"Everyone's a hero in their own way.
Everyone's got villains they must face.
They're not as cool as mine,
But folks, you know it's fine
To know your place."
—
Captain Hammer,
Dr Horribles Singalong Blog.
In many works of fiction, the hero does good deeds on a level that would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone in the real world to emulate. They stop wars, dismantle criminal syndicates,
Save The World so often it
becomes part of their regular schedule, and never shy away from performing a
Heroic Sacrifice (sometimes even giving their lives for the greater good
several times). Yet if the hero runs into a firefighter, volunteer worker, or soldier (
if they're on the idealistic side of the spectrum), the hero will often make a comment along the lines of, "You guys are the real heroes."
The idea of such a scene is usually to pay tribute to real life heroes who may not have their own TV shows or look like supermodels, but still give of themselves to save other people's lives. This is a noble motive on the writer's part, but it can create some problems if the story's
Fourth Wall is firmly in place. The characters don't know they're fictional, after all; from their perspective, Superman tossing a nuclear bomb into outer space is no less real than a firefighter saving someone from a burning building. This can make the audience wonder
why the story's hero considers him/herself a lesser hero than some guy who's never even saved the world once. If the main character is a superhero, writers might
justify this by pointing out that rushing into danger takes a lot more courage if you're not
Nigh Invulnerable.
The rationale for this without making it cheesy even with the
Fourth Wall in place is that even though the firefighters and police can't toss a bomb into the sun, they go out every day to do their jobs
without superpowers and they save the world on a much smaller scale than Superman or Green Lantern or Spider-Man or Thor is able to. Even in a world with superheroes, they are still real heroes. The people in
Emergency Services would just count as heroes for what they do. Then again, if
so many stories didn't make them look
so ineffectual, it would make more sense to consider them heroes along with the superheroes.
It gets worse. These same heroes will just as soon say "
Never Be A Hero".
Examples:
