History Main / MunDanger

* The first series of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' featured a CannibalClan in [[Recap/TorchwoodS1E6Countrycide "Countrycide"]]. Like the ''Supernatural'' example, the heroes were drawn by killings they assumed were the work of aliens or the rift at first. This episode also has the distinction of being the only story in ''Doctor Who'', or its Expanded Universe, to be devoid of ''any'' science fiction elements (the [=SUV=] tracker Toshiko holds is the most advanced tech the episode features, and Jacks' immortality is never used either).

* During the Majin Buu saga of ''Manga/DragonBallZ'', [[FakeUltimateHero Mr. Satan]] ends up actually managing to [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath teach basic morality to the titular monster]], who was only killing everyone because he [[ObliviouslyEvil had no concept of right and wrong and had been instructed to kill by a truly evil person throughout his existence]]. Then a SpreeKiller taking advantage of the apocalypse wrought by Buu under the belief that consequences won't matter with the imminent extinction of humanity, armed with realistic firearms and explosives, comes along and kills Buu's MoralityPet, causing the evil within him to separate from and absorb his innocent side and bringing the conflict which otherwise would have ended there FromBadToWorse. In a series defined by alien and magical threats with BeyondTheImpossible stated power levels, this asshole managed to make a huge impact through acts and means that are fully within the realm of real-life possibility.

Compare TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse and sister trope {{Mundangerous}} for superpowered beings being taken out by similarly low threat objects. If at all interested, the trope name is a portmanteau of "mundane" and "danger'' and not some SuperRobot series you just about remember but turns out never existed. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Also has nothing to do with]] a certain moon of ''VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram''. Contrast ParanormalEpisode. In the audience, this may instill RealismInducedHorror.

Compare TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse and sister trope {{Mundangerous}} for superpowered beings being taken out by similarly low threat objects. If at all interested, the trope name is a portmanteau of "mundane" and "danger'' and not some SuperRobot series you just about remember but turns out never existed. [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant Also has nothing to do with]] a certain moon of VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram. Contrast ParanormalEpisode. In the audience, this may instill RealismInducedHorror.

** A few of Ito's one-shot stories count as well, in a meta sense. While most of his work revolves around bizarre supernatural horrors, a few such as ''Love as Scripted'' and ''The Bully'' revolve around all too real horrors like murder, domestic abuse and incest.

* ''Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon'' is a franchise of animated movies with a colorful cast of villains who have funny moments to them despite being a threat to the heroes in their own right. But the darkest Disney villains are Judge Claude Frollo from ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney'' and Bill Sykes from ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany''. Frollo is a prejudiced bigot who abuses his position as the French Minister of Justice for his pent-up sexual frustration of Esmeralda, [[HotGypsyWoman a Romani woman]] whom he obsessively pursues to the point of threatening to kill her if she refuses despite him initially professing to be sin-free. Frollo's HolierThanThou attitude to justify his evil actions drives a major portion of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'''s plot, but it also contributes to his VillainousBreakdown. Bill Sykes is a New York City LoanShark who threatens to kill Fagin if he doesn't pay back his loan. When seven-year-old Jenny arrives at the docks alone to pay the ramson for her kidnapped cat, he kidnaps her and threatens to feed her to his dogs if her parents don't pay.

* ''Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon'' is a franchise of animated movies with a colorful cast of villains who have funny moments to them despite being a threat to the heroes in their own right. But the darkest Disney villains are Judge Claude Frollo from ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney'' and Bill Sykes from ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany''. Frollo is a prejudiced bigot who abuses his position as the French Minister of Justice for his pent-up sexual frustration of Esmeralda, [[HotGypsyWoman a Romani woman]] whom he obsessively pursues to the point of threatening to kill her if she refuses despite him initially professing to be sin-free. Frollo's HolierThanThou attitude to justify his evil actions drives a major portion of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'''s plot, but it also contributes to his VillainousBreakdown. Bill Sykes is a New York City LoanShark who threatens to kill Fagan if he doesn't pay back his loan. When seven-year-old Jenny arrives at the docks alone to pay the ramson for her kidnapped cat, he kidnaps her and threatens to feed her to his dogs if her parents don't pay.

* ''Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon'' is a franchise of animated movies with a colorful cast of villains who have funny moments to them despite being a threat to the heroes in their own right. But the darkest Disney villains are Judge Claude Frollo from ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney'' and Bill Sykes from WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany. Frollo is a prejudiced bigot who abuses his position as the French Minister of Justice for his pent-up sexual frustration of Esmeralda, [[HotGypsyWoman a Romani woman]] whom he obsessively pursues to the point of threatening to kill her if she refuses despite him initially professing to be sin-free. Frollo's HolierThanThou attitude to justify his evil actions drives a major portion of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'''s plot, but it also contributes to his VillainousBreakdown. Bill Sykes is a New York City LoanShark who threatens to kill Fagan if he doesn't pay back his loan. When seven-year-old Jenny arrives at the docks alone to pay the ramson for her kidnapped cat, he kidnaps her and threatens to feed her to his dogs if her parents don't pay.

* In the game ''Videogame/UncannyValley'', [[spoiler: What was shown as disturbing shadow beings in the protagonist's nightmares turns out to be a bunch of gangsters out for the protagonists blood. However, after they're dealt with, the protagonist have to deal with a bunch of [[KillerRobot Killer Robots]] unconnected with the aforementioned gangsters]].

* ''Fanfic/TheFall'': In a [[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas world]] devastated by nuclear war, where mutants and bloodthirsty killers roam freely what is [[LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero Louise's]] most pressing danger? Radiation poisoning due to averting NoBiochemicalBarriers typical in reverse summon stories. That and simply earning enough to pay for it.

** The Whoniverse Mundanger stories, by form of danger:

*** Organized crime: [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters "The Gunfighters"]], [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E1TheSmugglers "The Smugglers"]], [[Recap/TorchwoodS1E6Countrycide "Countrycide"]].

* The first season of ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' also featured a CannibalClan in [[Recap/TorchwoodS1E6Countrycide "Countrycide"]]. Like the ''Supernatural'' example, the heroes were drawn by killings they assumed were the work of monsters at first.

* Kull also had certain tales lacking paranormal threats.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Despite news media and realistic fiction focusing on threats of war, gang crime, terrorism, starvation, and serial killers, most Americans will die of heart disease or cancer, which each claim more lives than the sum of the next three causes of death, cerebrovascular diseases (such as stroke), chronic lower respiratory diseases, and (especially automobile) accidents. Suicide was 11th, and homicide was 15th, with every other slot filled by a disease or condition.
** One notable editorial in the Chicago Tribune, written on the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, noted that across the country, nearly five times as many people died on 9/11 of "causes unrelated to terrorism" than died of "someone flew an airplane into a building", including nearly 1500 tobacco-related deaths, and nearly 4000 people who died in automobile accidents.
* One episode of ''Radio/ThisAmericanLife'', ''[[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money The Giant Pool of Money]]'', included a story of a Marine, returned from [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror Iraq]], trying to catch up with his mortgage payments after the housing bubble collapsed and his interest rates went through the roof. In [[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/390/return-to-the-giant-pool-of-money the followup episode]] sixteen months later, This American Life reported that [[EarnYourHappyEnding the Marine ultimately got the loan refinanced to a point that he could keep up]], but that it ended up being even worse than being deployed.
-->'''Adam Davidson:''' Wait, wait, wait. You fought ''in Iraq'' as a Marine, and this was more stressful?\\
'''Richard Campbell:''' Yeah. Believe it or not, yeah. It was. It's a lot harder to deal with than shooting at people and having people shoot back at you, believe it or not.
* In a similar example to the above, one segment on ''Series/TheColbertReport'' focused on a group of "patriots" who for some reason had decided that meter maids were the greatest threat to modern society and spent their time following them around and constantly harassing them. One such target was an Iraq war vet who eventually quit because of the harassment, claiming in an interview that the abuse he was receiving from these people while handing out parking tickets was worse than being shot at by insurgents.
* In Europe, many of the purported attacks of bears, wolves and lynxes against livestock are actually the work of feral dogs. Farmers are obviously more inclined to blame the former since that guarantees a government compensation for their losses, whereas the latter usually doesn't.
* Commercial aviation is very, very, very safe. And it is actually getting safer. This does not stop people from being queasy around flying, but the fact of the matter is: Once you have taken the cab to the airport, the most dangerous part is actually over. On a per km basis, driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous than aviation or UsefulNotes/HighSpeedRail. And most risk factors are stuff that drivers routinely do in a "Ah, it won't be so bad" attitude, like excess velocity, drunk driving, inattentive driving or getting behind the wheel when sleep-deprived or agitated.
* Despite the prevalence of "armed intruder" and "lockdown" drills, the most deadly threat on school grounds remains the buses and cars in the parking lot.
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* {{Manga/OnePiece}} has the ArcVillain of Enies Lobby, Spandam. Unlike most major antagonists, he is weak and incompetent, and relies on [[DragonInChief Lucci]] to do most of the fighting for him. However, his cruelty is matched by very few foes, as he has the shipwright of Roger's ship killed, has Franky mutilated and forces him to become a cyborg by running him over with a train, and his abuse of [[IronWoobie Robin]] is such that he makes her cry, which not even other villains that make her experience illusions of her deceased loved ones can do.

** "The Adoption of Kshin" features a gang of river pirates led by a woman known as the Dragon Queen, who (pre-series) clashed with Kshin's family, leading to Kshin losing his parents and being separated from his grandfather. When, years later, Kshin's grandfather continues the search for the city (accompanied by Mandrake, Lothar and Kshin) the Dragon Queen and her stooges follow them.

* One of the scariest scenes in the [[Franchise/JurassicPark Jurassic Park]] series comes in [[Film/TheLostWorld The Lost World]], and doesn’t involve the dinosaurs at all (although they’re responsible for the situation). Sarah Harding awakens from a concussion inside a trailer dangling off the edge of a cliff, with only the rear windshield separating her from falling hundreds of feet to the sea below— and then the glass begins to crack…

* 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]]), simply 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, and proof that TheEmpire doesn't need space wizards with fantastic powers to be terrifying.

* In the world of ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'', much of the danger comes from sentient tentacles, berserk salmon, and a rotating cast of {{Big Bad}}s, but in ''Fanfic/IveGotYourBack'', [[VideoGame/Splatoon2 Marina]] suffers a life-threatening injury from lacerating herself on a jagged-ended handrail.

** "100 Proof Highway" revolves around Rick and LJ trying to protect Jedda after she becomes friends with a boy from school who has a serious drinking problem and is putting both himself and Jedda in danger. This is the only episode in the series where the story contains almost nothing out of the ordinary.

* ''WesternAnimation/DefendersOfTheEarth'' mostly has the Defenders facing alien incursions (with Ming being the usual culprit), as well as technology gone rogue, superhumans who are using their powers for evil and various demons and other supernatural creatures. However, there are a few episodes where the antagonist is an ordinary human, and the only science fiction and fantasy elements are the futuristic setting and/or at least one out of the Phantom, Mandrake and Jedda using their special powers:

* In the world of ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'', much of the danger comes from sentient tentacles, berserk salmon, and a rotating cast of {{Big Bad}}s, but in ''Fanfic/IveGotYourBack'', Marina suffers a life-threatening injury from lacerating herself on a jagged-ended handrail.

* ComicBook/TheJoker. Throughout the DC Universe, there's the PhysicalGod ComicBook/{{Darkseid}}, GalacticConqueror ComicBook/{{Sinestro}}, even ComicBook/LexLuthor who has inexhaustible resources. Yet some how the Joker, an ordinary [[TheSpook nameless]] guy who went absolutely insane, manages to be just as terrifying and dangerous as they are if not more so.

* In the Chilean comic "Zombies en la Moneda", the country is invaded by -obviously- zombies, however for the protagonists some of the moments of greatest danger come from things like neo-nazis, police crazed by stress, a girl psychopath who is also a SerialKiller and [[spoiler: an earthquake accompanied by a tidal wave.]]

* ''Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon'' is a franchise of animated movies with a colorful cast of villains who have funny moments to them despite being a threat to the heroes in their own right. But the darkest Disney villain is a prejudiced bigot by the name of [[WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDameDisney Judge Claude Frollo]], who abuses his position as the French Minister of Justice for his pent-up sexual frustration of Esmeralda, [[HotGypsyWoman a Romani woman]] whom he obsessively pursues to the point of threatening to kill her if she refuses despite him initially professing to be sin-free. Frollo's HolierThanThou attitude to justify his evil actions drives a major portion of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'''s plot, but it also contributes to his VillainousBreakdown.

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'':