done by a mildly rotund middle-aged lady wearing an open dress who proceeds to leap up high in the air and drop down on top of the protagonist's head, trapping it within her dress. Squick aside, it is 100% accurate for all predictions (and necessary to proceed with the game) and she provides the service to the protagonist free of charge.
- The adventure game Darkstone features the gypsy townsperson Madame Irma, who is implied to be a fortune teller. She doesn't fill the function exactly, at least not for you; she will cure the player character(s) of poison or injury at no charge. For an appropriate fee, however, she will identify mysterious artifacts and jewelry recovered from the local dungeon, and remove any curses your character may have picked up.
- Dead or Alive: Fortune telling is stated to be one of Kasumi's hobbies, though we never actually see her do it in-game.
- Death Road to Canada has the Wiz who appears in trading posts acts like this. He can be used to boost a random party member's maximum health, be asked to have do a tarot reading for a party member (revealing their personality stats), or be recruited himself.
- Dragon Quest IV: Meena/Nara reads people's fortunes and introduces herself by doing so before she joins in Chapter 5. One of her more useful weapons is a deck of Tarot Cards. She is also The Medic.
- There's Madame Gladius from Dusty Revenge, who reveals the trust behind the titular character's lineage as The Chosen One via Crystal Ball, only to be suddenly shot dead by the first boss. Her blood even splatters on the crystal.
- There's Olava the Feeble living in Whiterun in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim; however, the Dragonborn can only make use of her skills one time, and only if they do the Dark Brotherhood questline.
- The Fallen London Gazette features the predictions of the city's most greatest chiropteromancer Madame Shoshana. She can be encountered in Mrs. Plenty's carnival as well, and apparently owns a Crystal Ball.
- Both Fantasy Quest games include the Soothsayer, a gypsy fortune teller. She takes your gold and offers a lot of useless advice before finally helping you.
- Final Fantasy VII:
- Cait Sith presents himself as a fortune-telling machine (though in reality he's a spy remotely controlled by a Shinra agent, though one who's eventually sympathetic to the heroes.) He tells fortunes twice; the first time is when you initially encounter him, he spits out a few non-sequiter fortune cookie-esque "predictions" before coming up with a startlingly specific one. Later he provides another prediction in regards to Aeris and Cloud's romantic compatibility. His confirmation of them as the One True Pairing (versus Cloud and Tifa) is less than cut and dry in its accuracy.
- There's the Fortune Teller booth in Wonder Square at the Gold Saucer (the same place you meet Cait Sith for the first time). For a small fee it will provide a vague fortune which can help remind the player what to do next to advance the main plot.
- Fire Emblem:
- Hannah from Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade gives you a reading regarding what you will find during the next map if you pay her some money. When she goes "Screw This, I'm Out of Here!" halfway through the story, Nils takes the role, making use of his Psychic Powers for free, though his hints are vaguer than Hannah's.
- In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Micaiah made her living as a fortune teller before coming into the company of the Dawn Brigade.
- Sumia from Fire Emblem: Awakening makes fortunes using flowers and says that she wishes to use griffon and pegasi feathers for it. In some of her endings she becomes famous for her fortune telling.
- Fire Emblem Fates has fortune-telling as Nyx's usual daytime job, but she's rarely if ever seen doing actual fortunes since the war breaks in and she either runs away (Birthright) or has to join the crew (Conquest and Revelations).
- Seadall in Fire Emblem Engage partakes in fortune telling when he's not dancing. At one point in the game, he opens up a venue in the Somniel so he can give your units tarot card readings when it's night time.
- We learn that Winston Zeddemore was a fortune teller on Coney Island before becoming a Ghostbuster in Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
Peter: Did you wear a turban?
Winston: No, man! It was a red velvet cape with moons. It was plush! - The fortunetelling sisters in Harapa in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. The elder sees the immediate future by looking into a bowl of water, charges 5 coins per vision, and generally remains positive and helpful. The younger offers Matthew a free reading from her Crystal Ball... and immediately regrets it.
- Grandia III: Dahna has this as her general theme, complete with sets of tarot cards for weapons, and with battle quotes to match. That being said, she plays a greater-than-normal role in the story, being the chief of her tribe, and directing the party towards two Guardians using her own knowledge, rather than relying on actual fortune telling.
Dahna: [casting Meteor Strike] The Star card! This is your destiny.
- Aki in Gravity Rush, who can sometimes be found talking to her Creepy Doll Pandora, and usually gives out her cryptic, seemingly-useless fortunes at a hefty price. One DLC chapter has the "culprit" breaking Pandora, and she aids in their capture with even more seemingly-useless advice (with the cost going to said culprit).
- The Dealer in the tarot-themed game Hand of Fate is, naturally enough, one of these.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising: It's mentioned in chapter 14 that Viridi reads fortunes.
- The one Graham visits in King's Quest V gives him an update on what Mordak is doing - including having the shrunken Alexander tied down and threatening to feed him to the cat.
- A mechanical fortune teller named Morgan plays this straight in The Labyrinth of Time. He is your main source of clues in the game, but costs a quarter per hint. And his booth is tucked away inside the mirror maze, which can be fairly hard to reach at times.
- She's not a fortune teller per se, but Linde from The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel acts as one for Class VII, Sara, and Towa. She carries parchments where a person and Rean draw out their fortunes and read them. It ends up Foreshadowing events that happen in Cold Steel II and III.
- There's one in Legend of Mana, a fruit lady, who wears fruit on her head, sits in a giant fruit, and tells the future by spinning around the fruit. So yeah.
- Some of the games in The Legend of Zelda series have one to remind you what you're supposed to be doing.
- Two versions turn up in The Lost Crown: A Ghosthunting Adventure: Nanny Noah, a little old lady who reads Nigel's palm and tea leaves, and "Mystic Morgan", an innkeeper who's dressed up as a gypsy to offer crystal-ball predictions at the May Day Fayre.
- Esme in Love & Pies is a traveling fortune teller who can predict bad things in their future if "they meet [her]".
- Seena from Lufia: the Legend Returns is a traveling fortune teller with a Chronic Hero Syndrome. Basically, she will make a fortune of almost anything positive, and then drag her partner with her to achieve it. Or just make it happens, as she's under a disguise of Erim the Sinistral of Death, she has a power to make whatever she has predicted becoming true.
- The Maid of Fairewell Heights: Jinn uses his Crystal Ball to serve as one in the Bonus Room. He gives fortunes that are randomly Normal, Great, Excellent, or Unfortunate Things, and precedes the announcement of the fortune type with:
According to my CRYSTAL ball...
- In Mitsumete Knight, the Asian (aka the player avatar), and ideally a girl of your choice (or the one who has the highest Love Gauge with him if she invites him) will visit a fortune teller during the Mid-Summer Festival. The old woman will tell them through her Crystal Ball their destined person. It's an opportunity to check out who's the leading girl in affection of your roster, and if this girl is also the one you went to the festival with, you'll get a big boost in Relationship Values with her. If you haven't met any girls, the crystal ball will break and the fortune teller with ask for financial compensation (kinda moot as Money for Nothing rules in this game).
- The second game of the Ravenhearst story arc from Mystery Case Files is called Madame Fate, in which the titular seer and carnival owner foretells her own murder.
- There's a mechanical one of these in Phantasmagoria, who will give Adrienne a different fortune each day.
- Ōkami gives us Madame Fawn, a recluse fortune teller living in a cabi in Agata Forest. She can give hint to Amaterasu about her next tasks.
- Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, episode one features a mechanical fortune teller that doesn't dispense fortunes so much as missions. They tend to be cryptic, and they greatly annoy Gabe, who finds them bizarre and stupid. After finishing three of the fortune-missions, Gabe demands to put in the next token, gets a fortune, reads it, and then screams bloody murder before smashing the gypsy machine to mulch with his bare hands. And no, you never find out what it told him. Presumably it wasn't very nice.
- In Planescape: Torment you can encounter an elderly fortune teller at one point. If you try to have her read your fortune, she tries, then apologies and gives you a refund, saying that you're the first person she's not able to get any sort of reading from at all.
- In Princess Maker 2, one shows up once in a while. And an avaliable ending features the daughter of the game becoming a teller too.
- Professor Layton and the Curious Village: One of the villagers, Agnes, insists on reading Layton or Luke's fortune in exchange for their solving a puzzle. She invariably predicts bad luck.
- Ragnarok Online has the Bard/Minstrel/Maestro and Dancer/Gypsy/Wanderer classes that both technically are capable of telling fortunes. They share a move called Tarot Card of Fate as a method of inflicting status effects and conditions on targets.
- Jake Quinlan visits a fortune teller's booth near the end of Ripper inside a virtual simulation of Victorian Whitechapel, to activate the weapon he can use against the Ripper there.
- In Rockett's Tricky Decision, Saki Kajiyama runs a fortune booth at Nakili's party, dressed up as the typical gypsy fortuneteller. Also in Purple Moon, there's frizzy-haired outcast Mavis, who proclaims her psychic powers (always right) and sometimes gives out mystical artifacts; although she herself doesn't fit the stereotype (psychic and cryptic, yes, but not a fortune teller by trade), she describes her mother as "this beautiful gypsy (who) knew all about magic" and has a crystal ball that once belonged to her.
- The third installment of The Room has a mechanical fortune teller named Maggie that's actually powered by her actual soul, who was imprisoned by the Craftsman after she disobeyed him. She's aware enough to know what's happening around her, and even leaves a cryptic warning on the glass at one point. But she can't help you beyond that unless you solve the extra puzzles in Grey Holm before the ending.
- In Roots Of Pacha, Maeri can predict the weather by just observing her body, and you can ask her for the next day's forecast.
- RuneScape has a fortune teller in Varrock who greets your character with the "cross my palm with silver" line, whereupon your character confusedly points out that money is gold.
- The Voodoo Lady from The Secret of Monkey Island. The Curse of Monkey Island features the more Gypsy-like Madame Xima.
- Shadow Hearts: Covenant has Lucia, a career fortune teller of Italian origin who joins the party. One of her unique abilities is to use tarot cards in a high-risk/high-output Random Effect Spell that influences the entire battle.
- The Fortune Teller from Shadow of Destiny. Throughout the game, the player can visit her to learn the time he is going to die. She's pretty accurate.
- Shin Megami Tensei:
- Shin Megami Tensei if... uses a character generating device that has shades of traditional fortune-telling.
- Persona:
- Persona 2 has an Egyptian-themed Fortune Teller that can have "Dragon Fortunes" that gives you random battle variables (more gold dropped, rate increases, etc.), and a Love Fortune that lets you answer questions for random bonuses with characters that can be hooked up with. It's outright stated that she used to be notorious for being very bad at it until the power of rumors changed it.
- At the start of Persona 4, Igor uses Tarot cards to predict your destiny. Later in the game, it's implied that his assistant Margaret was the one who set up the fortune-teller booth at the school festival (which is pretty much confirmed in Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth).
- In Persona 5, Chihaya Mifune is a fortune teller specializing in Tarot cards whose predictions are rumored to be infallible. While her fortunes are genuine, they can also be changed with enough effort, and your Confidant with her is centered around her finding the courage to Screw Destiny. Depending on what rank her Confidant is, using Chihaya's services will grant you perks ranging from increased social stat growth rates to deepening your bond with your Confidants. To top it off, her Confidant Arcana is even Fortune!
- The Matchmaker NPC from The Sims 2 Nightlife dresses like a gypsy, carries and obsessively polishes a crystal ball, and if paid will summon another sim for a blind date with yours— the more you pay, the more likely the other sim will have compatible traits and interests.
- In Snatcher, there's one who reads fortunes based on a retina scan. Of course, after guessing a few too many things about the protagonist, his Robot Buddy points out that she was actually using the retina scan to browse the database for factual information about him.
- The Chao fortune teller in Sonic Adventure 2 gives your Chao a randomly-generated name.
- Rose from Street Fighter, who is a powerful psychic and the local Lady of Black Magic. Street Fighter V introduces her student and the local Magical Girl Warrior Menat, who also fights with a Crystal Ball in addition to psychic powers.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- Merlon and his family from the Paper Mario series, who either tell Mario his next destination, upgrade his partners, or provide unique bonus effects in battles.
- Luigi's Mansion has one named Madame Clairvoya, who offers Luigi her services after he brings each of Mario's belongings scattered around the mansion.
- Madame Bwahstrella is a mechanical fortune-teller Rabbids in Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.
- Tales Series:
- In Tales of Symphonia there is a fortune teller in Triet. The first time you visit her, she gives directions that help advance the plot. Subsequent visits are an optional thing to check on the game's Relationship Values.
- Lailah in Tales of Zestiria acts like this at times, mostly in victory quotes and in a skit.
- True Love Junai Monogatari has one of these popping out sometimes when the players send the Player Character shopping or to the city's downtown. She has a Crystal Ball, hides her face under a hoodie, and if paid she'll give cryptic advice about the girls. In Anze's ending, however, she's hinted to be actually a goddess, an angel or a minor deity — probably the one who sent Anze to Earth as a cat for losing her wings.
- Touch Detective: Katrina, the oddly purple-skinned fortune teller serves as a sort of go-to expert of the strange that Mackenzie often makes use of during her cases.
- The Ultima series traditionally uses an interview with a gypsy fortune teller for stealthy character creation. In the NES version of Ultima IV, recurring character Hawkwind takes over the job.
- In Yarudora series vol.2: Kisetsu o Dakishimete, the main protagonist is the writer of the fortune-telling column of the magazine he works part-time at. He basically has no fortune-telling knowledge and doesn't believe in it, so he writes whatever comes into his mind; yet, from various people's account, his tellings somehow are very accurate, making his column the most popular one of the magazine, to the point that when he writes one of them in a way to meet again Mayu (who strongly believes in this fortune-telling column, without knowing he's the one writing it), a ton of people searching for love are at the same shop he mentioned, at the same hour, and having ordered the same lucky meal! Unfortunately for him, it comes back to bite him in the ass big time, when Tomoko, at the peak of her jealousy and distress, reveals to Mayu he's the one writing the column, during the confrontation sequence near the end of the game.
Webcomics
- Tower of God: Sia Sia appears as a Fortune Teller, but she more likely uses her Lighthouse and street wits to gain and dispense knowledge before she gave up that job and became a fanatic.
- The Shufflers: Märchen works as this due to his talent in cartomancy. However, others not liking his readings leads to him asking Hiddenite to be his bodyguard after a chance meeting.
- Girl Genius:
- Moxana. Predictably, she is a Robot Girl with a full blown Steampunk AI.
- Agatha poses as a fortune teller at one point. What little we hear of it is as confusing as it is amusing.
- Sister Marie of Erfworld, being a Predictamancer. She's got the "Cajun" accent to go with it.
- In Glorianna, the oracle Valangia tells Glori that she has a twin somewhere out in the world, and that she needs to go find her. Glorianna doesn't really believe her, but is happy for an excuse to leave her crummy little village.
- In The Wretched Ones, Jackson Adler has a reputation for telling peoples fortunes while drunk and claiming no responsibility while sober.
- Biter Comics: A local psychic is killed and the cops working the case ponder how she didn't see this coming. She ultimately gets the last laugh.
- In Yokoka's Quest, Blinky uses a deck of tarot-like divination cards to determine Yokoka's and Grace's elemental edges and flaws, a Crystal Ball to determine their elemental affinities, and a Magical Incantation to determine Yokoka's Clan allegiance.
- Anansi Padma from Archipelago is a professional Fortune Teller - she even owns a real Chaos Disk (an incredibly complicated magical device for telling the future and how it'll come to be), although we see her scrying from glasses of wine several times, as well. She's not the mysterious sort, though. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more to-the-point, practical woman among the cast.
Web Original
- The side character codenamed Gypsy at the Super Hero School Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe. Once she gets her confidence in a Deal with the Devil she even dresses the part. She really is one of a long line of fortune tellers, complete with an ancestral Tarot deck which is magical and apparently alive. Her predictions turn out to be scarily accurate.
- The Autobiography of Jane Eyre: At the Thornfield party, Mr Rochester plays Pagliaccio, a fortune-telling clown. It's a reimagination of the scene from he book in which Mr Rochester dresses himself as an old gypsy woman and tells fortune to young ladies, disguised and recognized only by Jane. Here everybody knows it's him and he trolls his guests quite mercilessly. He predicts adultery and divorce for Ms. Eshton who looks horrified.
Western Animation
- The Crumpets: In "Li'l Wonder", Granny and Li'l-One dress like Fortune Tellers, run a fortune telling service outside the house, and use the drawing tablet to trick other children out the house.
- In Futurama, the mechanical version is upgraded to a robotic version. One episode she appears in is "The Honking", in which she advises Bender on how to remove his curse of the were-car. However, she appears to be more of a source of information than an actual seer. She once even says "What am I, psychic?"
- In an episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield gets cursed by one of these so he becomes a monster under moonlight; he's later cured and he gets his revenge by using the gypsy's book against her and turning her into "the most horrible thing imaginable"... which turns out to be a mime.
- The recurring character (and chihuahua) Shirley The Medium in Courage the Cowardly Dog.
- The fortune teller Aunt Wu from the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Fortuneteller". Her prophecies are accurate, though mainly because most of them are Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. That said, she has some truly accurate predictions regarding both the weather and the fate of certain characters.
- Cassandra, the gypsy moth in "Seer No Evil", Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. She flies around a light bulb to find out watts going to happen.
- The Simpsons:
- A fortune teller at a Renaissance fair tells Lisa her future in "Lisa's Wedding". She's quite young and good-looking, uses a crystal ball, and says that she likes predicting embarrassing futures.
- One appears in "Treehouse of Horror XII". Homer accidentally trashes her room, and she puts a Gypsy Curse on him and his family.
- The Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts". The gang meets a Gypsy fortune teller who gives them dire warnings. She turns out to be the episode's villain in disguise.
- Masikura the chameleon in All Hail King Julien serves this purpose to the eponymous King Julien.
- In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Pinkie Pie sometimes does a fortune teller act, complete with turban and crystal ball. The joke of it is that Pinkie is a genuine — and fairly powerful — precognitive.
- A fortune teller never actually shows up in Archer, but it's frequently referenced with the Running Gag of characters saying "Just like the old gypsy woman said!" after certain events.
- A bumper on The Beatles show featured Ringo visiting a fortune teller. She panics at what she sees and runs away. What she saw is lightning striking the crystal ball.
