Sprite did a series of commercials based around subverting Cereal Induced Superpowers by invoking this trope. One features a kid spotting NBA player Grant Hill drinking Sprite, and thinking Sprite will make him a basketball player — which he quickly disproves by drinking Sprite and then attempting a slam dunk, failing, and falling on his ass.
Announcer: If you want to make it to the NBA... practice. If you want a refreshing drink, obey your thirst. Sprite.
In one Sprite commercial, a mom takes out some Sun Fizz to give to her children. The sun logo comes to life to sing the drink's praises. The mom and kids respond by doing what a real life mom and kids would do: freak out and run away, screaming. This troper recalls that commercial winning some kind of award.
Black Lagoon. So, it turns out that taking on a heavily-armed unit of former Russian Commandos armed only with an ax isn't that good of an idea. I'm looking at you, Hansel.
While Blitz Stanford, an enormous neo-Nazi is extolling the virtues of his enormous Luger, Revy takes the time to reload before promptly shooting him.
In Black Cat, Train is falling off a building and Rinslet jumps off to catch him, ending when Rinslet comes to a sudden stop at the end of the rope - and actually does tendon damage to her arm. Turns out inertia matters after all...
In One Piece during the Thriller Bark arc, Chopper points out that the zombies' inability to feel pain is actually a weakness. Even if they can keep getting up from normal damage, they don't know what's really hurting them. Oz's limbs all end up broken, and he can't understand why he can't move anymore.
Similarly, in the same arc, Zoro suffers grave injuries that put his life in danger- as usual. But, unlike the other times where he gets better and the injuries are usually never mentioned again, one arc later Zoro tries fighting and his wounds cause him to be temporarily paralyzed. And then two arcs later, even after resting and being treated (by Perona, believe it or not), his wounds actually re-open when he tries to fight and move, resulting in him getting his ass kicked by Apes.
Luffy himself once tried fighting a man who could produce and attack with deadly corrosive poison. Seeing as how only Mooks had been poisoned by Magellan (the man in question) at this point, the audience and Luffy himself thought he stood a chance from the moment Luffy launches a Jet Bazooka that actually DROPS the hulking Magellan... but no. Touching him with that attack and many more poisons launched at him nearly kills Luffy within just 2 measly episodes of starting the fight.
Checkmate from Ultimate Muscle has a similar problem. While injuries that don't affect his body mechanically don't slow him down, he has an unfortunate tendency to collapse from his wounds at the worst possible moment because he never knows when he's too hurt to keep fighting.
Also happens in a minor part of the Dark Tournament arc of Yu Yu Hakusho; the giant robot that can't feel pain can't tell that it was actually damaged...until it's under the opponent's control already.
Also used in Rurouni Kenshin, where Gein's super Iwanbo gets destroyed because he couldn't tell it was damaged.
Another example from the series is Sanosuke's ultimate technique, which involves putting so much force into a punch that it tends to fracture the bones in his own hand. His doctor is not amused.
Early in Outlaw Star, the crew blast their way out of a spaceport to evade space pirates, presumably causing hundreds of thousands of wongs in damage. Towards the end of the series, the crew returns and Gene is immediately arrested and thrown in jail for property damage and other laws he broke, and only gets out at all because the traffic controller had been found to be taking bribes.
In The World God Only Knows, Keima notices that unlike in a game, when an idol confesses their love to you, other people are generally not happy. In fact, they're pissed.
Any hentai where the girl gets pregnant after unprotected sex when it's not explicitly (heh) their "safe period".
Freezing features beautiful girls who attack each other with sharp weapons. When their clothes get ripped apart, so do their bodies.
In Holyland, gangsters often don't respect the results of Combat by Champion but instead beat the victor down anyway.
Subverted in Bakuman。. After Kosugi does a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man punch to Nanamine when he essentially gives up on manga following losing to the main characters, Nanamine threatens to report Kosugi for assault and cause him to lose his job. Nanamine doesn't go through with it, though, thinking it would make him more of a laughingstock than he already is.
In Azumanga Daioh, Osaka, of all people, pulls this when she wonders what Chiyo would do if she was kidnapped. Chiyo suggests that Tadakichi-san could come to her rescue, and Osaka mimes shooting him. This leads to this exchange:
Chiyo: So what should I do?
Osaka: If this was a TV show, you'd use your genius brain to think up somethin'...and fight back against incredible odds...
Osaka: ...and get killed.
Comic Books
This trope could be called "The Kick-Ass Principle", too. Seriously, read the whole damn thing. It subverts almost every and all superhero trends, and replaces it all with how it would work being a hero in real life. It's painful to watch it.
Until an 11 year old girl starts tearing apart the mob singlehandedly. But even then, reality finally catches back up with her when she fights the boss, who has trained in martial arts. Also, the Batman of the movie uses guns and armor instead of impossible crimefighting skills.
This is probably one of Garth Ennis's favorite tropes, and is probably the reason why he has such a devoted Hatedom among certain hardcore superhero fans.
Early on in Hitman, there's a wannabe superhero/anti-hero who is introduced kicking some people's asses, and then a few issues later he is simply shot to death by some mafia guys like he was a joke.
Similarly, the villain in Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers event. Time-travelling jellyfish-totem Gothic Queen versus runaway car. And it rocked.
Every time Wonder Woman and Batman go up against each other. You expect Batman to pull out one of his special contingency plans or gadgets to take her down, because that's what Batman does right? He's after a criminal under her protection! Here they go, this will be good, talking has failed! Epic hero vs hero will ensure. Oh she just blocked his batarangs and punched him off the roof. Wonder Woman is taking down all the members of the Justice League to save them from a prophecy, and Batman has caught on to her! He figures out she is doing this because of a prophecy (by analyzing a hair or something, it's Batman) from an ancient Greek Oracle. Batman does not believe in pre-destined fates, Wonder Woman thinks this is the only way. Batman tries to get her to make a mistake by insulting her, he escapes from her unbreakable lasso! Oh she just threw a rock at his head and punched him out. Huh. That's what you get when a normal person goes up against a Super with no Kryptonite Factor.
It might also have to do with the fact that Batman and Wonder Woman have a similar tactical mindset, and with Wonder Woman's superior abilities, she of course has the advantage.
They have similar fighting skills. Only the Manhunter is in Batman's league as a tactician. But its still enough.
In Common Grounds, Let's You And Him Fight situations between people with superpowers end up with at least one corpse, along with a subsequent trial and lengthy prison term. You do not get a free pass because you were a hero, you do not escape prison every other week to wreak your vengeance or operate as an outlaw vigilante, you do spend several years behind bars and, once released, have to scrounge in the trash for food because an ex-con fresh out of jail for murder has plenty of trouble finding gainful employment. However, on the upside, the death in that fight will inspire the foundation of an international chain of coffee shops where Heroes and Villains can chat amicably over donuts.
Black Orchid doesn't just lampshade this, a mook gives a half-page Character Filibuster on the subject. Then he shoots the Decoy Protagonist in the head and sets her corpse on fire to make sure she's really dead.
In Irredeemable, the Ax Crazysuperhero-turned-supervillaintitular character, in a flashback from his early teens, hears his foster mother is about to commit suicide. He gets here in a fraction of a second. But sounds takes almost ten seconds to travel two miles. She was already dead before he left his school desk.
Amusingly one of the first times Empowered comes across as actually being badass. She points out, quite effectively, that driving an SUV at 75 miles an hour into a villain's back is much more effective than hitting him with a thrown one at about 5 miles an hour. This allows her to defeat a villain that the entire superhero squad she's a Butt Monkey for was defeated by. Unfortunately, the car is totaled, leaving her tied up and unable to brag, and her superhero squad walks off, assuming they and the villain knocked each other out. (Forgetting about Empowered in the process.)
In the first Sam and Max comic, they're tied up on top of an active volcano and a husky cult leader intends to kill them. The large amount of heat from the volcano causes the cult leader to spontaneously combust. However, the comic decides to play it off as a Deus ex Machina for the sake of humor.
This is pretty much the central premise of Watchmen: what happens to superheroes when Reality Ensues? What becomes of people who dress up in costumes and take the law into their own hands in a world as full of political and social complexities as the real world? They die. They go insane (presuming they weren't insane already). Or they become monsters.
Similarly to Watchmen, The Boys works on a decidedly more realistic take on Superheroes. They have PR agents and are fighting over defense contracts, among other things. It's shown that The Seven (DC analogues) spend most of their time being faces for the Evil Corporation, doing very little, if any, actual hero work, since there are no villains to fight (since powers distribution is monopolized by a single corporation, who gets their "heroes" a ton of freebies, and essentially lets them be as evil as they want as long as they have a good public face). The one time they actually tried to fight evil... yeah, didn't end well
It's worth pointing out that the most noble and heroic death thus far ( Lieutenant Wallace's Last Stand against the oncoming Nod army) ends up being subverted.
'Forward'' has River facing off against a rival pirate crew's Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy. The battle begins with them sizing each other up, and with the martial artist declaring River as a Worthy Opponent, who might be able to truly test his skills, and he rushes at her with his bo staff. River shoots him twice in the head. Then she demands chocolate.
Later on, River is facing a group of vengeful pirates. She's on the ground, and they're in their ship. She starts running for cover behind some boulders where they can't shoot her, only to get hit by the backwash of their engines and get thrown into said boulders, breaking hers legs and back.
Braid of the Limbo Clone Squad. When he was facing his demise he was plucked from his universe by a mischief god and given his choice of powers. His choice: the natural laws of his Earth will always rule him. How does this count as a power? Well, the universe he was thrown into is an anime universe, meaning that the only reason the heroes haven't died is that the universe's laws seem to want to protect them. Which means he can see through the flimsy disguises that most people use and has no problem just killing the fuckers when they're not powered up with a simple sniper shot to the head.
Another case is where Blaine hits his head and the Easy Amnesia / Tap on the Head tropes are very much averted.
Played with, though also straight, in the Nineteen Eighty Three Doomsday Stories, which has Austria hoping against hope that Hungary survived Doomsday. She doesn't. Though it doesn't stop her from looking after him even after death.
Film
In Kung Fu Panda 2, Po thinks he can use kung fu to make his ordinary straw hat into a disc of destruction to cut the chains holding the furious five from half a mile away. He ends up looking like an idiot.
Prior to that, Po tries to heroically tell Lord Shen about how he's going to rescue the Furious Five and stop him, only to show that Shen can't hear a word of it thanks to Po being so far away.
The first Pirates of the Caribbean film ends with Will rescuing Jack from being hanged, in dramatic and public fashion. The second film opens with Will in jail.
As is Elizabeth. Being the daughter of a governor does not give you the right to aid and abet a known felon.
In the animated film Wizards, good wizard Avatar confronts his Evil Twin Blackwolf. At first everything seems to set up for a Wizard's Duel. Then Avatar, who up to this point has been a pacifist, suddenly pulls a gun and shoots Blackwolf dead, adding "I'm glad you changed your name, you son of a bitch!"
Although less violent than most examples, this ends up happening in Ratatouille — after everything seems set for a Happily Ever After, it gets derailed into more of a Bittersweet Ending. Despite everyone's efforts to revive Gusteau's, it's shut down for good when the Health Inspector is entirely unmoved by the fact that the rats in the kitchen are perfectly sanitary and are cooking the food. Remy, Linguini, and Colette do bounce back and open up another restaurant, though, keeping it from falling into a full Downer Ending.
There was also one earlier; Linguini reveals his secret to the kitchen, only to have everyone, even the waiter and his girlfriend, walk out.
Linguini and Colette's Falling in Love Montage is rudely interrupted when Remy falls off Linguini's head, and is abruptly faced with the very real danger of being a rat in the middle of the street.
In the Final Battle of the first live action Kekko Kamen film the title character is fighting a very butch mook who is revealed, with much gloating from the Big Bad, to be immune to all of her powers. The heroine then picks up a gun from a fallen mook and uses it.
In the Macaulay Culkin movie Richie Rich, the Big Bad spends the entire movie trying to break into the Rich family vault so he can steal their money. By the time he actually makes it in, however, he finds that is full of nothing but keepsakes and photo albums, leading to this:
Van Dough: But where's the gold... the diamonds... the negotiable bearer bonds? The money! [points his gun at them]Where is the money?!
Richard Rich Sr.: In banks! Where else?
Shooter is kind of in love with this, with the climax basically being about four or five stacked up. Do not. Mess. With Bob Lee Swagger.
The entire film of The Departed runs on this trope- deaths are abrupt and meaningless, there are no last-minute speeches, and it all happens so damn fast for the characters that they have no time to react.
Infernal Affairs (the source inspiration) is even more so in that the one death in The Departed that actually has meaning to it never happens in the original.
And in The Last Crusade, when Donovan shoots Henry Jones Sr. to force Indy to bring back the Grail
At the end of Ip Man, after beating General Miura, Ip Man stands around and thinks of the cost of war. Then, as promised, he is shot for not throwing the match. He survives, but it's still a very striking moment.
To Live and Die In L.A. has the protagonist Chance abruptly shot dead in a fight with the Big Bad's henchmen. Like deaths in The Departed, it's very abrupt and there is no last-minute speech. With still ten minutes left to go before the film ends, Chance's partner chases after the Big Bad and eventually kills him. The film's creators did film another ending where Chance lived, but chose the one where he died because it fit the story and the characters better.
Operative: I want to resolve this like civilized men. I'm not threatening you. I'm unarmed-
Mal: Good. [draws his gun and shoots him]
Operative:[leaping back up and grabbing Mal from behind] I am, however, wearing full body armour. I'm not a moron.
Later on in the film, Wash is killed right in the middle of a Crowning Moment of Awesome. Talking Is Not A Free Action. And when the Operative tries to use his Pressure Point technique, it doesn't work because Mal had that particular nerve cluster removed due to a war injury. In Real Life, susceptibility to pressure points varies widely and One Hit Kills are difficult and not nearly so delicate.
American History X: After learning the error of his ways, a former member of a Neo-Nazi gang is shot dead by the black boy he pissed off at the beginning. In real life, Easily Forgiven is very rare, and requires at the very least some attempt to make amends to the people you wronged.
In Ninja Assassin, the ninjas easily kill their way through their many opponents... until they lose the advantages of darkness and surprise and have to fight soldiers with automatic weapons.
In the fourth Rambo film, we meet a group of pacifistic missionaries who travel into Burma hoping to offer aid to the viciously persecuted Karen people. Nearly all of them are dead by the end. Some may count this as Unfortunate Implications by suggesting that pacifism doesn't work, but keep in mind that in Real Life, the Burmese monks who tried passively resisting the S.P.D.C. have been all but wiped out.
Kinda proving the point...
At the end of Inglourious Basterds, Zoller makes hostile advances on Shosanna, who shoots him. After a while, it turns out that Zoller is not dead, and Shosanna has second thoughts, so she goes to him - and gets shot dead in return.
Possibly the most delightful moment from 1980s Eddie Murphy vehicle The Golden Child is when the Big Bad Sardo Numspa attempts to have Murphy's character Jarrell arrested, claiming that Jarrell stole a dagger from Numpsa, because Numpsa needs the dagger to kill The Messiah. Numpsa believes that either Jarrell will give him the dagger to avoid arrest, or that the police will simply hand it over to him after arresting Jarrell if he refuses. Jarrell gleefully agrees to be arrested, then takes a moment to explain the rules of evidence handling to Numpsa: Jarrell will be arrested, and the dagger held in police custody as evidence for his trial, which might not happen for months or over a year. Since Numpsa has to kill the child within a specific time frame, instead of having to fight his way past one or two unarmed guardians he'd have to storm police headquarters to get ahold of the dagger. Numpsa is forced to publicly back off of his accusations and let Jarrell go free rather than risk it.
Ghostbusters ended with a triumphant victory for the heroes, but the sequel shows the aftermath. The defeat of Gozer calmed the psychic dimension, allowing the ghosts to rest at peace once again and putting the ghostbusting services out of business. On top of that, the amount of property damage, code violations, and other offenses committed throughout the first movie have come back to haunt them in the form of multiple lawsuits suing them into bankruptcy. At the start of the second movie, they're working odd jobs from TV show hosts to children's parties.
In Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu, Van Helsing kills Dracula. He is then arrested for murdering a foreign dignitary. End of film.
The generally lighthearted comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats takes a dark turn when it references the real MK-ULTRA experiments: A soldier is driven into psychosis with LSD and disorienting lights. He goes on a rampage and is Driven to Suicide. Later on, it revisits the theme when the protagonists discover a working application of all that "research": sleep deprivation torture via loud nonstop music and strobe lights.
The Matrix ends with Neo running to escape the Agents and make it to a hotel room so he can log out. He opens the door, and Smith is there waiting with his gun out at point-blank. He simply shoots Neo. Even The Chosen One can't dodge bullets at close range. Neo comes back, though, to fit with the whole Kung-Fu Jesus theme.
In fact, the whole return from death thing is really the ultimate engagement of reality, since the whole movie is based around the concept that nothing in the Matrix is really occurring. As such, reality kicks in and he simply starts re-writing the world around him.
The A-Team: The team clears their name, and the bad guy, a rogue CIA agent, is taken away by his employer to a nonspecific future. Then the team is arrested for breaking out of jail, and because the Government needs someone to blame for all the damage they've done. They should have bought Wrongful Accusation Insurance.
The Empire Strikes Back: When the AT-AT first appears, it looks intimidating, fearsome, unstoppable... right until a rebel snowspeeder demonstrates the drawbacks of long, ungainly legs.
There's also the fact that it's only armed with forward-facing weapons.
To a lesser extent, the AT-ST in Return of the Jedi. It may have two legs and a rotating cockpit, but it can also be tripped.
In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, after Scott manages to knock Gideon away, he stops for a chat with Ramona and Knives. Only for Gideon to stab him through the chest. Lots of gaming tropes are played straight in this setting, but Talking Is a Free Action is apparently not one of them.
In Kick-Ass when Dave gets his first try at superheroism and gets stabbed in the gut for the effort, just to be run over by a car mere seconds later.
There's also the other would-be superhero at the start of the film who seems to think he can fly. Gravity doesn't agree with him.
When Big Daddy gets killed.
Hit-Girl spends much of the movie being awesomely lethal. Then in the climatic battle, she finally runs out of ammo and throwing weapons and we remember that she's an eleven year old girl in a somewhat realistic state of panic and the only thing keeping the bad guys from destroying her now is their uncertainty about whether she's still armed. Also in an earlier scene, she tries to engage in hand to hand with the boss only he's a full grown man who also knows martial arts and promptly drops her forcing her to resort to weapons again.
In The Awaken Punch, a 1970's Kung Fu movie, the hero tracks down the leader of the gangsters responsible for murdering his family and kidnapping his love interest and kills him after a brutal fight. S.O.P., right? Well, then he gets arrested for nine major offenses, including the deaths of six other gang members. The End!
The Pixar movie Up has an instance of this. Young Carl, determined to impress Ellie, attempts to walk across a wooden beam to retrieve his balloon. He takes a single step. The beam promptly breaks.
In The Incredibles, there's an in-universe example of Elasti-girl explaining to her children that the bad guys they're facing are not like the ones on TV, that they Would Hurt a Child if given a chance.
Funny Games is this in spades. Do you actually think that the poor victims will be able to escape their captors? You have two guesses. If you think they escape, one more guess.
Literature
Madame Bovary did this in 1856, making it Older Than Radio. The eponymous madame reads way too many romance novels, and is convinced the world works that way. Naturally, it doesn't. The love affairs she has ultimately go nowhere, because the men she's seeing aren't the type to drop everything and whisk her away. The extravagant lifestyle she leads is done just to delude her from sadness. And when she finally can't take it anymore, she takes poison, expecting it will kill her quickly and romantically... and that doesn't go so well either. The whole novel was a Deconstruction of tropes associated with Romanticism that the bourgeois classes loved to read, and ended up paving the way for Realism.
Happened pleasingly often in the Redwall Series. For instance, in the climax of Martin The Warrior, where the Big Bad slams the LancerChick Rose into a wall when she attempts to jump him. She is immediatelydead as it broke her neck. Likewise, when Martin disarms said Big Bad, he wastes no further time on him and kills him while he is still on the ground.
However, the original novel also has it's moments, like when the Anti-Villain Sela The Vixen comes to sell intelligence to the Redwallers outside the castle walls. She is, however, not greeted by the Abbot coming out of the side gate with the required payment, but by his aide-de-camp, Constance The Badger. The transaction is over right and there, with Constance nonchalantly knocking Sela out and taking the papers with her. Have I mentioned that Constance and the Abbot are the good guys (which is subverted quite a few times for reality's sake, especially considering that they caused Sela's death)...
Or in Mattimeo, where a gang of slave traders disguise themselves as entertainers to sneak into Redwall Abbey and abduct the children (for underground mining labour). At an ensuing festival inside the abbey grounds, they manage to spike all of the partygoers' drinks, and get them to drink them at the same time by calling out a toast. All seems to be working according to plan.
Or does it?!
Actually it turns out that the cooks and kitchen aides naturally didn't drink anything, and try to stop the slavers by themselves. The slavers, on the other hand,... simply slaughter them and calmly proceed loading the Unconscious on their cart. Two 'Reality Ensues' moments in one.
In Retribution Falls the heroes find the legendary pirate port Retribution Falls to be exactly what a city built by pirates would be like: a badly built Wretched Hive.
In War of the Dreaming, there is an scene where a Beatrix-Potteresque Mouse shows up to rescue one of the heroes. Then the setting changes back and Mouse promptly gets stepped on.
James Patterson has this as a side effect of the Author Tract in Cross Country, Alex Cross's ex girlfriend gets brutally murdered by an African mercenary. He heads to Africa. The second he gets out of the airport, he's kidnapped. By the police. Then it gets worse. You could basically cut out several hundred pages from the middle of the book, and all you'd miss would be the Author Tract and Reality Ensuing, over and over again.
In the Warhammer 40,000 novel Brothers Of The Snake, Apothecary Menon wanders around a village with suspected Chaos cultists with his helmet's faceplate up. For a good reason, mind, as the daemon his squad is hunting is invisible to helmet sensors and can only be seen with the naked eye. Unfortunately, when he gets into a fight with said cultists, he takes a bullet in the face and dies.
In a Ciaphas Cain novel, Cain notes that many battle sisters do something similar, fighting with their faces exposed claiming that faith will be their armor. Many of them die horrible deaths thanks to the Tyranids as a result.
Used numerous times in the Dresden Files book Changes, nearly always as yet another way to horribly torture Harry. Example: the Red Court sends in assassins to take him out. Rather than attacking him directly the way that, say, the gruffs did, they pay lesser thugs to try to kill him over and over, then set his house on fire. He barely manages to get his elderly neighbors out... then falls off a ladder and breaks his back, leaving him paralyzed. He has to make a Deal With TheFair Folk to fix it.
In the short story Day Off, Harry goes home to find a group of weak-talented wizard wannabes waiting outside his home. Apparently, Harry dispelled a bad luck curse they'd placed on some lady (which was so weak that Harry was mostly convinced wasn't real, and dispelled it to give her peace of mind). They sneer and threaten him, with the leader demanding that Harry prepare to defend himself, before he and his posse begin gathering their power to attack him. Harry responds by shrugging, drawing his .44 revolver, and pointing it at them. At their shocked disbelief, his response is "I'm a'fixin' to defend myself."
In the Gaunts Ghosts novel His Last Command, this is how a scout takes down a stalker, an Implacable Man that can soak up ridiculous amounts of damage and keep coming. Chaos enhanced beastie or no, it's still an animal that can be paralysed by hamstringing and slain by getting shanked in the brain through the base of the neck.
In The Witcher Saga Geralt tells a story about when he was young, he wanted to pose as a knight when dealing with thugs mugging a merchant and his daughter. The downright brutal method he used to dispatch the thug's leader ended in daughter fainting from horror, and merchant running away from him along with the bandits.
In Wearing The Cape, Hope/Astra is given a lesson in momentum and force and why it's a good idea to know how tough something is before you fly yourself into it like a missile. The book is actually full of little reality-checks, like superheroes getting warrants before going after supervillains, villains who's lawyers get the charges dropped, and strangers committing random acts of badness.
At the end of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, they kill the Big Bad who betrayed the hero of ages past, stole the power of the Well of Eternity for himself, dislodged the Earth from its proper orbit, brought up volcanoes that constantly choke the air with ash, created a permanent underclass of slaves, and turned HIS OWN FRIENDS into monsters. Good riddance, right? Well, no. The second book then details the political consequences of such a sudden power vacuum, and trying to go from a totalitarian dictatorship directly to a constitutional monarchy (hint: a lot of people die.)
In the Honor Harrington novel On Basilisk Station, the Bronze Age-tech Medusans manage to brutally kill some Manticorans by swarming them. Then, the Manties bring out the heavy weapons and air support. The aliens die. And die. And die some more.
Live Action TV
Angel: Lindsey has a big showdown planned with the eponymous hero, only to be outraged when he's shot and killed by sidekick Lorne. "Goodnight, folks."
When the gang finds out that Knox is responsible for Fred's death. Angel starts a speech to Knox about how they're the good guys and they don't kill, and in the middle of it Wesley shoots Knox dead. He has principles, but they don't extend all the way to showing mercy to the guy who killed the woman he loved.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5 finale: Buffy approaches The Dragon atop a tower. He gears up for a fight, and she just knocks him off the tower.
In the season 3 premiere, the Monster of the Week knocks The Chick down and does a speech about how his realm is inescapable. Then the girl gets up and pushes him off the edge.
Midway through season 2, a demon is hyped throughout the two-part episode as being so strong, that no weapon forged by man could defeat him. He is blown apart in one shot by an anti-tank missile. Guess what mankind was capable of forging has improved in the past six hundred years.
Season 6 episode Seeing Red: The villain's plot is thwarted, the heroes have their denouement with the talking about their feelings, and Tara is shot dead by a stray bullet when the villain comes back with a gun.
Huge mook: ...and the last thing you see will be my blade!
Mal: Darn. *kicks him into an engine*
In "The Message", Wash tries to lose a pursuing ship by flying into a canyon:
Wash: They're not behind us anymore!
(Looks up and sees that the other ship simply flew over)
Wash: I didn't think of that...
In the Doctor Who episode, "Last of the Time Lords", the Doctor talks one minor character out of shooting the villain, then he gives a speech about how there are better ways to do things than kill people. While he's giving the speech, another minor character picks up the gun and shoots the villain anyway. Talking Is Not A Free Action, and not everyone is as pacifist as the Doctor.
And then there's "Midnight", which savages the Doctor's usual bluster and approach to problem-solving. Instead of managing to get the people's trust, they view him with suspicion and think him very arrogant. It's all part of the Monster of the Week's plan.
In Torchwood, Tosh and Ianto find themselves confronted by three hooded, scythe-wielding men who spout fire and brimstone, then ominously start walking towards them as the music swells. They gun them down without a pause.
Ianto: There we are then.
Tosh: Sorted.
Torchwood: Miracle Day uses this as its premise: Having everlasting life in the real world creates horrific problems.
This happens in Jericho in the episode "Termination for Cause" when Jake and Russell were arguing what to do with Goetz, then Stanley drove up and shot Goetz in the head for killing Bonnie
The pilot for True Blood goes for this one. Girl saves cute vampire boy from crooks, cute vampire boy shows interest, girl is alone in car park... and gets the crap kicked out of her by the crooks, who ambush her.
In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron does this all the time. She makes it a routine habit to simply and bluntly execute anyone who poses a threat to the Connors, refuses to let loose ends remain untied, and generally acts in what can best be described as the most brutally logical manner possible.
And then there's Derek's death. He gets in a gunfight with a terminator at close range and no advance warning. And just to really drive the point home, the camera then follows the terminator, effectively making it little more than a background incident. Which, in this world, it kind of is.
FBI agent Ellison finally tracks down Cromartie and has more or less concluded that the target is some sort of combat machine. He even goes out of his way to secure an FBI Hostage Rescue Team for the assault. Unfortunately, antitank weapons are not included in the team loadout and thus it goes exactly the way of every other police versus Terminator fight in the universe.
Heroes – Subverted: Near-invulnerable superpowered serial killer Sylar, who's been by far the most powerful character on the show for a whole volume, is dropped mid-monologue by a sudden knife in his weak point from a man he turned his back on...and just gets back up again, because he'd used his new shapeshifting powers to move his weak point.
The pilot episode of Bones has one where Brennan confronts the killer, who is dousing a room with evidence in gasoline. When Brennan says she can't let him destroy evidence, he pulls out a lighter does the whole "try and stop me and we both burn" thing. Brennan immediately whips out her revolver and shoots him in the leg. And in even more ensuing reality, she is promptly arrested for it. By Booth. And later fails to get a gun-carrying permit, because of this incident.
CSI: Miami:"Guerrillas in the Mist". The bad guy has a weapon that's basically a Metal Storm with the serial numbers filed off. In The Teaser, it actually vaporizes three men. Horatio tracks the baddies down at the airport and comes riding in in his Hummer, which the bad guy destroys. Caine gets out of the burning car and takes aim at just outside of point-blank range. A staredown ensues.
Bad Guy: You're on the losing side of this one, Lieutenant. I could fire a thousand rounds before you get a shot o—
Blake's Seven gives us a single ship —admittedly the most advanced in the galaxy— crewed by approximately seven people —admittedly very talented— trying to bring down a gigantic evil bureaucracy (the Federation). They manage to survive for four years, then reality catches up.
The series 16 And Pregnant deals heavily with this, as the young mothers-to-be face the reality of their decisions. Turns out that babies doNOT, in fact, make everything better.
In the Miami Vice episode "Glades", The Dragon is holding a shotgun to a little girl's head as Sonny Crockett approaches with this pistol drawn and aimed. The Dragon begins threatening to shoot the girl if he's not let go, saying "If I so much as twitch, she's go—" BLAM Sonny shoots him right between the eyes, with the Post-Mortem One-Liner, "Maybe you won't twitch."
In the first episode of Battlestar Galactica's second season, Starbuck tries to shoot Sharon for being a Cylon, and then Starbuck and Helo have a tense confrontation where Helo convinces her not to shoot Sharon because Sharon is pregnant and different from the other Cylons. Just in time to hear the engine noise as Sharon high-tails it out of there in Starbuck's stolen Raider - because, of course, when your baby's life is at stake, you're not going to stand around and wait to see if the crazy lady with the gun changes her mind.
'Justified' is based around this trope. Raylan has been cautioned about killing people after the first episode because he has earned a reputation for it, which doesn't make the police look good, and besides, every time he kills someone it involves more paperwork for him and his boss. As a result there are many situations where he could kill somebody but can't because of his position, so has to find more intelligent ways around it. In a later episode, Loretta really wants to kill Mags, but Raylan (who is behind her), points out that the police are in the room next to her and they will arrest her if she does it (even though the killing is justified by her - and the audience's - standards).
Chappelle's Show : "When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong" skits are all about this.
The Saturday Night Live "Hero Song" features Andy Samberg as a businessman singing about how he's distressed by crime in the city and donning a superhero cape and mask to clean up the streets. Until he finds a Distressed Damsel played by Amy Adams being menaced by a mook played by Jason Sudeikis. In mid-line, the singing hero takes a punch to the face, at which point the mook proceeds to beat the hero. Brutally.For over a minute.
The series two finale of Sherlock hinges on the police no longer implicitly trusting Sherlock on the basis that he's Just That Good, and the reaction of their superiors to an amateur PI being given access to classified information (repeatedly).
Music
Swedish songwriter Lars Winnerbäck tells us what really happened to some of Astrid Lindgren's characters in his "Balladen om Konsekvenser" (The Ballad of Consequences).
The song "Scalp" by Atmosphere features the narrator describing his night. He goes to the bar and meets his friend Sonny, who offers to pay him for retrieving a package from a tattoo parlor. One expects the protagonist to follow through with his task, possibly finding something surprising in the package along the way, but instead he is killed in a car crash pretty much immediately after leaving the bar. Which is what happens when you drink $50 worth of alcohol and then drive at night.
Kazuyuki Fujita fought Mirko Cro Cop twice. Fujita is a fighter known for his pitiful defense and general clumsiness. Cro Cop is a fighter known for his devastating striking. Reality ensues. Twice. Painfully.
Not sure if "reality" and Cro Cop can even be used on the same page; before this, Fujita had beaten a few high-profile guys by simply outlasting them (i.e. letting them tire themselves out from beating him up too much). Cro Cop just went Beyond the Impossible, as is his wont.
Fred Ettish vs. Johnny Rhodes, UFC 2. Ettish performs a textbook snap kick on the opponent to no effect. He is then brutalized to the extreme.
Tabletop Games
Any tabletop RPG player knows this can happen to the heroes or the villains. It doesn't matter how dramatic the story has made it, one lucky roll from either side can make a climactic showdown very, very brief.
The extent to which this happens can tell a lot about the nature of a game and GM. Games that heavily avert this trope (such as Dungeons & Dragons and SW D20) tend to create a very heroic, action-movie like feel. Grittier, meaner, more brutal games (The World Of Darkness, Dark Heresy, GURPS, Call Of Cthulhu, and so on) intentionally invoke this trope to help create the feel of danger, failure, and high stakes. Some games, such as the old West End Games D6 Star Wars adaptation, have rules written to invoke this trope and then blatantly tell the GM to lie and keep the PC's relatively safe, allowing them to feel like reality may ensue when it probably won't. Some games even shoot to overplay this trope in the name of schadenfreude; for instance, in Paranoia, your character is incompetent, your boss is insane, and your teammates will throw you under the bus at the drop of a hat— so sure enough, you're pretty much guaranteed to suck, fail, and die repeatedly for laughs. GNS theory covers this as well; Simulationists want this trope in force, while Narrativists want "plot first."
Act one of The Fantasticks ends happily, with the couple together and the "feud" ending. Act two opens up with "This Plum Is Too Ripe", which is all about the characters realizing that everything isn't so great after all.
Into the Woods is all over this trope. Not only does it show the realistic consequences of fairy tales (particularly in regards to Fourth Date Marriage and Parental Abandonment), it also shows just how dangerous some fairy tale characters can be in a more realistic setting. When a giant comes down from the beanstalk, the audience goes "hey, cool!" at first, until she starts actually stepping on people. It's not played for laughs.
Specifically, it's Act II that does this. Act I is frequently used for school productions, as it's a fairly straightforward mash-up of recognisable fairy-tales that ends with a musical number celebrating how all the heroes have had their dreams come true and now they're going to live Happily Ever After... and then Act II opens, and everyone is faced with the fallout of their decisions.
Video Games
The Final Boss of The Darkness, Uncle Paulie, is built up as the catalyst for all of the misery in Jackie's life, from the death of Jackie's girlfriend to getting blown out of a window by a bomb. Jackie finally makes it to Paulie, and Paulie goes down just as easy as the Mooks Jackie had been slaughtering to reach him. After all, Paulie's a normal human being, and a rather overweight one, at that. Jackie has the personification of all evil living inside of him. If anything, it's more of a Curbstomp BattleCutscene Boss than a final boss fight.
In Sonic the Hedgehog, with the addition of the Sonic Boost in recent games we see a more realistic take on what happens when an object gets hit by another object moving at the speed of sound.
Most strategy games would make missions where you cause an enemy commander's Final Death to be long base sieges. Dawn of War sees the Imperial Guard's General Sturnn off in the middle of the Disorder campaign, at the start of a mission that gives the player only a standing force and no base to rush him with. There's a longer part of the mission afterwards, and his passing is barely mentioned subsequently. Only in a Crapsack WorldHalf Empty like Warhammer 40000. Then again, it may be Justified; this is, after all, a setting where there are enough ranks above a "mere" General for even them to be open to the Commissars' field executions - in the fluff at least.
It's not even a particularly spectacular fight. Fight can be summed up as Gorgutz picking up Sturnn and beating him into bloody pulp. Then again, what you do expect from fight between beefed up Ork and normal human?
Played around with the Metal Gear Solid series a few times, although it's much more into CMOAs.
In Metal Gear Solid 3 there's a point where you see one of The Cobra Unit out in the open and defenseless. If you're quick you can shoot him in the head, averting a boss battle with him later. Or since he's old, you can just wait a week (according to the PS2 internal clock) and he'll die of natural causes. On the other hand, the area is then manned by twenty guards instead of one boss character.
Metal Gear Solid 4's difficulty settings qualify for the trope: Even though one of the game's "features" was an expanded arsenal of firearms and associated controls, only on Liquid Easy (lowest difficulty) can he take enough damage to get away with anything approaching a stand-up or run-and-gun fight, as he's still one operator against however many enemies, whether human or GEKKO.
In Halo: Reach everyone gets an over the top Heroic Sacrifice death with Jorge blowing up a Covenant super-carrier, Carter crashing a dropship into a Scarab, Emile falling over a ledge with the Elite who just impaled him with an energy sword, and Noble 6 getting a Last Stand and taking as many Covenant with him as he can. Only Kat gets shot in the back of the head by a sniper in mid sentence as the team passes a hole in the roof.
In Fable IIyou can shoot the villain as he is doing his Motive Rant. If you hesitate, one of your companions (Karma Houdini Reaver) will pull the trigger.
Deus Ex, a minor patron saint of deconstruction, lets reality happen quite a few times. At one point, The Dragon decides that it's much, much smarter to just order his troops to kill you, rather than actually having to go through the complicated business of waiting for the Explosive Leash to kick in. (Notably, he also activates the Explosive Leash- which for newer models like you is a relatively slow and seemingly natural death rather than instant death by explosion.) At another point, you confront an enemy Obstructive Bureaucrat who realizes that trying to shoot the Super Soldier might not be such a good idea, so he waits until you turn around and leave, whereupon he shoots you in the back. At the "Realistic" difficulty level, there's a quite high chance that this will kill the player character in one shot. Of course, you can silently pick off the guards before he chance to sick them on you, resulting in a "You win this round, Denton."
The agility and tenacity of the Game Breaker QAAMs' from Ace Combat may be what happens when you put a real-world (nigh-)undefeatable heater, a la Python 4/5 or AA-11/R-73 or AIM-9X, against planes that usually encounter missiles sloppy enough to be outflown without needing countermeasures. Also seen when Captain Bartlett in Unsung War draws a missile away from Nagase and the missile stays firmly on him despite his weaving here and there... and it proceeds to splash him. Must have been a QAAM. He gets better.
The Xbox 360 game Over G Fighters is essentially what happens when Reality Ensues on Ace Combat. Did you know that afterburner in the presence of heat-seeking missiles is a BAD thing? On the other hand, unlike Ace Combat, the player (though also enemies) can sometimes break missile locks by turning enough to reduce their plane's radar cross-section.
Shadow Complex: The writers go through the trouble of fleshing out a personality for the evil quasi-Nazi Mad Scientist who has kidnapped your girlfriend...and instead of an epic boss fight or the scientist pulling out ninja moves or something to get away, he is Killed Mid-Sentence in one shot by the hero, right in the middle of saying that the hero "doesn't look like a killer".
At the end of the game, the Big Bad is not killed by the hero, whose family and loved ones he was threatening, but by the girlfriend, who is—surprise!—an NSA operative. Which explains what they were doing in the woods right by the enemy base, but she really should've captured the guy alive.
The "good" ending of the recent reimagining of The Bard's Tale ends with the Bard saving the world from an ancient and terrifying evil. However, as nobody aside from a small cult who don't really like him know this, he's soon back to hustling inns for free booze and sex.
The various "Chosen Ones" encountered during the game are victims of this. Bright, bold lads setting out to meet their destiny, they're quickly murdered by everything from wolves to trow to zombies. One sheriff even took to locking them up for their own safety.
In Seiken Densetsu 3, Angela's prologue has her trekking through the aptly named Sub Zero Snowfield...in a highly Stripperiffic leotard. She doesn't get ten minutes in before she starts coming down with hypothermia.
Used wonderfully in Rudra No Hihou. A few days after the other protagonists have already received their magical Power Crystal, Surlent is still lacking his. Being a scholar, he finds it inside an ancient artifact he's set out to research. It promptly flies towards him to merge with his body... and the impact kills him. Instantly.
Used amusingly at the beginning of Resident Evil 4. How is the evil Umbrella corporation finally destroyed? Through a daring black-ops raid with soldiers fighting its myriad monsters in one final battle? Nah. The U.S. government freezes its assets in retaliation for the destruction of Raccoon City, and the highly publicized disasters plaguing the company cause its stock prices to drop, sending it into bankruptcy!
In Minecraft's Survival Mode, you need to gather natural resources to build into weapons (among other things). Swords can be made of (in order of ascending rarity) wood, stone, iron, gold, and diamond. For the most part, the rarer starting materials result in stronger weapons, except golden swords are functional identical to wooden swords. It came as quite a surprise when the players realized the second-rarest material made the weakest weapon, and a lot of people thought it was a bug... until they remembered gold is one of the softest metals in the world. Just like in real-life, gold weapons are only good for decorative purposes.
This was initially true of all items made of gold, but this made gold so worthless that it was changed for balance reasons. Although gold tools still count as wood for purposes of durability and what they can actually do (a Gold Pickaxe can only harvest the same materials as a wood pickaxe), they work incredibly fast — a golden pick or axe can chew through materials in no time flat, outclassing even the diamond tools of the same type.
The huge material properties overhaul in the latest release of Dwarf Fortress resulted in a few of these, as a simple damage multiplier for each metal was replaced with actual stats for tensile strength, shear and compressive yields and so forth. Adamantine turned out to be incredibly strong and lightweight, making for excellent edged weapons, but when players forged warhammers and maces from it the results were disappointing.
In Utawarerumono, the rabbit-people bring out their ultimate weapon: Humongous Mecha. The best anyone else has basically amounts to pointy sticks. They slaughter their enemies en masse, and are completely invulnerable to you, the player, fighting spirit be damned. Well, until you become a giant divine monster yourself.
In Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Sam is facing down Shetland on the rooftop, with their guns drawn. Shetland goes on a Motive Rant, ending it by saying that Sam "wouldn't shoot an old friend" and putting his gun away. Sam can, at this point, opt to put his gun away, triggering an I Surrender, Suckers moment where Shetland draws his gun and catches a bad case of knife in the heart for his trouble. The other option is to just shoot him in the face the moment he puts his gun away.
Many of the cutscenes in Dynasty Warriors 7 invoke this with Annoying Arrows—In one scene, Pang Tong succumbs to a wound that resulted from taking an arrow intended for Liu Bei, Zhou Yu dies in a similar fashion, and another cutscene has the famous Eye Scream scene with Xiahou Dun (at least as much as can be shown in a T-rated game). To say nothing of Wu.
For Max Payne, not so much. But reality ensued all over poor Vinnie, a mob lieutenant with more enemies than friends and such an incurable fanboy for a cartoon Kid Hero that he'll cosplay without hesitation. Doing so straps him into explosives, and since that puts him in an Enemy Mine situation with Max, you figure The Hero should be able to save his life. And he did. Temporarily.
In Grand Theft Auto IV, the game's Final Bosses (which differentiate depending on which ending you take are hardly any tougher than any of the other random Mooks you've been killing. They have slightly more health thanks to body armor, but other than that, they're no tougher, and will likely go down quickly.
In Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, Batman can take out dozens of prisoners with delicate uses of flips, jumps, punches, and Batarangs. But try to take on a group of gun wielding goons head on, and Batman will quickly be turned into Bat-paste. Especially true in the sequel, where he fights mooks with high-powered sniper rifles.
Visual Novels
Despite passionate pleas, Masayuki in A Profile is ultimately completely unable to make Miou's parents reconcile. As he says to Miou, it's not like a kid like him can do much to convince adults of anything serious like that. On the other hand, it's not completely without results in that it made her father approve of him, whereas until then he was judging Masayuki as the street punk he used to be.
A common occurrence on Shortpacked!. Rule of Funny will be enacted, then in the next comic the serious results will hit the characters.
In El Goonish Shive this is most likely what ended Susan's uniform crusade arc. Didn't help she was blatantly ignoring nearly half the school, and misreading almost the entirety.
In Friendly Hostility, Collin gets a part time job as a funny kids show host. When he's publicly outed as being gay, it's shrugged off as a joke at first, until he realizes it will cost him his job. He becomes severely depressed and ends up breaking off his relationship with Fox, and although they try to work it out with a therapist, later canon shows that they never get back together. End of comic.
In Sinfest, there's an entire Reality Zone. Inside it, characters are drawn with a much more realistic style, and all the normal rules like Rule of Funny or Rule Of Cool no longer apply, with characters instead being forced to face reality. The Devil and other supernatural characters all avoid the place like the plague, for example, and Squig (an anthropomorphic pig) turns into an ordinary pig when he enters.
One transformation-fetishist rewrite of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde had Jekyll as the Unlucky Childhood Friend of a woman he knew, after she becomes engaged. This gives him the inspiration to complete a potion that brings out his subconscious desires. Turns out his subconscious desire is to be a large, strong, well-endowed possibly bisexual sociopath named Hyde. After assaulting and killing his beloved's fiance, he forces himself into his beloved's home, forces the potion down her throat, and her already comely form turns into a loose-moraled sex goddess. After they're...done, they try and dose the rest of the city. The first person turns into a bisexual sex-goddess and they have a threesome. Then the story goes "no, wait, she really dies peacefully, since she had smallpox, as previously mentioned, and didn't want to live". The second one we see turns into a fireproof pyromaniac (with a gigantic moustache and super-strength) trying to "purge" the world, and accidentally destroys the lab and the remaining stock of potion. Since the potion wears off eventually, once they're back to normal, their hosts obviously aren't going to make any more. The story ends with the city in flames from the pyromaniac.
The New Adventures of Captain S has the hero constantly beating up enemies inside the world of videogames. When he punches someone in the real world he hurts his fist.
ThisCracked article lists a number of humourous hypothetical examples, imagining what sort of films fictional characters would watch.
"An ex-con coach and a team of misfits... No one thought they'd have a chance. They were right."
How It Should Have Ended frequently combines this with Fridge Logic and/or Cutting the Knot in derailing various movies and such. A few examples include Star Wars A New Hope, where instead of going around the planet between them and the rebel base, the Death Star just blows up the planet then immediately follows it up by blowing up the base too, how in The Empire Strikes Back Vader could have caught Luke with the force rather than doing nothing when the kid jumped off the catwalk, or Batman running over the Joker with the Batpod in The Dark Knight, which resulted in putting the Joker in traction but not killing him. And the Twilight parody, where Belle gets vamped at the end of the first movie.
The Prolecto series, at Episode Two and later, falls into this, and at first balances hilarity with reality, but moves towards reality later on. For instance, at the end of the first one, they decide to start converting everyone! At the beginning of the second one... They're in prison for, amongst other things, public nudity!
The Salvation War runs on this. One of the core themes is that Biblical depictions of the powers of angels and demons, quite simply, are not all that impressive compared to modern weapons. Sure, a demon may be nine feet tall, run thirty KPH without getting tired, regenerate from most injuries in a few hours or days, can rip through human beings like tissue paper, and throw lightning bolts, but all of that is terribly useless when the demon's most advanced weapon is a pitchfork and the humans are sitting twenty kilometers away launching missiles and firing artillery that rips through demonic flesh as easily as it does human.
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Near the beginning of Act II, Dr. Horrible gloats about his unstoppable plan to commit a heist using his Freeze Ray. Cue Gilligan Cut and a bruised Dr. Horrible explaining how he needs to be careful about what he says on his blog because both Captain Hammer and the LAPD watch it.
Western Animation
Family Guy loves doing this and it is almost like the writers flip a coin to determine if a specific action will play out according to cartoon logic or will generate realistic effects. It's actually a good way to keep the audience guessing as they can never assume how things will play out based on genre conventions. Examples include:
When Peter "goes to" Peter-Copter and the Hinden-Peter he promptly crashes them into Joe's house causing substantial damage.
When Joe manages to tackle the robbery suspect and severs his spine in the process Peter jokes about the man's resulting paralysis, but Joe informs him that the man died.
When pretending to be the The A-Team, Peter and friends expect the workers demolishing the park to flee in panic, crashing their vehicles in the process and then slinking off in shame, defeated. The foreman educates them how even if they weren't killed outright by the reckless shooting or vehicle crash, even a minor fender bender can result in serious neck injury and partial numbness.
Stewie forgets about his babysitter's boyfriend whom he locks in the trunk of Brian's car. When he remembers after 3 weeks it is clear that the person has died.
There's also the clown that Peter has kept in the ceiling somewhere in order to pop up when Lois admitted Peter was right. Unfortunately, this hasn't happened for years. So when it finally does, all Peter gets is a skeleton in a colorful wig.
Which is a throwback to an earlier gag involving Peter having bought Meg a pony in preparation for his screwing up.
Peter: Oh... oh right ponies like food, don't they?
In one episode, the family wins the lottery, and one of Peter's decisions is to buy a giant room full of gold coins and dive into it like Scrooge McDuck.
(cue the room, Peter dives into the coins, only to bloodly hit them hard)
Peter: Aaahhh!! It's not a liquid! It's a great many pieces of solid matter, that form a hard floor-like surface! Ahhh!!
Mighty Max: In one episode, a barbarian has recently rampaged through a village, killing everyone. Max the Kid Hero goes inside a house to check the carnage and immediately hops out, vomiting. He's seen gore all the time on television, but realizes it didn't prepare him for this.
G.I. Joe: Resolute had this, when Storm Shadow asks why his uncle/sensei won't teach him his famed Seventh Step, which is basically instant death for anyone it hits. His uncle says he is not ready, and Storm Shadow pulls off his mask dramatically, symbolically divesting himself of his attachment to the dojo. It's actually a signal for an assassin to snipe his uncle, so Shadow can take over the dojo. When he sees the assassin, Snake Eyes runs forward, and the assassin shoots him first. The sensei turns around, puzzled, and since he's standing still, it's much easier for the killer to hit him. Oh, and it the miniseries was written by—wait for it—Warren Ellis.
Beast Wars had a scene seemingly parodying the one from Raiders of the Lost Ark: Optimus is going all over the place showing off his sword moves, and Megatron just shoots him.
This Megatron is a Combat Pragmatist. He'll do anything if it means his goals are met. Hell, when his plan to simply kill off the proto-humans fails and he later finds the Decepticon battleship Nemesis, the first thing he does with it is try to blow all proto-humans off the face of the Earth.
Even when Dinobot II (who has regained the originals' memories) tries to tell him that it's an overkill to use giant ship-to-ship lasers to kill a primitive tribe of organics, Megatron pretends to consider it for a second, and then pushes the button anyway.
Played for laughs in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go when the Sun Riders (who at this point are evil) have taken over the Super Robot and forced the Hyperforce to flee. Chiro suggests that they instead use the Sun Riders' old fighting mecha and they head to where they've been told it's stored... only to find out that it is only 20 feet tall (compared to the Super Robot skyscraper) and is in disrepair, at which point the following exchange takes place:
Chiro: * Slams his fists into the ground* That's IT! I give up!
If you don't understand how this is Reality Ensues, it's because after being faced with all the odds, Chiro, the main protagonist in the show, is actually ready to give up, whereas normally in this sort of show they would immediately start looking for another way.
Either that or the fact that the TV superheroes didn't actually use a Humongous Mecha while on set.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: After two episodes of turmoil, Aang finally unleashes his Avatar State. The assaulted army stops, watching in awe as the Avatar prepares to unleash his spiritual wrath upon them- and then gets shot down immediately. With Azula, transformation isNOTa free action.
A rather jarring example on The Powerpuff Girls: after moving into the gritty, more realistic Citiesville, the girls' attempts to fit in are all met with either laughter or cold dismissal. The final straw was when the mayor of Citiesville called them in after they had stopped some bank robbers - not to congratulate the girls, but for blowing up a bridge to stop their getaway:
Mayor: NO! Do you realize the two crooks that you caught stole approximately four hundred dollars? Do you realize that you did over three MILLION dollars in property damage to that bridge?!IT'S NOT REPLACEABLE!
An even better (worse?) example was when Rainbow the Clown suffered an accident that turned him into the sound-and-color-hating "Mr. Mime." He almost succeeds in turning Townsville into a silent, monochromatic wasteland, but the girls set everything right with The Power of Rock. Rainbow's mind is freed from the evil and he thanks the girls for saving him - at which point they beat the tar out of him and have him carted off to jail, because... well... he broke the law.
Sym-Bionic Titan fights the first Monster of the Week in the city and causes major damage. For the rest of the series, the city is shown being rebuilt, while the team tries to draw away future monsters out to the country where they're less likely to do harm.
In Gargoyles, the eponymous heroes always have to explain to their human allies that they can't actually fly; they can only glide, meaning there are often situations where their wings are of no use, like falling into pits and having to climb out.
On The Simpsons in the episode "The Homer They Fall", Homer Simpson has a condition which renders him largely impervious to the effects of head trauma, which he uses to gain success in amateur boxing by tiring his opponents out. He winds up getting set up in a fight with an Expy of Mike Tyson, who pummels him so hard that he forgets where he parked his car.
Another example would be when Lisa befriended a beached whale, and Homer came to the rescue with helicopters to save it...But it turned out that it was just Lisa's Hope Spot, and the whale died like many beached whales do.
In "The PTA Disbands", a tour guide in Fort Springfield is giving a lecture on a "fully restored and in ready to fire condition" Civil War cannon aimed directly at the base of a manned lookout tower. She mentions that these cannons are "very sensitive and that the "slightest jolt" can set them off as the Springfield Elementary bus starts swerving towards the cannon. The bus hits it and...one of the cannon's wheels falls off.
Tour Guide: Of course for safety reasons, we don't keep the cannon loaded. That's just common sense.
