"I began to get a feeling... of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is no one you can contact."
— Will Dennison, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
When there is a group of characters who are all just totally weird, either in general or in a particular scenario, the Only Sane Man is the only one who, well, isn't.
Picture this: Alice is the Stupid Evil Psycho for Hire, Bob is a Cloudcuckoolander, Henry is an Empty Shell, Charlotte is a Chaotic Stupid prankster, Karl is too nice for his own good, Daniel is Charlotte's Annoying Younger Sibling, Emily is a shallow sociopath, Maria often Rhymes on a Dime, Franklin is a Mad Scientist, Gardenia is a Lawful Stupid Fundamentalist, Jacob thinks he's a hero on a grand quest, and Lily is a Mad Artist who's obsessed with her wax "statues." Looks like your standard Dysfunction Junction. But then you have Isaac. Isaac is actually a very well-adjusted individual. He reacts with appropriate horror to things like Alice's finger and eyeball collection, Gardenia's tendency to attack anyone not believing in her religion, Franklin's experiments to revive the dead with science, and the crimes against nature that Franklin calls pets. Or reacts with either annoyance or bewilderment to things like Bob's warped logic, Karl's Honor Before Reason mindset (honor being always thought first in his case), Maria's insistence to rhyme all the time, and Jacob's delusions of being a hero. Isaac is the Only Sane Man and The Only Voice Of Reason in the room.
The other variant is where the other characters aren't always that weird, but everyone save one character is acting weird in a particular situation. For example, they might regard something absurd as Serious Business, with the Only Sane Man the only one who notices how crazy that is.
This latter variant also includes a standard comedy piece: something absolutely insane is going on, but only one person notices (or cares). There are usually three stages, with a rough correspondence to the Five Stages of Grief: Bewilderment (Shock and Anger), trying to get others to see or admit the weirdness (Bargaining and Denial), and bitter sarcasm (Acceptance).
In the more extreme cases, the poor soul may be trapped in a World Gone Mad and/or wind up Giving Up on Logic in frustration. Sometimes, though, they are Not So Above It All. A character may also think of themselves as the Only Sane Man without proper justification.
A Too Dumb to Fool character may be the Only Sane Man, although he is likely to be less worked up about the failures of others to see than in most cases.
The Only Sane Man is often relied upon as the Only Sane Employee. This character often ends up a Knight in Sour Armor. For a more horrific version, see Through the Eyes of Madness. For the sci-fi version, the Ignored Expert is your go-to guy. The comedy version will often end up being either a Butt-Monkey or a Chew Toy. If all the other characters are otherwise sane, and really should see something, but only one guy does, he's an Einstein Sue. See also Cassandra Truth, Surrounded by Idiots, and Surrounded by Smart People; contrast with the Unfazed Everyman. May temporarily overlap with What the Hell, Hero?.
If several characters take turns being the Only Sane Man, they're playing with a Sanity Ball. If it's a two-person show, with one person playing the Only Sane Man to the other's wackiness, it's a Straight Man and Wise Guy scenario. This trope is the savvy half of a Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl duo, one third of a Comic Trio, and part of the Four-Man Band. If they're only later proven right, it may be The Dissenter Is Always Right.
Usually, but not always, a Cast Full of Crazy contains an Only Sane Man. Usually, he's prone to Sanity Slippage. Sometimes, he's Only Sane by Comparison, in which he's pretty crazy himself but not as crazy as the rest of his cohorts.
The Wonka may well feel like this (or be this!) in a world that doesn't follow his thinking. Insanity is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, and The Wonka often has quite valid points.
No Real Life Examples, Please! - Real Life does not have only one sane person.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Films — Live-Action
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Tabletop Games
- Theatre
- Video Games
- Web Animation
- Webcomics
- Web Videos
- Western Animation
Other examples:
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Advertising
- The US Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade commercial has several barbarian kings all eating and laughing around a table (the gist was that they'd all just agreed to be allies). One of the men suddenly keels over, dead. There were many confused faces and cries of alarm, prompting one of the kings to shrug and say, "I put poison in his mutton." After a pause, the kings laugh and continue eating... except for one, whose facial expression clearly communicates that he knows that he's the Only Sane Man in the room.
Audio Plays
- Exit Tunes Presents ACTORS: Hinata Mitsutsuka. Despite his character design and cheerful personality, he is in fact the one who reins in his fellow club members' more...unorthodox ideas.
[talking to the Singing Club, about the cat the Singing Club had accidentally adopted] "Like I said, that kind of naming sense is no good!!"
- In ACTORS2, Rei Ichijoudani. While he has his moments where he acts otherwise, for the most part, he acts like this. Especially when it comes to his former nanpa partner Takato...
- In ACTORS3, Seijun Yuyama, mostly with regards to his Club President Kouya and friend Kaoru.
Seijun: Don't drag me into this conversation, you perverts.
Kaoru: I'm no pervert! I'm a Covert Pervert!
Seijun: Don't just say that so easily!!
Comedy
- Most comedians are trying to invoke this trope a lot of the time, particularly in observational material.
- This is the schtick of Japanese comedian Jinnai Tomonori. His sketches involve him being placed in the middle of increasingly surreal situations where he's forced to point out just how ridiculous what he's dealing with is, and futilely try to enforce order on the situation. This is a fairly typical example.
It's similar to a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine, except that the Boke is not an actual individual character, but anything from a video game, to an ATM, to someone we never see who's controlling the lights on a building.
Comic Strips
- The title character of Dilbert. He's about the least dysfunctional character in the comic and the closest to a genuinely good one.
- Frank Mellish from Liberty Meadows gets flustered and dismayed at the animals' antics.
- Sam from InSecurity may have his quirks, but compared to his wife Sedine and her cousin Roy, he's practically the voice of reason.
- Conchy and Oom Paul split this role between them in Conchy, with Conchy being The Everyman and Oom Paul being a Deadpan Snarker.
- Sara in Knights of the Dinner Table.
- Nodwick frequently plays the role of Only Sane Man to his party, having by far the greatest amount of common sense of the lot and being less bound by the Contractual Genre Blindness that seems to come naturally to adventurers. This happens in almost every standalone story they're in, but by far the most noticeable is the comic's pastiche of The Lord of the Rings.
- Franklin from the Peanuts comics: he is the only character not to have some sort of quirk or obsession. He is also the only person to point out exactly how weird everyone else in Charlie Brown's neighbourhood is. And — in a twist that was particularly ironic in the late 1960s - he is the only black character in the strip.
Charlie Brown: Franklin! Where are you going?
Franklin: I'm going home, Charlie Brown. This neighborhood has me shook. I didn't mind the girl in the booth or the beagle with the goggles, but that business about the "Great Pumpkin" - no, sir!
Charlie Brown: But...
Schroeder: Hi! Did you guys know there are only sixty more days until Beethoven's birthday?
Charlie Brown: Oh, good grief!
Franklin: [under his breath] Like, wow! - Twisted Toyfare Theatre:
- Spider-Man is basically the only person in the entire world with a single lick of common sense. However, this has caused him to become so jaded he flat-out refuses to participate in any kind of action if he can avoid it, for example immediately taking the blue pill to go back to sleep when Morpheus offered to take him to The Matrix.
- Spider-Man might have company in the "not completely out of his mind" department in Doctor Doom, the series' other main character. Maybe.
Films — Animation
- In Bolt, Mittens the cat is the only one of the main characters who doesn't constantly have her head in the clouds, and is also the only one who is aware of the fact that Bolt is living in a fantasy world — Bolt believes that everything he's been in on his TV show is real, and Rhino would have the capacity to know what Mittens would know if he wasn't so cripplingly fanatical about Bolt and so off his rocker.
- In El Arca, everyone seems to be totally in love with the female panther Panty, all of them singing and dancing to her song "I will Survive", none of them seeming to notice she's talking about murdering and eating them except for the pig, who is clearly uneasy and suspicious, while everyone else, including the other prey animals, is completely oblivious to the actual words of the song, only really seeming to pay attention to Panty's... um... assets.
- Charlotte's Web: Edith Zuckerman is the only one to point out that the writing in the eponymous spiderweb ought to be taken as a sign that the spider is special. She is quickly dismissed.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas: Sally seems to be the only denizen of Halloween Town who even approaches the realization that people don't want to be scared or attacked on Christmas. Santa himself later lampshades her wisdom: "The next time you get the urge to take over someone else's holiday, I'd listen to HER. She's the only one who makes any sense around this INSANE ASYLUM!"
- Pocahontas: Pocahontas herself is the only character in the film, apart from Grandmother Willow, who knows right from the start that war and xenophobia will do absolutely nothing to help matters between the opposing English settlers and Powhatan tribe. She is the reason John Smith gains a greater appreciation for both the landscape around him and the people inhabiting it, and she is also the reason why the war at the end of the film comes to a peaceful resolve.
- Deconstructed in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man 2099, is the leader of the Spider Society, which means that he's the unfunny and grounded one in a tower full of quippy, eccentric Spider-People, and the lone pragmatist in a group of idealists. It's played for laughs most of the time, but he complains to Gwen just after meeting her that he seems to be the only one taking the threat to the multiverse seriously. By the end of the movie, he's full-on ranting while slamming Miles Morales against a wall:
- Sleeping Beauty: Merryweather proves to be the most realistic and grounded of the Three Good Fairies, often pointing out flaws in Flora's plans and correctly anticipating Maleficent's schemes. When Flora and Fauna attempt to make Aurora/Rose a new dress and cake for her sixteenth birthday, Merryweather is the only one who points out that they're doing an absolutely terrible job and insists on using their magic to fix the presents, saying that they have to put Aurora's happiness first.
- Trolls: Branch gives off vibes of this, compared to the hyperactive Poppy and her happy-go-lucky brethren when dealing with the Bergen trying to eat them.
- In Turning Red, Jin is the only one in the family who tries to approach Mei on her own terms. When Jin sees the video Mei made with her friends, he encourages her not to delete it.
- In WALL•E, Captain McCrea is the only human on board the Axiom that isn't entranced by the 700-year-long ennui of their existence.
Music
- The Beatles: "The Fool on the Hill".
- The protagonist from Harry Chapin's "The Rock".
- The singer in Tears for Fears' "Mad World" sees himself as this. It's arguable whether he actually is.
- The Spine of Steam Powered Giraffe is arguably this, being much more calm and rational than his siblings.
- Contessa of Emilie Autumn's Bloody Crumpets likes to see herself as this. Then again, seeing as how the Crumpets are supposed to be a group of asylum inmates, "sane" is relative.
Contessa: I would like to make it very clear that I am not, I repeat, I am not, not, NOT insane!
Everyone Else: [hysterical laughter]
Emilie: [to the audience] ...She eats people! - Daniel Amos: The album ¡Alarma! includes a short story in the liner notes where the narrator winds up in a decrepit city, where he's the only one to notice that the religious leaders are all spouting nonsense. The narrator outright calls himself "the only sane mind in this mad world."
- Drake is naturally this on the four-way collaboration "Forever" from the More Than A Game Soundtrack, since the other three are Eminem, Lil Wayne and Kanye West.
- In the music video for Imagine Dragons' "On Top Of The World" has Stanley Kubrick, Richard Nixon and the band members faking the moon landing. Very badly. The whole thing is being broadcast live and everyone is watching with anticipation. Eventually, the ruse becomes obvious and people burst into the studio... so that they can cheer along with the fake astronauts, even laughing along as Richard Nixon does a cabaret line dance with the astronauts. Meanwhile, Stanley Kubrick is obviously humiliated by the entire event and the cosmonauts are watching with mixed confusion and irritation.
Podcasts
- Caleb the medic from the Firefly game of Cool Kids Table is the only member of the Zelda's crew who isn't weird (Roc), bloodthirsty (Kimmy), or just plain thirsty (Mickey).
- Kakos Industries has the company owner, Corin Deeth the III, act as this for the most part. He's a lot more logical to an almost pretentious degree though even he has had instances of becoming obsessed with inanimate objects and believes having a live baby implanted into someone's thigh is a good idea for a Halloween costume.
- In Welcome to Night Vale, most Night Vale residents are so often exposed to Orwellian government surveillance, eldritch abominations, and supernatural disasters that they don't recognize such events as odd any more. Carlos, a recently-arrived scientist from the outside world, is the only person in the town who realizes just how WRONG all this is. Though even he doesn't seem to appreciate the full extent of just how weird Night Vale is
- Georgie is this in Wooden Overcoats, being an easy-going Hyper-Competent Sidekick among a misanthropic jerkass (Rudyard), a shy, Covert Pervert mortician (Antigone), a talking mouse (Madeleine), and a Parody Sue (Eric). She's also Funn Funeral's Only Sane Employee.
Professional Wrestling
- Joey Styles was signed to play precisely this trope in ECW. Paul Heyman told him "In the midst of all the craziness, I want you to be the steady voice of reason"
- In WWE, it's pretty common for play-by-play guys on commentary to do this (Especially if their were Face). Jim Ross did this on RAW while Michael Cole was the same on SmackDown!.
- In a rare example of the colour commentator coming off as this, William Regal on WWE NXT
- This is continuing now that he is the GM of NXT
- Several heels tend to think they're this, including Chris Jericho, CM Punk, and Damien Sandow. They usually tend to drift into Not So Above It All.
- Though Punk was the genuine sane one in the "love triangle...square" storyline, as Daniel Bryan was certifiably insane by that point, Kane's reputation spoke for itself while A.J. Lee, the object of all their "affections", was clearly off her rocker and three-fourths of the way to being committed.
- Whenever WWE or TNA wrestlers venture out into the "real" world for skits, there is usually at least one bystander who fills this role. The "Special Guest Host" on Monday Night Raw (usually a non-wrestling-related celebrity) also tends to play this part, but there have been some exceptions - and, in at least one instance, the Special Guest Host turned out to be the heel of the show.
- Jerry Springer filled this niche when he guest-starred on Monday Night Raw. Yes, that's right - Jerry Springer. (Double-subverted when he proved to be Not So Above It All, of course.)
- Jonathan Coachman caught the Sanity Ball - temporarily, anyway - at the 2007 Royal Rumble. He, Theodore Long, and Kelly Kelly - representing Raw, SmackDown, and ECW, respectively - were backstage watching the Royal Rumble Match participants file in to choose their numbers from a bingo tumbler that Kelly was cranking. It wasn't long before Coachman was becoming visibly unnerved by the Carnival of Killers - including a pair of vampires (Kevin Thorn and Ariel) and a mentally-challenged Indian giant (The Great Khali) - lining up to take their numbers, as well as frustrated that Theodore Long and Kelly Kelly seemed completely unfazed by these frightening individuals. Finally, Coach lost his temper and - in a manner that made him look anything but sane - screamed at Long and Kelly that he had had all he could stand of "Your SmackDown freaks!" and "Your ECW degenerates!" As it happened, the final man to enter the room was Ric Flair - and this caused Coach to cheer up and become pleased that at last they had a classy, "normal" Superstar in their midst. Then Flair revealed that he was Not So Above It All by getting down with his bad self at an impromptu dance party thrown by Kelly's "Extreme Exposé." Talk about Playing with a Trope until its wheels fall off.
- At Survivor Series 1999, wrestling porn star Val Venis led his team of "Sexual Chocolate" Mark Henry, wrestling vampire Gangrel and, filling this role, wrestling martial artist "The Lethal Weapon" Steve Blackman to victory over Davey Boy Smith and The Mean Street Posse.
- CHIKARA 2009-2010: Crossbones played this role in UltraMantis Black's The Order of the Neo-Solar Temple, as a subtrope of The Un-Favourite. Mantis would fawn over Hydra and Delirious while belittling or dismissing Crossbones.
- Nobody was better at being the eye of the storm while wrestlers were ranting and raving than Gordon Solie was.
- On a late 1992 episode of WWF Prime Time Wrestling, Bret Hart teamed with THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR to defeat wrestling voodoo master PAPA SHANGO and KAMALA THE UGANDAN GIANT!
- The Shield: Originally, Roman Reigns used to be this for the stable. Dean Ambrose was liable to fly off the handle at any time and Seth Rollins showed a startling lack of self-preservation during matches along with a sadistic streak after he ended the Shield to join The Authority. However, as the years went on, the actual Only Sane Man turned out to be Ambrose, at least in part because he was the only member to make peace with the end of the stable. Both Reigns and Rollins, meanwhile, underwent such severe Sanity Slippage that they made even Ambrose at his worst look sane in comparison.
Radio
- Central to the style of comedy team Bob & Ray. As neither was a classic Straight Man, they played point/counterpoint between this and the Cloud Cuckoolander instead.
- The Goon Show: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne fills this role, not that this is particularly difficult.
- The Jack Benny Program: Mary was generally the most level-headed character on the show. Jack and the guest stars would fill this role often as well.
- In The Men from the Ministry April essentially plays this role in Series 1. This might've been a factor to her disappearance in Series 2, since she doesn't get much material in the comedy (apart from the episode "Moderately Important Person", where she's the main focus of Prince Salim's lust).
- Old Harry's Game: At the start of the show, The Professor is the only major character who isn't completely incompetent and/or a vicious sadist. After he leaves, Edith takes his place.
- Karl Pilkington of The Ricky Gervais Show. While Ricky and Steven laugh about all his thoughts, a fair number of his questions and statements are perfectly logical: notably a thought experiment where he wondered if one would be able to confidently state that they are the original if they had a clone with all the same exact memories up to the point of their creation.
Roleplay
- Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
- Despite her mental illnesses that make her believe that she's unstable, Zia is shown to be one of the more dependable characters in tense situations. When she finds a group of students attempting to break out the school- without even bothering to check the emergency exits first- she calls them out for overreacting. She does so again when the group jump to killing Benjy now that he's hulked out, rather than seeking a non-violent solution.
- Nurse Dini lacks the quirks of the other staff at Rogers High, and is instead a straight-talker who's sensible to her patients.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney: All playable lawyers (these being Phoenix Wright, Mia Fey, Apollo Justice, Miles Edgeworth, Gregory Edgeworth, and Athena Cykes) play this role. They live in a world full of wacky over-the-top personalities, and they are constantly reminded of that. Most of them seem to enjoy it most of the time though, constantly thinking on how ridiculous nearly everyone else is in the comfort of their minds. That said, there are a few other stable personalities besides them, but they are the exception. It's worth noting that even the main characters are only really stable by comparison: this is the agency that made its name for itself doing things like cross-examining a parrot and summoning ghosts whenever they ran out of ideas, after all.
- Apollo deserves special mention, as he is consistently portrayed as the Only Sane Man, even when he is not the playable character.
- The ultimate prize for Only Sane Attorney has to go to Gregory Edgeworth; when he's playable in a flashback, he proves laid-back, polite, and professional, with his only 'quirk' being how much he thinks about his young son Miles. He even admonishes his assistant for appearing to not take the crime scene seriously.
- The Only Sane Prosecutor prize goes to Klavier Gavin (with post-timeskip Edgeworth as a runner-up). Yes, he has a second career as a rock star, and yes, he air guitars in court, which is kind of weird. He's also the only prosecutor you face to be a Graceful Loser with no baggage regarding his win record, completely non-corrupt, and have no grudge against any main characters. He's also fairly good at keeping quirky witnesses on-task (compare Edgeworth, who can never get them to even say their names on the first go) and is the only prosecutor to think of issuing a gag order surrounding a high-profile crime. Being called "Herr Forehead" and lightly teased/flirted with is tame compared to what other prosecutors get away with. The only times Klavier is remotely antagonistic is when he's an Unwitting Pawn to people he genuinely trusts, and he immediately about-faces when given reason to believe they've betrayed that trust.
- In Code:Realize, Victor is not particularly any more normal than the rest of his companions — a group which includes a self-proclaimed gentleman thief with peculiar ideas about justice, an excitable and mishap-prone Gadgeteer Genius who plans to travel to the moon, the mysterious and eccentric Comte de Saint-Germain, the hero of the Vampire War who's known as a "human weapon," and an amnesiac girl who melts anything she touches — but he is the only one of them who seems to expect people to behave or events to occur in a reasonable manner. Cardia is also normally sensible but doesn't have a strong frame of reference for what's normal and what isn't, which means poor Victor is the one most often reacting in dismay and exasperation to the group's antics.
- Danganronpa:
- All of the 'Detective' characters (Kyoko, Chiaki, Shuichi) count, as they're the ones whose first reaction to a crime scene is to start solving the crime instead of freaking out or accusing random students- a very important trait when not solving crimes gets everyone but the perp killed.
- The player characters (Makoto, Hajime, Kaede) embody the trope in a different way, since they're the ones most vocal about how mistrusting each other is playing into Monokuma's hands and focused on ending the game instead of playing it. Hajime gets special mention as the snarkiest protagonist and the one most likely to vocalize his observations.
- As a general rule, the vast majority of Danganronpa characters are a massive Dysfunction Junction who seriously needs therapynote , but outside of the painfully normal main protagonists, there are two exceptions overall: Leon Kuwata and Sonia Nevermind; Leon's Casanova Wannabe and Keet tendencies aside, the former had a pretty normal upbringing due to getting his talent through The Gift and implied to come from a rich family (his cousin, Kanon, is the daughter of a TV company executive) and thus is pretty quick to point out a lot of the cast's zanier behavior. Sonia is largely the same way, who's generally speaking a Spoiled Sweet Nice Girl who, outside of being a Nightmare Fetishist and Covert Pervert, doesn't have nearly as many issues as her friends do. Interestingly, Leon had the rotten luck of being attacked by Sayaka and killing her in impulse that he justified as self-defense, resulting in his execution. Meanwhile, Sonia had no such incidents and it's her friendly personality that helped her survive to the end of the game.
- Jaehee Kang in Mystic Messenger is by far the most reasonable member of the RFA, the charity organization you join at the start of the game. This trait is made apparent in the choices necessary to enter her route: she likes a main character who is optimistic and hard-working, but sensible and cautious. She claims that nothing special has ever happened to her (downplaying the fact that she's lost both of her parents so young) and is the only one in RFA who is rightly wary of you the beginning of the main routes, which makes sense because you're a total stranger entering a locked, private server, and suddenly living in their dead friend's apartment under extremely suspicious and mysterious circumstances. Whereas everyone else warms to you pretty quickly, you have to put in a little work to get her to begin trusting you.
- The protagonist is the only one in Dra+Koi who seems to actually be at all well balanced. His classmates are all crazy and his mother wants to rape him. The dragon herself indicate she'd like to eat him or sleep with him and sees little difference between the two options.
- The Fruit of Grisaia: Makina believes that this is how Yumiko sees herself, and considering the quirky and wacky nature of her classmates, it' no wonder.
- Kenji and Hisao both claim they're this in Katawa Shoujo. Kenji is quite offended at Hisao's claim: "There can't be two last sane men... There can only be one, like in that foreign movie where there could only be one, and in the end there is only one dude left, because that was the point." (In other words, Hisao is, Kenji only thinks he is.)
- Doki Doki Literature Club!
- Natsuki is the only member of the titular club who keeps her head throughout the entire game, even as the game starts to show its true psychological horror colors. She even writes a letter begging the player to help Yuri with her Self-Harm problem and is the only member of the group who doesn't commit suicide when she dies.
- Subverted with Monika: In the first act, when everyone else's problems are still relatively normal (so Natsuki, for example, is suffering from lack of respect, poor self-esteem, and anger management issues), it seems Monika is the only one who's totally fine and stable. It turns out she's worse than any of the others and the cause of all the insanity going on since the end of the first act.
- Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair: Raiko, the Player Character, is a somewhat gloomy introvert, but she's by far the least eccentric of the ten teenagers who attend Rie's party. It's played seriously at the climax, when Raiko is the only surviving character who thinks rationally and doesn't immediately accuse Kamen of the murders.
- Unlike Rire and Strade, Sano in Boyfriend To Death isn't as gung-ho to kickstart the Cold-Blooded Torture, and is considerably kinder if he warms up to you. It says something about how utterly fucked up in the head the "boyfriends" are when the Mad Doctor is the closest to a sane man.
Web Original
- Ab3, the Author Avatar in The Binder of Shame. He's kind of a jerk, but he's still leagues more moral and rational than the other players, and is the only one who calls out things like El Disgusto's obsession with ninjas and lack of personal hygiene, Psycho Dave's white supremacy, etc.
- The Black Legion of the Dark Lord Sketch Melkor has Mac, who is a friend of the Dark Lord Sketch and holds the title of Plain Old Bilbo. She has, so far, basically been the only one to attempt talking reason to Sketch. Everyone else just goes along with everything she says.
- Welshman in Englishman started out like this (and usually turned out to be wrong) while later on he seems to give up and accept the insanity of the Englishverse.
- Oli White in Escape the Night is the only one who never loses focus of the groups original goal; escaping the house with as many people as possible. He never wastes time bickering and is always looking out for his fellow teammates. He’s also the least eccentric cast member in the entire show. His reactions to situations are also the most realistic.(usually exasperation)
- Sasha Hunter in Greek Ninja finds herself rolling her eyes all the time at her comrades' antics.
- Guy of Life in a Game, being the only "real" person in his video game world, is the only one who questions the insane video game logic that everyone else seems to take for granted. It comes and goes, but the best example of it is in Episode 6-2.
- Rational Wiki: The category Right of Reason is for conservatives with enough reasonable viewpoints that they can be taken seriouslynote . The leftist version is called Left of Reasonnote .
- Algernon's characterization in the Something Awful: Dungeons & Dragons gaming sessions, being dragged into increasingly ridiculous situations with increasingly ridiculous people.
- Whateley Universe: Both Lancer and She-Beast play this role for Team Kimba and the Bad Seeds, respectively.
- Several in Farce of the Three Kingdoms, on different levels. Of the founders of the titular kingdoms, Sun Quan is the only one who could possibly be described as "sane." Zhou Yu is far from sane, but he's the only character to point out that the hero/villain premise is absurd, and the first to react appropriately to Liu Bei.
- Survival of the Fittest: A common character trope that shows up, in particular in response to some of the more outlandish characters. A few examples of this include: Heather Pendegrast, Lyndi Thibodeaux, Huy Tran, Eddie Sullivan, Christopher Harlin, Melanie Beckett, Sean Leibowitz.
- Hall of Sida in Njal Gets Burned. Though he certainly has his Cloud Cuckoo Lander moments (for instance, he thinks Christianity is based around worship of the Archangel Michael), he's the strongest advocate for peaceful resolutions and one of the few people respected enough by both sides to have a chance of pulling it off.
