History Main / MunDanger

* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse: The Netflix shows in general tend to go for this trope, dealing with threats too mundane for the Avengers to handle, such as [[Series/Daredevil2015 Wilson Fisk]], [[Series/JessicaJones2015 Kilgrave]], or [[Series/LukeCage2016 Cottonmouth]]. Even [[Series/IronFist2017 the Hand]], with their "ninja cult with immortal leaders" schtick, prefer to stick to low-down crime like CorporateWarfare.
* ''Series/MastersOfHorror'': The villains in the episodes "Incident on and off a mountain road", "Pick me up", "Family" and "The Washingtonians" are more or less colorful serial killers ([[UndeathlyPallor colorless]], in the case of "Incident"), but human as far as we know. The villain in "Dance of the Death" is just a shady club owner.
* In all the episodes of ''Series/{{Merlin 2008}}'', only ''one'' episode has dealt with a threat that is purely non-magical in nature: the first season's "The Moment of Truth", in which the gang travels to Merlin's village in order to fight off rampaging bandits. Since then, there ''have'' been a couple of mundane villains, but they've armed themselves with magical weapons and tools.
* The fourth season of ''Series/{{Supergirl|2015}}'' has Agent Liberty, a normal former college professor, whipping up people into an anti-alien bias. Kara at first downplays them as just some minor crazy extremists. That is until she finds chat rooms where ''regular suburban mothers'' are asking for advice on how to make bombs to take care of ''alien children in school''. As Kara relates to J'onn, she can handle monstrous aliens and would-be dictators but the idea of normal, regular people willing to kill those who look different is too much for her to take.

-->'''Dean:''' Monsters I get. People are crazy.

* Enforced in ''TabletopGame/TalesFromTheLoop''; the game's SanityMeter rules do not discriminate between supernatural and mundane reasons for stress; a KidHero can be just as easily pushed to the DespairEventHorizon by bullying at school or dismissive parents as an attack by robo-saurs from the 34th Hell-dimension.

* ''ComicBook/IronMan'': One of the beings who has come closest to killing Tony Stark is not any of the costumed criminals, space aliens, gods or monsters he's faced, but Kathy Dare, a mentally unhinged stalker who simply ambushes him in his home when he doesn't have him armor on, and shoots him dead center with a gun.

* Enforced in ''TabletopGame/TalesFromTheLoop''; a KidHero can be just as easily pushed to the DespairEventHorizon by bullying at school or dismissive parents as an attack by robo-saurs from the 34th Hell-dimension.

* In Episode 7 of ''Series/{{Andor}}'', Cassian is arrested and sentenced to prison ([[spoiler:a prison which is secretly a slave labor facility that never actually lets anyone out]]) not for any of the various criminal activities in his past or how he recently aided the nascent Rebellion as a hired gun on a job, but because while walking to the store he happened to pass by some sort of police action and a cop on a power trip decided he didn't like the way Cassian looked or answered the cop's questions, choosing to interpret everything Cassian said or did as proof that he was involved in the crime or was mouthing off to the cop. Cue Cassian being hit with a bunch of trumped up and blatantly false charges. For anyone living in an authoritarian system or in an area known for overactive or brutal police, it's an all too real fear.

* ''WesternAnimation/StaticShock'' usually has to deal with superpowered villains, but in the VerySpecialEpisode "Jimmy", the main threat is a trio of vicious bullies, and their main target who plans to kill them with his father's stolen gun.

* ''Film/FantasticBeastsAndWhereToFindThem'': Despite the surplus of dark wizards and magical beasts running about, everything ultimately comes down to [[spoiler:an ordinary, [[TheFundamentalist fundamentalist mother]] and the son she has spent a lifetime abusing.]]

* One episode of the first ''Anime/FullmetalAlchemist'' anime, a series in which heroes and villains alike wield alchemic magic, deals with a comparatively less-flashy [[spoiler:cross-dressing]] serial killer.

* Unsurpisingly, given its long run on TV, ''Series/TheXFiles'' featured a bunch of these.
** In "War Of The Coprophages", a cockroach infestation creates mass hysteria about an alien invasion, though the trope is subverted in that there really ''are'' robotic alien cockroaches[[note]]And even then, it's still unclear if there is actually more than ''one'' alien robotic cockroach and the others are not just the common kind[[/note]], but they have nothing to do with the deaths in the episode.
** In "Grotesque", a serial killer believes he is possessed by a demon, though it is implied that this is more down to madness and obsession than genuine supernatural drama.
** "Home" sees Mulder and Scully tackling a trio of murderous inbred hicks.
** In both "Irresistible" and "Orison", a serial killer named Donnie Pfaster becomes obsessed with Scully; he is seen on a couple of occasions with a demonic visage, but this could just be his victims' fear warping their perception.
** In "Hell Money", an incinerated man turns out to be part of a grim organ-dealing gambling game.
** In "Our Town", an entire town turns out to be a CannibalClan; although there is a slight supernatural edge to the piece -- eating human flesh, it turns out, provides you with extended life and youthfulness -- it's secondary to the actual threat.
** "Quagmire", on the other hand, provides a DoubleSubversion: The prehistoric monster said to inhabit a Georgian lake where people have gone missing recently turns out to be an alligator. Mulder is... disappointed, but just as he leaves the scene, the audience gets to see that there ''is'' [[RealAfterAll an actual plesiosaur]] in the lake. Whether the entire episode is just one big {{Deconstruction}} or a vindication of Cryptozoology is anyone's guess.
** Done to chilling effect in "Paper Hearts" where Mulder confronts a child killer who claims to have taken Mulder's sister. The episode ends ambiguously with Mulder's convictions of her alien abduction shaken.
** In "The Jersey Devil", the famous creature is neither a devil nor a {{bigfoot}}, as they seem to angle for a while, but a feral woman. The outlet left for mystery is the woman's male companion, whose body is stolen before the agents (and the audience) can examine it.
** Played with in "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", where there is a were-lizard running around, but said creature is totally harmless and benign. The real threat is a deranged SerialKiller, whose murders were attributed to the were-lizard.

* ''Wiki/SCPFoundation'' deals with dangerous anomalies, monsters, and world-ending objects on a daily basis. All sorts of stories exist about what could happen if something goes wrong, leading to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. However, [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scuttle one tale]] has them brought to their knees by a computer glitch. [[spoiler:Specifically in the computer system that controls the Main/DeadMansSwitch for their emergency nuclear warheads.]]

* In the ''Series/LostGirl'' episode "Faetal Attraction", a Fury named Olivia finds out that her husband Samir is having an affair with a human named Jenny. Olivia angrily hires [[HornyDevils Bo]] to assassinate her. Bo assumes Jenny is just an innocent girl and tries to protect her, but it turns out that she is actually a psycho who kills her lovers and collects their skulls (of which she has ''dozens''). By the time Bo finds out, Jenny has already added Samir's skull to the collection and was completely unaware of his supernatural nature. She then falls in love with Bo and tries to [[TogetherInDeath kill them both with a bomb]]. Bo manages to escape, but the explosion kills Olivia and her two sisters.

* ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'': Runeterra is filled to brim with magical and supernatural threats - the UnholyGround of the Shadow Isles, the all-consuming Void, ancient Ascended mages sealed for millennia and even independent figures like [[EvilIsBurningHot Brand]] and [[HornyDevils Evelynn]]. However, there's also the Noxian empire, which is 'just' a brutal and expansionistic tyranny. Independent villains also include Jhin, who uses only DepletedPhlebotinumShells and his twisted artistic genius, and Gangplank, who is just a pirate on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. Are they taken seriously in the lore? Yes. Are they taken seriously in gameplay? Even more so.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E3Rosa "Rosa"]] is a story about a man who wants to MakeWrongWhatOnceWentRight and destroy the civil rights movement in America... because it turns out that even a billion years in the future there's still people who are racists (in the mundane sense, not in the "[[FantasticRacism that guy is from Sycorax Seven" sense]]), and he is one of them. [[DisappointedByTheMotive This actually makes one of the Doctor's companions so sickened]] that he ''shoots'' the guy (with a time displacer gun, [[FateWorseThanDeath but still]]). The story also takes place [[DeepSouth in Alabama during]] TheFifties, and because (aside from the Doctor) they are all people of differing ethnicities, [[DeliberateValuesDissonance it becomes even harder to move around.

** Although several of the earliest episodes had nothing science-fictional beyond the Doctor and his time machine, the only post-'60s story to feature nothing fantastical at all (apart from the presence of the main characters) was the two-part murder mystery [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E5BlackOrchid "Black Orchid"]].

** Played across the entire sixth season of the show with Buffy being ineffectually challenged by the Trio, a group of human supervillain wannabes; two of them have minor magical powers, but their leader Warren is just good with computers and machines. Inverted initially as, rather than being more challenging or horrifying than normal monsters, they actually spend most of the season being pretty useless nemeses, [[spoiler: until Warren goes off the deep end, murders his ex-girlfriend and shoots Buffy and Tara, killing the latter - an especially noteworthy feat since it was the first time a character from the opening credits had been killed by one of the show's villains.]] "Who's the real monster?" and all that...

* In the CataclysmBackstory of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', [[spoiler:Marceline's mother Elsie]] did not die because of [[TheMagicComesBack the return of magic]] or an attack by a NuclearNasty or any other dramatic, supernatural event. [[spoiler:She just contracted radiation poisoning after she and Marcie obliviously walked past an abandoned, decaying nuclear power plant. Marcie's [[HalfHumanHybrid demonic heritage]] protected her, but Elsie — being a normal human — [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome wasn't so lucky]] and slowly wasted away over the next several weeks.]]

* Creator/KimNewman's story "Literature/WhereTheBodiesAreBuried 3: Black And White And Red All Over". The other WTBAB stories were about a supernatural SerialKiller emerging from a SlasherMovie; this is a RippedFromTheHeadlines tale of tabloid hysteria and hypocrisy over such movies (Yes, ''ultimately'' it's all down to [[BigBad Derek Leech]], but he doesn't do anything supernatural to make it happen.)

** Jet Alone, a "malfunctioning" giant robot from a rival organization, also qualifies.

* This is a common thread through nearly all the horror comics by Creator/EmilyCarroll that are collected into the anthology ''ComicBook/ThroughTheWoods''. The various stories feature ghosts, vengeful zombies, mysterious {{doppelganger}}s, etc., but in most of the stories the greatest dangers to the characters are much more ordinary, such as: being cut off from the rest of the world by a blizzard while low on food and supplies, being put into an ArrangedMarriage to [[TheBluebeard a man who is secretly a murderer]], a friend's [[SanitySlippage slow mental breakdown]], and a younger brother willing to [[CainAndAbel commit murder in cold blood]] at the prospect of being humiliated one too many times.