Basic Trope: A character (often evil) denies that an unpleasant event is possible.
- Straight: Hiro foils Emperor Evulz's latest evil plan. Evulz yells out "This cannot be!" in response.
- Exaggerated:
- Evulz frantically repeats "IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!" at the top of his lungs for a full minute as his plan crumbles around him.
- Every time Emperor Evulz suffers even a mild setback, he immediately screams out "This cannot be!" at the top of his lungs.
- Downplayed:
- Evulz quietly says "No." just after a small part of his plan is foiled.
- Evulz isn't denying that his plan has failed, but demands to know one thing: "How?! How did this happen?"
- Justified:
- Evulz is immensely arrogant, and is unable to accept reality on a good day.
- Hiro's return is genuinely surprising and seemingly impossible, even for the audience.
- Inverted:
- Hiro makes a Heroic Sacrifice, and as he's dying he says "This had to happen."
- Hiro is saved by a timely Deus ex Machina. Dumbfounded, he says "This is impossible!"
- A character chides themselves for not predicting an unpleasant event, bonus points if it really is one that they should have seen coming.
- Evulz is witnessing something that's Beyond the Impossible. His response? "Yeah, I've seen that before."
- Subverted:Evulz: THIS CANNOT B— just kidding! You stupid heroes reaching me now is all part of the plan!
- Double Subverted:Mook: Sir, you forgot to repair the death-trap again...
Evulz: THIS CANNOT BE! - Parodied:
- The second anyone says "this cannot be," they die immediately afterwards, to the point that tricking someone into saying it is enough for it to work.
- Evulz responds this way to a very visible flaw in his plan.
- Zig Zagged: Evulz alternate between saying "This cannot be" to "this had to be" to "this shouldn't have happened"and a bunch of other variants as well.
- Averted: No-one screams denials to the uncaring heavens.
- Enforced: It's demanded in an adaption of the work because the original became popular on the internet, and now people want to Watch It for the Meme
- Lampshaded:
- "Is denial the best you got, Evulz?"
- "THAT'S IMPOSSI— wait of course it's possible, it's happening right in front of my eyes!"
- Invoked: Evulz needs to throw the fight for some reason, and screams this in order to make it more convincing.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Evulz keeps a realistic expectation of his abilities at all times, and sneers at the very idea of panicking like this.
- Discussed: "It's a real trend for villains to deny the reality of the situation just before they die."
- Conversed: "He said what? Oh, Evulz is a dead man now."
What? A link to the main page? This Cannot Be!!
