Unknown Phenomenon

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• GaoGaiGar: The heroes encounter a mysterious energy source known only as THE POWER that seems to boost natural abilities greatly. It resides on the planet Jupiter.

My Hero Academia

• I am not Done (MHA): A mundane example, as well as Izuku's bane during the Sports Festival in "Fighting Back"; as the race starts by the start of a tunnel, he mentions that anything is possible. He doesn't like that a bit.

• Solaris (1972): Solaris, the titular planet, is shown to be partially intelligent. Genius Loci are not something Earth scientists—and, consequently, the protagonist as well—ever thought possible.
• Stalker (1979): No one is sure if The Zone is even alien. Two characters remark that a meteorite supposedly fell where the Zone is now, but even that's up in the air.

• Galaxy of Fear: Many threats tend towards this, to the point where it overlaps with Flat-Earth Atheist from time to time. The Doomsday Ship has a phenomenon that's almost unheard of there — the intelligent and perfectly functioning but evil AI — treated as completely mystifying and confusing.
• Sphere: A long-buried spaceship is revealed to have originated in the distant future and fallen into a black hole, recording this in the last entry of its log as "UNKNOWN (ENTRY) EVENT". Harry takes this to mean that the crew of the Habitat is fated to die, because if they lived to report this phenomenon, it wouldn't be "unknown".
• When the Moon Hits Your Eye: Scientists have absolutely no idea how the Moon could possibly turn into an "organic matrix." They're equally puzzled how the original Moon (dubbed Luna) returned exactly one lunar cycle later, with Caseus (the cheese Moon) disappearing along with the Lunar-1 cheese asteroid. Based on the Distant Finale, a century later, scientists are no closer to figuring this out.

• Blake's 7: In "Terminal", Zen detects one in their path and, seeing as they don't know what it is, wisely suggests going around it. Avon doesn't listen and takes the Liberator through, causing its destruction from a substance that eats away at the Liberator's hull, overwhelming its ability to self-repair.
• Doctor Who: Even the Doctor has encountered a couple of thingies that he'd never encountered before. The most notable are the Devil (perhaps) in "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", and especially the unnamed creature from "Midnight". The latter is especially Nightmare Fuel-y because no-one ever finds out what it is — not the victims, not the Doctor, not the viewers, no-one. Lampshaded in "Amy's Choice" when the Eleventh Doctor laments "I don't know! Why does everyone always expect me to know everything?"
• Lost: The DHARMA Initiative discovered extreme electromagnetic anomalies on the Island, along with pockets of "exotic matter," and they constructed their research stations, especially the Swan and the Orchid, in order to tap into these energies.
• Quark:
  Quark: What do you make of that?
  Ficus: A most fascinating phenomenon, but one which leaves the mind facing a myriad of possibilities, alternatives and conclusions that are at best strictly hypothetical with no sound basis in fact.
  Quark: In other words, you don't know.
  Ficus: That's what I said.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: In "The Naked Time", Kirk calls Spock to ask what happened. Spock then replies, "Unknown, Captain. It's like nothing we've dealt with before." He later points out to Scotty that the fact that their sensors couldn't find a cause means nothing because the possibilities where No Man Has Gone Before are infinite.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Tuvok's distorted, echoing message to Janeway at the beginning of "Twisted" is the first sign that this episode is gonna get hella weird.

• Warhammer 40,000: If you don't already know what's behind the local Negative Space Wedgie, you probably don't wanna know. And quite often if you do know, you'll wish you didn't.

• SAYER: Typhon is chock-full of space weirdness that everyone just agrees to not think about. The "Anomaly" in Halcyon's stairwells is a prime example.

• Galactic Civilizations: Goody Huts are the space equivalents of Inexplicable Treasure Chests. Investigating one can give you extra money or a new bonus, advance your research, or cause the investigating ship to vanish. Quite a number of them (especially in the first game) enhanced the ship that found the anomaly. This could lead to the absurdity of your initially unarmed survey ship becoming your most powerful battleship by simply finding the right anomalies. The sequel tried to avert this by the anomalies only enhancing existing weapons on the ship, but there's nothing stopping you from designing a survey ship with weapons once you research the appropriate technology.
• Iron Lung: A certain point of interest stands out from the rest, an inexplicable anomaly that distorts the player's vision and pulses unnaturally. The cause of its existence is unanswered, not unlike many other aspects of the game.
• Romancing SaGa 3: The Aurora is an infrequent weather phenomenon that only ever shows up at night over the Ice Lake once you've finished its respective quest. It's a beautiful display of colors over a dark-bluish sky.
• Space Station 14: Studying these is how the Science Department generates research to be spent on the Tech Tree.
  • One of the tasks of the science department is to study energy-based anomalies, zapping them with science-y particle emitters to stabilize them so that research points can be steadily harvested by scanning them — or destroy them, if the phenomena is becoming too severe to be safe. If an anomaly's severity reaches maximum, it'll go supercritical and consume itself, unleashing an extremely dangerous and far-reaching effect.
  • "Alien artifacts" also cause all kinds of weird phenomena when triggered. Each artifact has a branching tree of randomly-generated effects and stimuli it responds to. The science team needs to hook one up to a scanning platform to discern clues, then provoke the artifact into activating (while hopefully not dying in the attempt), generating a wealth of research points for every node activated. Once exhausted, or if the remaining options have become too dangerous to be worth triggering, the artifacts can be sold off by Cargo.
• Stellaris: Anomalies are oddities, mostly planetary, for your science ship to investigate for extra yields, new tech, empire effects, or occasionally things going horribly wrong. Most of them are the result of the galaxy's myriad predecessor races, and never fully explained; the galaxy is old and full of wonders.
• Wuthering Waves: The Tethys System is compared to a natural phenomenon, with no clear answer to its origins or how it came to be. According to files and materials, it was always just there on the Black Shores.
• Xenosaga uses this a lot in the span of its three games.
  "I AM RECORDING A SPACE TIME ANOMALY!!!"

• SCP Foundation: The titular organizations's whole purpose is to secure, contain, protect, and research strange phenomena that range from monsters to reality-breaking artifacts, such that humanity isn't wiped from the face of Earth. The Foundation's entries mostly comprise redacted logs of its scientists trying to figure out what the subject matter is and what it does.