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It can be quite surprising when there is a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome in a medium like this...


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    King of the Hill 
King of the Hill is notable for eschewing the more outlandish, fantastical plots seen in other animated sitcoms like The Simpsons and Family Guy in favor of more down-to-earth stories grounded in realism, which often results in this.
  • A common plot in late-1990s animation was a run-in with the Department of Child Disservices, where a set of coincidences convinces a social worker that the family's children are being abused. King of the Hill uses this plot for its pilot when a social worker named Anthony Page claims that Hank and Peggy are abusing Bobby because Bobby showed up with a black eye. However, Page gets a shock when he's chewed out by his boss and sent back to the social worker office in Los Angeles for jumping to conclusions. Page didn't even ask anyone with any authority in Bobby's life (like his Little League coach) about how Bobby got his black eye. While Page assumes it was from Hank punching Bobby, it was actually from Bobby not watching the ball during a Little League game. The entire thing could have been cleared up if Page had so much as spoken to the Little League, but didn't out of a desire to advance his own career. This was to set the tone for a recurring element of the series — various "experts" who have more self-importance than competence in their supposed field of expertise.
  • Various episodes have shown the effects of what an unhealthy diet can do to someone. In "Hank's Unmentionable Problem", Hank becomes constipated due to his low-fiber, high-meat diet and almost needs surgery to fix it. Tied with this is "Love Hurts and So Does Art", in which Bobby develops gout from eating a high amount of processed deli meats. In "Dia-BILL-Ic Shock", Bill's love of junk food causes him to develop adult-onset diabetes.
  • In "Keeping Up with Our Joneses", Hank finds out Bobby and Joseph have been smoking and he attempts the Radish Cure on Bobby; making him smoke an entire carton of cigarettes. Bobby vomits before he can finish the last pack and gains a crippling addiction to nicotine as a result. Hank and Peggy also end up relapsing into their old smoking habits because of this. When Hank tells a support group what he did, they react with complete and utter horror and throw him out.
  • In "The Arrowhead", Hank attempts to coerce Lerner and his crew off his property with a fake artifact. This fails immediately because while a pompous jackass, Lerner is still a professional archeologist backed by a whole team of archeology grad students who can easily spot a fake artifact.
  • In "Bills are Made to be Broken", Bill attempts to reclaim his old high school football record after Ricky Suggs unfairly surpasses it due to being allowed a walk out of pity after breaking his leg. Although he initially attempts to train with Hank to get back into shape, Bill is extremely out of shape, even for a man in his forties, and tires after just a few minutes. And while he does manage to tie his record with Ricky, even recreating his legendary touchdown, the pressure of all the younger and stronger football players dogpiling him quickly takes its toll, and Bill ends up breaking his legs. The Stinger shows Bill recovering in rehab alongside Peggy.
  • In "Little Horrors of Shop", Hank is fired from being the shop teacher because of his students bringing tools and sharp objects from home. Most schools have a very strict policy when it comes to bringing in any sort of sharp or blunt object that could be used as a weapon, including tools.
  • In "Peggy Makes the Big Leagues", David 'The Flyin' Hawaiian' Kalaiki-ali'i is the quintessential Dumb Jock whose talent for earning his school trophies make teachers overlook his academic failures and let him pass without actually learning anything. When they try to get compel Peggy to let him pass, the booster club and his mom set up his room to make him look like he's mentally challenged. It works, but when David comes home and finds out what they did and have been doing the entire time he's been playing ball, he's rightfully insulted that everybody especially his own mother thinks he's stupid. David resolves to study and earn good grades.
  • In "'Twas the Nut Before Christmas", Bill starts constantly dressing up as Santa Claus. Because he's wearing the same Santa costume every day, the outfit becomes increasingly worn out and filthy as the episode progresses. Also, while people found Bill's Santa shtick charming in December, they're creeped out by it when he keeps doing it well into February.
  • In "Ho, Yeah!", Hank tries to lose Tammy's pimp Alabaster in a car chase by speeding through a traffic light just as the light turns from yellow to red. Hank initially thinks this has bought him time, only to end up shocked when Alabaster just runs the red light to continue the chase. Obviously, a petty criminal like Alabaster isn't going to care about a traffic violation if he's frantically chasing one of his sources of income.
  • "Phish and Wildlife" has Peggy, who is "on a roll" (i.e., butting into everyone else's business to show how smart she is), barge onto an active crime scene, introducing herself to the cops as if she were a private detective. The scene immediately cuts to the police escorting Peggy back to her car over her protests.
  • In "Dale Be Not Proud", Dale is rightfully upset that Hank gave away his kidney to a sick child because he was under the impression that NHRA John Force was going to need it; it doesn't help that the doctors basically guilt-trip Hank into signing on it. Sure, Dale's reaction to it is more "unique" to most, but given that it's his organ, no one can really blame him. It helps that Dale meets the ill kid and graciously makes a "trade" with him for the kidney.
  • In "You Gotta Believe (In Moderation)", after learning that the middle-school Baseball Team has been dissolved due to a lack of funds, Hank and his softball team decide to play against "The Ace of Diamonds and his Jewels," a Harlem Globetrotters-style comedy baseball team consisting of former Major-League Baseball players; because they always donate the proceeds of the game to a charity of the host's choice. Hank somehow gets the idea in his head that Ace would appreciate it if he and his team actually played to win (exploiting the fact that Ace's team only has three players). Ace realizes what Hank is doing and responds in kind. The result is that Ace wins in an extremely unentertaining 83-1 blowout. He also keeps the proceeds from the ticket sales as opposed to donating them because the boring game drove off the crowds, and Ace is extremely dependent on selling merchandise to make money.
  • The end of "Cops and Robert" has Hank finally get Barry Rollins to calm down so he can explain that he mistakenly took the guy's wallet and the whole thing was just a simple misunderstanding, which he apologizes for. Of course, that doesn't mean Hank is cool with he and his friends being chased down and attacked with a baseball bat:
    Officer Brown: Sir, will you be pressing charges?
    Hank: Well, hell yeah!
  • In "Life: A Loser's Manual", Dale builds a guard tower in his front yard. As he can't get permission from the county zoning office, he deliberately builds it without a foundation and makes every dimension slightly smaller than the threshold to trigger county building regulations, so it's 39 feet tall and only 9.9x9.9 feet at the base. Khan brings a county inspector to have it condemned and when Dale smugly tells the inspector what he's done, the guy is horrified and tells Dale that, while the tower may be technically legal, such a tall tower with a small base and no foundation is incredibly unstable and unsafe. He is then immediately proven right when Dale leans up against the tower and it falls over, crushing his shed and fence.
  • In "Just Another Manic Kahn-Day", when they finally get Kahn's medication for him, everyone waits intently until he tells them that the meds aren't an instant fix to his mood swings. Sure enough, he goes through another manic episode before he stabilizes.

    Other shows 
  • In one of the original Æon Flux shorts, Aeon is having a shootout with a bunch of mooks, and dispatches all but one of them, who manages to get the drop on her and has her dead-to-rights. Aeon then spreads her legs and licks her lips seductively. The mook realizes what anyone with half a brain would do realistically, that she's seducing him just to make an opening to kill him, and promptly blows her brains out. Not Distracted by the Sexy, indeed.
  • The Amazing World of Gumball:
    • "The Finale" has a Call-Back form of the trope. The plot centers around the Wattersons finally paying the consequences for all the wacky hijinks they've done in the past; thus, the family has to pay for the destruction of Elmore, Gumball and Darwin having to retake Kindergarten for all their school shenanigans, Richard having to pay the fines for his reckless driving, and the family having to pay $800,000 for their housing bill by tomorrow.
    • In "The Spoiler", while at the movies, Gumball and Darwin catch Anais pirating the movie while hiding in their bag; Anais explains that she'd paid a ticket online to be in the theatre, and is just recording the movie to watch it later at home. While Gumball starts to see that there isn't a problem here, Darwin is a little confused, as he still thinks that what Anais is doing is wrong. Shortly after, Larry the movie clerk bursts out the doors and calls out:
      Larry: HEY! Movie Piracy is a federal offense.
    • In “The Gift”, Anais has been kissing frogs, hoping for one of them to become her Prince Charming. Of course later in a cutaway, her parents had to take her to the hospital as she ended up getting frog flu from kissing so many frogs.
      Doctor: I'll prescribe wart cream, a healthy dose of reality, and far fewer princess movies.
      Frog: *croaks*
  • American Dad!:
    • In "License to Till", Steven and his friends are helping Snot's uncle Solomon to harvest his cabbage farm before the storm comes, but Steve instead wants to hang out with all the popular kids, so he uses Solomon's tractor as a ferry for all the cool kids to travel to their parties. Soon after getting ditched by the cool kids, Snot helps Steve to bring the tractor over to the farm just before the storm comes, but as Steve has been using the tractor for so many times, it ran out of gas, and he forgot to refuel it. Steve tries to think of the bright side about learning his lesson, but Uncle Solomon yells at the kids because he's unable to finish the harvest and is going to lose his farm.
    • In "Hurricane!", Klaus jumps into the water flooding the house after gloating that he will be able to survive due to being a fish unlike the rest of the cast. The only flaw in that plan is that Klaus is a freshwater goldfish while the aforementioned water is saltwater from the ocean, resulting in him almost immediately jumping back out flailing in pain begging to be put back in his fishbowl.
    • In the B-plot of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Smith", Stan and Roger realize that having a boat is a waste of time and money, since neither of them are experienced at maintaining and sailing a boat. Also, when Roger discovers that the life jackets have cocaine in them, he excitedly asks Stan if he knows what this means. The comedic version of this would have Stan and Roger team up as cocaine dealers who sell the stuff to pay off the boat. However, since Stan is a CIA agent and has dealt with drug smuggling busts, he immediately places Roger under arrest for intent to sell cocaine.
  • American Dragon: Jake Long: In the episode "Fu and Tell", Yan-Yan whips out a complex and acrobatic kung fu move she claims to have learned at the Shaolin monastery. However, but she ends up telegraphing her attack to Fu Dog and exposing herself to a simple but very effective punch.
  • In the Animaniacs episode "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Clock", Slappy suffers a nervous breakdown and Skippy is forced to commit her to a nursing home and take over the household chores. When a social worker comes, Skippy attempts to lie that Slappy of course is at home, she's just busy after calling for her. In a regular cartoon, this would work. The lady gives him a cynical look as if she's heard this story before from kids trying to protect their guardians, besides which she was there earlier and could clearly see no one was in the house. Then she says she's taking him into foster care, ignoring his protests, because it's dangerous for him to live alone.
  • Archer:
    • Archer's Idiot Hero status ends up destroying the reputation of ISIS by season 3, especially with the loss of their competent agents (many of which died because Archer blew their cover), leaving Lana to essentially do the job of a dozen people by herself. Archer is by far the best fighter the agency has, but since he refuses to extend those skills to actual intelligence or subterfuge, he becomes The Millstone for every mission that requires more than brute force.
    • Traintop battles are noted to be noisy, filled with 100-mph (161 km/h) winds, and *spit* bugs getting in your mouth constantly. After being in one in "The Limited", Archer comments that he doesn't know why the trope is so popular.
    • In "Heart of Archness: Part I", Archer leaves a seaplane on autopilot, then finds out autopilot only maintains course and altitude. It doesn't find the only refueling strip in the area and land before the plane runs out of fuel.
    • In "The Figgis Agency", the team subdues the guard dogs of the condo by feeding them tranquillizer-laced doggie treats. The following episode reveals that the dogs had a bad reaction to the tranquillizers and had to be taken to the vet for treatment.
    • Many of the agents have serious hearing issues and/or tinnitus as a result of being around so much gunfire and so many explosions in their missions. Archer in particular accumulates a truly massive number of injuries over the course of his career as a spy; aside from his hearing issues, he's been shot at least a dozen times, stabbed, burned, drowned, raped, exposed to radiation, undergone chemotherapy due to said radiation exposure, and put in a coma for three years. As a result of the last one, he requires physical therapy and needs a cane to get around.
  • In the As Told by Ginger episode "Driven to Extremes", Ginger tries to avert a prank on a sadistic substitute teacher that she thinks goes too far. However, when she fails to stop it (and gets covered in raw egg and toilet paper for her trouble) the sub is completely indifferent. She doesn't even show appreciation to Ginger, simply saying that this kind of thing happens to her all the time, that she's used to children hating her, and that she doesn't care because she's just a substitute and will be gone soon enough. Ginger realizes that, far from standing up for what is right against peer pressure like she thought, she just wasted a lot of time and effort defending someone who doesn't deserve it and doesn't appreciate it. She tries again the next day and verbally stands up to the sub, giving a dramatic "Reason You Suck" Speech. This just results in Ginger being sent to detention, thus making the episode a Downer Ending. This is due to Ginger's actions toward the teacher being viewed as insubordination and disrespect to the authority (whether the student is right or wrong). Also, the substitute teacher receives no comeuppance for her actions.
  • Batman Beyond:
    • Putting on extra muscle doesn't automatically make you a better fighter. When Willie tries to fight Nelson hand to hand in "Revenant", he still gets trounced, forcing Willie to fall back on his psychic powers again.
    • Bruce might have retained his fighting prowess well into his old age, but the series has made it very clear that his best crime-fighting days are behind him. When the younger Peek grabs him from behind in "Sneak Peek", he's able to overpower him and drag him to the apartment balcony without Bruce being easily able to tear free.
    • In "King's Ransom", when the Royal Flush Gang hold Paxton Powers hostage, they demand a ransom payment of 20 million credits from the man himself. Paxton informs them that he doesn't have that much liquid currency, as all his wealth is tied to investments that he'd have to sell in order to get the credits. This is Truth in Television for most rich people.
  • In the second episode of Baymax!, when Cass puts a camera on Mochi to spy on Baymax, Mochi is quick to knock it off when he notices it through a mirror, making it impossible for Cass to see anything from it, unlike other shows, where the characters usually fail to notice such devices.
  • In one episode of Beast Wars, Blackarachnia headbutts Silverbolt hard enough to knock him out... and then she falls unconscious a few seconds later. It doesn't matter who's on the receiving end, trauma from headbutts go both ways.
  • The Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Copy Machine" shows the danger of doing the Cheek Copy when Beavis attempts it. He almost immediately breaks through the glass and potentially cuts his femoral artery.
  • In the Ben 10 episode "Ultimate Weapon", Grandpa Max and Enoch are both seeking an ancient sword that is said to be extremely powerful. Enoch gets the sword first... and it disintegrates in his hands. Turns out that ancient artifacts aren't always in the best condition, as Max jokingly points out.
  • Big City Greens:
    • Unlike most media with a rich son of a CEO antagonist, Chip doesn't just get away with whatever he wants. His public actions turn customers and employees against him. When he inherits his father's company, it is noted that the stores are being boycotted. When you are a bad enough person, people won't care about who you know, and in fact knowing you reflects poorly on your connections.
    • In "Backflip Bill", when Bill does his gymnastics floor routine, it looks quite impressive until he messed up the landing at the end. And despite everybody applauding his performance, he gets sixth place. He also mentions at the end that now that he fulfilled his childhood dream he's going to retire from gymnastics due to his body being sore since he only restarted gymnastics recently and his body isn't as flexible as it was.
    • In "Gramma's License", despite Gramma successfully obtaining her driver's license, her license has several restrictions on it due to her poor eyesight and her age.
    • In "Tilly's Goat", despite heroically saving the dog show judge's dog from being crushed, Melissa doesn't win the dog show (because she's a goat, and had been doing terribly for the entire contest). The judge adds that, with all the damage Cricket caused trying to sabotage the competition, the kids are lucky she's not calling the police.
    • In "Bear Trapped", Cricket brings Daisy to live in the sewers, and overflows the tunnel (with him in it) in order to get Officer Keys and the animal control officers away from her. Immediately after, Cricket suffers a very nasty fever, due to his exposure to sewer water.
    • "Rated Cricket": Cricket wants to see a PG-13 rated movie, Kiss of Death. But he only sees the poster for the movie, and assumes it's some sort of a thriller; once he actually gets to see the flick, he realizes the movie is a teen horror/romance drama, and he's uncomfortable by what it shows.
    • In "Coffee Quest", Chip, having tracked Cricket and Gloria to the latter's apartment, loudly threatens them to come out. This results in one of Gloria's neighbors yelling at him to shut up (and throwing a boot at him), since it's the middle of the night, and he has work in the morning.
    • "Harvest Dinner": Cricket and Gramma are tasked by Bill to watch a pie in the window while he's cooking and when Tilly goes to the store to get paprika for the stew, but they find it's not a "real" job and decide to beat her to the store and get the paprika first. Sure enough, watching the pie was a real job — and once they step away and with nobody there to watch it, the pie is left vulnerable to any dangers that could ruin it, and is indeed stolen by the mean rooster. Once they get home, they realize the pie disappeared in their absence, and Bill angrily calls them out for disobeying him and not doing their job.
    • "People Watching": In Nancy's story, she describes a woman who got a job as a window washer... only to discover she had a fear of heights. The woman wore a blindfold so she wouldn't be able to tell how high up she was, and proceeded to wash every window on the building. Then she took off the blindfold... and discovered that, due to not being able to see what she was doing, she'd done a terrible job of washing the windows.
    • "Valentine's Dance": Cricket finally embraces his feelings for Gabriella, and announces that he's ready to accept their "love"... only for Gabriella to turn him down, stating that she only wanted to dance, and doesn't "love" him (she doesn't even know his name). She also points out that he's been acting weird all evening (mostly by running away from her). Just because someone asks you to dance with them doesn't mean they're in love with you, and repeatedly running away from them and acting strange whenever they try to talk to you is pretty much guaranteed to erase what little interest they had in you to begin with.
    • In "Cricket's Biscuits", Gramma would always make biscuits for her family whenever they get really hurt so they can feel better. After Cricket triggers a booby trap in Gramma's room and gets everyone hurt, Gramma makes more of her biscuits for everyone and then Cricket tells everyone they should go to the hospital since while the food makes them feel good, it doesn't make their bodies better from their injuries.
    • In "Quiet Please" when Bill sees Cricket about to be attacked by the librarian without even knowing it, he tries to warn him...while standing a hundred feet behind him, while his back is turned. He doesn't even turn his head. This prompts a Heroic Sacrifice, and the librarians attack Bill behind the oblivious Cricket, who never looked up once throughout all of this.
  • Blue Eye Samurai:
    • Mizu's skill with the sword is incredible... in the modern day. When we see her when she first began her revenge quest in flashbacks, her first interaction with criminals she tried to question resulted in her being pinned, stabbed in the side, then tossed on the street, only surviving because she by chance ran into her mother, or rather, who she thought was her mother. She definitely has natural skill, and later she was able to both defeat her husband in a friendly spar, and slaughter the bounty hunters who come after her, but it's clear that her superhuman-level skill now is born from years of experience and the sheer ruthlessness she fights with.
    • The series plays Katanas Are Just Better very straight, with Mizu and Taigen's mastery of the blade being sufficient for them to slice through entire tree trunks in a single blow with enough focus. However, despite both having the skills to slice arrows in flight as a defence when attacked from afar, when Mizu finally ascends up Fowler's castle and breaks into his personal study to confront him, he brings an English matchlock rifle to bear against her instead. Despite having the hand-eye coordination to bring her blade into the path of the bullet, the sword does not cut the projectile in two, and it actually breaks Mizu's Thunderbolt Iron sword instead, illustrating how dangerous and game-changing guns are no matter how semi-mystical the sword skills on display.
    • In the same vein as the above, just having the katana is not nearly enough. Plenty of emphasis is put on stance, grip, distance, strength, timing, and footwork. The first time Mizu tries to cut through a pole, her angle of attack is so bad the impact bounces the sword right out of her hand. There's a reason the katas of katana-oriented swordfighting were so detailed and their masters so revered. They could take decades to learn correctly, and often came down to sheer physics (or, less commonly, repetition through combat).
  • Bob's Burgers:
    • Teddy eats at Bob's restaurant almost daily, and eats a burger and fries every time. This is shown in "Friends with Burger-fits" to have negative long-term effects on his health — namely, he has very high cholesterol and his doctor is concerned that he could die if he does not change his eating habits.
    • Bob runs his business his way, but it's shown he's not very good at anything but cooking. He's shown to have little to no skill in business management and very adverse to change. As such, he consistently rejects things like a Tiki motif by a friend investing because he hates it, or refuses to sell sweet potato fries because he hates them. He also refuses to emulate his rival Jimmy Pesto despite his better amount of customers. Bob also has No Social Skills, preferring to stay behind the grill as opposed to go out and talk with people and get involved with locals. While in most stories this counts as Underdogs Never Lose, it results in his business constantly teetering in bankruptcy, relying mostly on repeat customers. If it weren't for Status Quo Is God, Bob's refusal to budge on how he runs his business would have done more damage than anything.
    • In "My Fuzzy Valentine", Linda holds a speed-dating event at the restaurant to spread the joy of love, but as Bosco the police cop joins in, he takes over and kills the vibe by causing the customers to hate one another. As the situation becomes worse and worse, Linda decides to put a stop to it by taking Bosco's gun so no one would listen to him anymore, but Ted warns her that she shouldn't be doing that, as it's against the law. Shortly after, Linda is arrested.
  • BoJack Horseman:
    • In season 2, BoJack is cast in his dream role as his hero, disgraced runner Secretariat. The thing is that Lenny Turtletaub the producer doesn't want to show many of the historical figure's warts. He specifically forbids director Kelsey or BoJack from shooting a scene where Secretariat made a Deal with the Devil with Richard Nixon to avoid serving in Vietnam. Despite Kelsey saying it's a bad idea, BoJack convinces her they should do it for the art, since that's her specialty, and surely Turtletaub will be impressed by their dedication. They break into the set to film it. Kelsey is proven right; Turtletaub fires her for insubordination when he sees the footage, and as punishment hires a director who clashes with BoJack and sabotages his other career choices. When BoJack runs away out of guilt for ruining Kelsey and breaking down from the stress, Turtletaub proceeds to replace him with a CGI duplicate since it behaves better and isn't a mess. While Kelsey later averts this trope by pitching the movie she wants to do in season 6 and impressing producers with her tenacity, for a long time, this attempt to do things her way backfires horribly and tarnishes her career.
    • Diane helps "rescue" a chicken from a farm where they're slaughtered to become part of the meat industry. Is it cool and righteous? Not to the cops, who arrest her and her "cronies" for trespassing and robbery once they catch up.
    • In "Hank After Dark", Diane finds allegations that a beloved television show host, Hank Hippopopalous, has been abusing his secretaries. There's no proof besides the womens' words, and none of them are willing to speak out for fear of Hank ruining them further. BoJack tells Diane This Is Reality, not a sappy journalist biopic, and she should let it go; Diane's husband Mr. Peanutbutter says the same thing, in part because it could hurt his career (since Mr. Peanutbutter is working on a show with Hank), and Diane even ends up receiving death threats in the mail (and thus should stop for her own sanity and/or safety). Diane remains confident that if she keeps pushing for someone to print the story, justice will be served. Nope. Every single major news outlet refuses to run the story due to their connections with Hank's employer corporation, and his fans continue to send death threats to Diane, and straight-up start to harass her in public. Eventually, Hank lures Diane into a parking lot at night and gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how she thought she could topple a Hollywood icon, asking who she thinks she is and telling her that he's simply too valuable for the system to eradicate. One person isn't enough to stand against the machine, let alone a ghostwriter that has only hearsay as evidence. Diane has to drop the story when it's clear that nothing's going to come of it, and even flies to another country to wait for the heat to die down before she even sets foot in America again. This is why when Vance and BoJack are later accused of their respective misdeeds — the journalists take the time to gather hard evidence with sources so they can break those pedestals far more easily and thoroughly.
  • The Boondocks:
    • Huey is established in the series as being well-trained in martial arts. However, the fact remains that he's still a 10-year-old boy, and he usually ends up losing to opponents that have more experience and training than him or in the case of Stinkmeaner, supernatural abilities.
    • In "The Block is Hot", Jazmine had signed a contract under Ed Wuncler to invest in her lemonade stand to get her own pony. But under his contract, Wuncler had advanced her pony on a 5-point royalty, so Jazmine had to make $21300 so she can afford it. While she was able to make the money, she didn’t count for the expense on spending on her new stand, promotion, marketing, and other additional upgrades, so not only did she not get her pony, but she’s now in $300 in debt.
    • In "The Garden Party", while the Freemans attend a party full of rich white people, Huey attempts to tell "the truth" (Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11). However, no one believes him because he's just a kid, he has no solid evidence, and everything he says is just his own opinions; also, Huey and Robert believe that if he told people the "the truth", chaos would ensue among white people. That doesn't happen either; just because one person says something, especially when it's a conspiracy theorist's opinion, it doesn't mean that everyone is going to instantly believe said person.
    • In "Ballin'", it not only references but also deconstructs the whole concept of The Mighty Ducks. What happens when you have a team that has little to no athletic talent? They ended up losing every game they've played in an embarrassing yet hilarious fashion, and the "miracle moment" is given to a team that is more polished athletically.
    • Played straight in "Stinkmeaner 3: The Hateocracy". The titular group fought and killed Bushido Brown, an already established badass, and after a failed attempt to make peace with them, the Freemans are about to be killed. How are these monsters stopped? The police are called, and the Hateocracy surrender without a fight.
    • In "The Fried Chicken Flu", Kernel's Fried Chicken, a KFC parody, does a food promotion to introduce a new fried chicken recipe. However, so many people come to try it, there are numerous long lines, people begin getting pissed about waiting so long, and worse several KFC restaurants run out of chicken. Then, Hilarity Ensues when people start rioting.
    • In "Early Bird Special", Granddad is initially optimistic about the idea of being a male escort, assuming he'll be up to his neck in horny ladies. However, he quickly discovers that his clients are primarily lonely middle aged women, looking for companionship rather than sex. As his "employers" point out, woman have no trouble finding men willing to sleep with them and wouldn't need to pay someone to do it.
  • Brace Face: In "Miami Vices", Sharon, sick of her mother's rules, decides to spend a few days with her dad in Miami, who is much more laid back and permissive. However, when Sharon gets drunk at a party and makes a fool of herself, he isn't happy and gives her a lecture about how she could have been taken advantage of in her state. Just because a parent is permissive doesn't mean they're going to be okay with their child doing something absolutely reckless like getting drunk at 13.
  • Carmen Sandiego:
    • Carmen tries to pull a prank by tossing water balloons at the Bookkeeper, as she did when she was a child. It might have been cute then, but when she becomes a V.I.L.E. student, the action nearly leads to her expulsion.
    • Impressive though Carmen's physical abilities are, exploring sunken ships found in the sea followed by walking around Quito, the second-highest capital city in the world, without taking the time to adjust to the change in pressure is a bit of whiplash for the body. She quickly succumbs to altitude sickness.
    • At the opening of "The Fashionista Caper", Shadowsan quickly discovers that walking around dressed like a samurai is not an Unusually Uninteresting Sight, and instead attracts unwanted attention most places. This prompts him to seek less conspicuous clothing.
    • V.I.L.E. does not have the Offscreen Villain Dark Matter you'd expect an evil organization to have. Running a massive criminal undertaking costs a lot of money, so if you fail to turn a profit, you could find yourself in the red quickly. Sure enough, Season 2 shows that V.I.L.E. has suffered major financial losses due to regularly taking it on the chin from Carmen.
  • In the Central Park episode "A Fish Called Snakehead":
    • While Paige knows that Bitsy is trying to purchase Central Park and the mayor is in league with her, she's unable to print her story because she has no proper leads to prove it. Birdie and Brendan may have given her the information but they're not suitable sources. Birdie is the narrator and he's forbidden to reveal any spoilers, and when he accidentally revealed Bitsy was the one who was laundering money to the mayor, he made up an excuse that he overheard some business talk in the park as a busker and that can be a questionable source. And while Brendan may be a Brandenham, he's a kid and they're usually not taken seriously, and not to mention that none of his family takes Bitsy's plan seriously either. Also, the photo of Bitsy and Dmitry together during Anya's wedding that Paige took in "Rival Busker" means nothing without any context.
    • Just because Dick Flake is an "expert" fisherman, that doesn't mean he can instantly catch a fish at a certain time. When he's unable to catch the snakehead before Bitsy arrives at the park, he had to go buy a dead snakehead and pretend he caught it in order to meet Bitsy's schedule.
  • In one episode of Chaotic, Kaz plays as the female Underworlder Takinom and gets hit in the groin. Female Groin Invincibility is averted, Kaz is actually staggered and takes a minute to recompose himself.
  • Cleopatra in Space: In the first episode, Cleo grabs a laser gun displayed on the wall to try and defend herself against an assassin robot. Since she's from a time period where guns are nonexistent, she has no idea how to operate it and quickly discards it in favor of a bo-staff (a weapon she does know how to use).
  • Codename: Kids Next Door:
    • The Kids Next Door as a whole is almost entirely reliant on whoever is currently the Soopreme Leader, because as tough and competent as its members are, they're... well, children. As a result, things like dealing with paperwork or making sure the organization is working properly is something only a handful of their operatives can do, and even they usually don't want to do it, which is why the Soopreme Leader is chosen through a massive game of "You're It", and whoever is It when the game ends is stuck with the job.
    • Knightbrace in "Operation T.E.E.T.H." appears to be a standard Depraved Dentist... but upon unmasking, it turns out that exhibiting such traits got him kicked out of dental school. The actual dentist in the episode is a nice man who sincerely wants children to have good teeth.
    • A lighthearted example happens in "Operation P.I.R.A.T.E." when Stickybeard captures Numbuh 5 and has his cabin boys tie her to the mast with licorice ropes. She just eats through them when he's not looking and attempts to escape.
    • In "Operation: L.U.N.C.H.", Numbuh 1 and Lizzie are having lunch, when they encounter Robin Food and his Hungry Men, a band of outlaws who steal food from kids and give them to the elderly. By the end of the episode, the Senior Citizen Squad shows up, to angrily confront Robin Food. Turns out he and the Hungry Men work the cafeteria in the local nursing home, but they steal food from kids because they're too lazy to cook. The Senior Citizens Squad however, wants Robin Food to actually do his job because kids tend to like a lot of junk food, which for elderly people, can mess up their bridgework and cause indigestion.
  • The Cuphead Show!: "Dead Broke" has Cuphead and Mugman "sharing" their pocket money by ripping the dollar bill in two halves. Given the nature of the show, this seems like another gag without consequences until they try to buy ice creams with their ripped bill and it gets rejected by the vendor.
  • Dan Vs.: In "The Parents", Dan engages in an epic fight with the hippies to save the kid he bonded with from being adopted by them. Then the adoption agency lady arrives with a cop and tells him that his background check disqualifies him from adopting the kid. Dan lets the kid go back to the hippies, but not before making him promise to steal from them at every possible opportunity.
  • Daria:
    • Jake's high stress and rage issues (particularly from his traumatic childhood at the hands of his father) tend to be Played for Laughs throughout the series, but in season 3, it appears to have taken a toll on his health as he ends up having a heart attack (and, in an earlier episode, a burst blood vessel in his eye). Granted it was a very mild one, but it was enough to give his family (even Daria) quite a scare.
    • Quinn spends most of the series pretending that she and Daria aren't sisters, and makes increasingly ridiculous excuses as to why Daria lives with her. Naturally, when she decides to 'reveal' the truth, everyone just shrugs because they all already knew.
    • In "Psycho Therapy", Helen is found to put her job ahead of her family's well-being... and gets praised by her law firm for being "partner material". While intended as a joke, it's actually Truth in Television that a company generally sees this as a positive trait.
    • In "Dye! Dye! My Darling", Jane decides to put blonde stripes in her hair as an homage to "The Lady or the Tiger". However, instead of getting a professional to do it, she forces Daria to do it despite Daria's protests that she doesn't know anything about hairdressing. Naturally, the results are awful. Jane is furious, but when she explains what happened to Trent, he invokes this trope on her again through a series of questions — Jane knew that Daria doesn't know anything about dyeing hair or even painting, so did she really think the results wouldn't be awful, even though Daria was genuinely trying to do her best? This leads to Jane revealing that she knew ahead of time that Daria would botch the job and was looking for an excuse to start a fight due to the tensions the two had been having over Tom.
  • Dexter's Laboratory:
    • In "Tuber Time", Dexter discovers that potatoes can generate electricity and plans to power up his lab. However, he discovers that a single potato can only generate a small amount of electricity, so he buys potatoes from grocery stores and fast-food places just to name a few by the truckloads. The large amounts of spuds did power up his lab... for about a day, as the potatoes go rancid and rotten over time, and Dexter's lab was left with a pile of spoiled mush. Instead of giving up on the idea, though, he just creates a giant super potato in space so that it would stay frozen and not spoil.
    • In "Morning Stretch", Dexter oversleeps due to spending all night in the lab,and only has 30 seconds to shower, dress, eat breakfast, and do his homework before the school bus arrives. Using an invention called the Time Extension Helmet, Dexter is able to extend 30 seconds into 30 minutes, but has overlooked one important fact; the rest of the world is still following normal time, meaning everything is extremely slow and much more difficult to interact with - the water in the shower pipes is slower than molasses, food takes too long to prepare, and his homework catches fire from the friction of the pen. It all ends up being All for Nothing anyway, as it turns out school is cancelled due to heavy snow.
    • "Mandarker", the second appearance of Mandark, reveals that Mandark's lab is still in ruins after Dee-Dee trashed it in the previous episode, and Mandark is heavily despondent and demoralized over it's destruction. Unlike Dexter, who's had to rebuild to rebuild his own laboratory on a near-daily basis both due to Dee-Dee's antics and other comical mishaps, Mandark isn't used to these kinds of setbacks, and is almost broken by one big failure.
  • In one episode of Doug, Doug's father, an in-store photographer, decides he wants to start his own photography store to boost up his own love of photography and help the Funnies financially. The entire family soon quickly learns the logistics of running such a store is not feasible as not only does the money they earn has to go back into finances to run the store, running the store by himself takes Doug's father away from his family for long periods of time as he has to do everything by himself. He ultimately decides to give up and return to his previous job, a lot happier.
  • Drawn Together: Toot Braunstein is known for subverting Acrofatic, demonstrating how pathetic a grotesquely out-of-shape person really would be. In "Mexican't Buy Me Love", she attempts Wheel of Feet, even uttering a Road Runner-like "BEEP-BEEP!" — and collapses on the road one second later, completely out of breath.
  • Ducktales 2017, “Timephoon!”, Louie has been pulling off a “get-rich-quick scheme” to retrieve ancient treasures from the past with Gyro’s Time Tub, later he would notice while continuing this, it disrupts the timeline zapping people in the present and in the past. Later in this episode, Beakly would discuss to Della while returning to mothering for her sons, she should atleast give them some discipline as they get into their wild antics, but Della excuses it as the kids are just being kids, but soon after realizing how awful Louie’s scheme has almost caused, she gets really upset. Even after Louie rescues and apologizes to the family, Della finally puts her foot down and grounds Louie for almost risking the lives of his family just for a quick rich scheme.
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy: In "Rent-a-Ed", during the Eds' circus act at the playground, Ed attempts to make Double D and Eddy go flying using the teeter-totter by jumping on the opposite end from the slide like a stunt he saw on TV. However, because the teeter-totter is not durable to handle someone of Ed's size and strength jumping on it from such a tall height, he ends up breaking it instead.
  • Elliott from Earth shows that falling straight on top of your knees while despairing hurts like hell.
  • El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera:
    • In the episode "Fool's Goal", Manny's local soccer team usually comes in dead last because Manny's father tries to play fair and square, even though all the other teams obviously don't. When his Grandpapi takes over coaching and encourages cheating, the team makes it into the finals with the opposing team being headed by one of their villains. However, Manny's father eventually finds out and Manny is guilted into trying to make the winning goal normally... which he utterly fails at and loses the game for the team. The crowd chases Manny and his Dad out of the stadium for the loss. When Rodolfo asks Manny if it felt good to play fair, Manny promptly states that if this was the result, it wasn't worth it. It's not exactly cheating if the other team does it, moral high ground or not.
    • In "The Mother of All Tigres", Manny tries to hide his identity of El Tigre from his mother because he fears she will ask him to leave Miracle City with her for being too dangerous. As it turns out, Maria already knew about his "secret identity" because, prior to this episode, he had made no attempt to hide his identity and is actually quite famous.
      Maria: Oh, come on, don't you think I read the newspapers?
      [Spinning Paper reveals that Manny is El Tigre]
      Frida: Dang, that's right, she can read.
  • Family Guy:
    • One episode features a Cutaway Gag that's basically the realistic outcome of Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny encountering each other.
    • "Blind Ambition" begins with Quagmire at the bowling alley watching Lois use the bathroom from the ceiling. It's not treated as just Quagmire being Quagmire as he gets arrested for peeping in the ladies' room.
    • In the "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1" short "Supergriffins", Mayor West exposes himself to radioactive waste in an attempt to gain superpowers that he can use to fight the Griffins. He ends up getting lymphoma. It does manage to make the Griffins realize just how irresponsible they were being with the powers, however, and they make it up to him by taking care of him in the hospital.
    • ”Peter’s Two Dads”, when Peter was playing as a clown for Meg’s birthday, he tried doing the pulling scarves out of mouth gag, but he messes up the gag, and actually swallows the scarves, and midway, Peter starts to choke and puke up on the rope of scarves.
    • In "New Kidney in Town", Peter gets addicted to Red Bull, and eventually tries making his own after Lois pours out his stash. The mixture, which includes kerosene because Peter idiotically assumed that since Red Bull was "fuel", he'd get the same effect from ACTUAL fuel, ends up destroying his kidneys and forcing him on dialysis until he can get an organ transplant. This leads into Brian willing to sacrifice himself, donating his own kidneys, to save Peter. They make it all the way to the operating room before Dr. Hartman is found to be a match for Peter and immediately chooses to do so for two reasons. First, Brian is still a dog, and the complications of cross-species donation would likely kill both of them, and second, due to Hartman being a notoriously poor doctor, the Griffins are his only remaining patients, and there's no way he'd willingly risk losing his career on such a pie-in-the-sky surgery.
    • In "Lottery Fever", Peter buys a room full of gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck and dives into them. The results are not what he expected. He'd have known that if he had actually paid attention to most of the media featuring Scrooge, as it's often pointed out that only Scrooge can do this safely, while anyone else who tries is likely to break their necks.
    • In "Brian's a Bad Father", Brian is trying to get past a security guard to see his son but the guard turns him away. Still determined to see Dylan, Brian tries to use a Pre-emptive Declaration before attacking a guard with the intent of knocking him unconscious. However, the guard immediately catches on to what he's about to do and blocks the attack with his fist before knocking Brian out with his baton. Stewie points this out after the guard leaves, telling Brian that he would have had a better chance had he not telegraphed the attack.
    • In "80's Guy", Peter gives Chris a bunch of old 1980s movies and tells him to do what the characters in those movies did in those movies on order to be noticed by a girl. Chris then imitates the boombox serenade scene from Say Anything... by standing outside her bedroom window playing "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel and is arrested for felony stalking.
    • In "A Wife-Changing Experience", Joe accidentally sees Lois naked, which reignites the passion in his marriage with Bonnie. Lois quickly gets addicted to the ego boost, and when Joe calls off any further incidents, realizing it's unhealthy, she tries getting her rush elsewhere by dressing up as a nurse and giving spongebaths at a Veterans Home. Which promptly leads to her being arrested, having gone from consensual voyeurism to what is basically sexual harassment, and her desperate sobbing about being a "desirable woman" is not an actual justification. In the same episode, Peter tries getting the attention of other women in the neighborhood to get back at Lois, but unlike his wife, who's a reasonably attractive middle-aged woman, Peter is a Fat Slob and his attempts are met with disgust and horror more than anything else. He ends up in the same police van as Lois after impersonating a Chippendales dancer.
  • Fangface: In "The Great Ape Escape", Fangface uses his tooth to cut a door into the side of a mountain so he and Puggsy can escape from the ape-men... but the door doesn't lead anywhere and they get caught anyway.
  • Happens surprisingly often in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, even as entire episode premises:
    • In "The Big Lablooksi", Mac decides to take bowling lessons from Bowling Paul, a self-proclaimed "bowling-guru". But Paul gives him advice that is far too abstract and metaphorical, and doesn’t focus on basics such as stance, dexterity, and concentration. As a result, Mac throws his ball way off course on his first attempt after taking these lessons, and only manages to get a strike and win through dumb luck.
    • In "Frankie My Dear", Bloo, Mac, and Chris dressed up as Orlando Bloo in a Totem Pole Trench to sabotage Frankie's date and stop Dylan from having Frankie to himself. The entire scene strives to deconstruct this trope hilariously by showing how difficult pulling off a Totem Pole Trench would really be. Orlando Bloo nearly falls over several times since three of them are piggy-backing, it's nearly impossible for Orlando to eat because Mac is the arms and the trenchcoat obstructs his vision, resulting in him flailing looking for a fork and even then results in him trying to pick up steak with a spoon. When he finally grabs the fork, Mac's arms are too short to reach Bloo's mouth forcing him to chew an entire steak. Frankie kicks the legs (Chris) over and over, but since Bloo isn't aware of this, he keeps talking casually rather than react how a person would.
    • In "The Sweet Stench of Success", Kip Skip admits on live television that his deodorant brand is designed to make people smell worse instead of better, he's arrested for false advertising.
    • In "Setting a President", Mr. Herriman has trouble working as a grocery store cashier after losing his job as house president. Many administrators often find themselves struggling with ground level or menial jobs. Of course, Fridge Logic comes in given that he looked for every job BUT an administrator, which he was quite skilled at.
  • In Frisky Dingo, Killface and Xander run against each other for presidency for most of the second season before it's pointed out that neither of them are eligible, as Killface wasn't born in the US and Xander is under 35.
  • Futurama
    • In "The Deep South", Bender finds several bottles of rum on board a sunken pirate ship. He tries to drink from one of them, but since he's still underwater, the rum just floats about.
      Bender: Arr, the laws of science be a harsh mistress.
    • In "Zapp Dingbat", Leela's parents fall out and separate, so her father decides to pursue his youthful dream of surfing the world's greatest sewers. Leela gets Bender and Fry to accompany him. Later in the episode, Fry is seen getting endless shots from a pile of syringes to combat the huge array of diseases he caught in the sewers.
  • In the Gravity Falls episode "The Stanchurian Candidate", although Stan is able to win over the town and gets more votes than Bud Gleeful, he is disqualified from the election due to his extensive criminal record. Not only that, but Bud doesn't win either - the victory goes to Tyler Cutebiker by default, as he's the only candidate who bothered filling in the official paperwork. Gravity Falls has a tradition where people announce their candidacy by literally throwing their hat into a ring, but that's just ceremonial, and they still have to actually register themselves, which apparently no one but Tyler thought to do.
  • In the Hailey's On It! episode "the Puffle Kerfluffle" Hailey sets out to reunite the titular duo, a pair of best friend children entertainers who were her and Scott's favorite show as kids. note  Despite her best efforts, they seem unwilling to make up, so she and Scott are forced to do the reunion show themselves, which results in the Puffles deciding to reunite to save the show. Afterward, Hailey asks if they will be back together, but the male half tells her no. Yes, they mended their friendship, but they've been apart for a long time and have their own interests now, they're not going to throw all that aside just cause they reunited for one show.
  • In Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, the jury in each of Harvey's cases always consists of the same jurors. This is ignored until the penultimate episode, when Mentok the Mindtaker finally notices and has all of Harvey's cases overturned as a result.
  • Hazbin Hotel: In the episode "Masquerade", Husk rescues Angel from being drugged and raped by some demon shark gangsters, entangling them in a net whilst he drags Angel outside to go back to the hotel. A short way down the street, Angel breaks free and reveals that he knew full well what was happening, having done several such events before as a messed-up "relief" from his abuse from Valentino. This leads to both eventually having a heart-to-heart talk that segues into the musical number "Loser, Baby"... only for the song ending to get cut off by the sharks bursting out of the club. Husk and Angel were singing in plain sight barely one building over, rather than actually fleeing them, a pursuit that wasn't over despite them getting caught up in the moment.
  • He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021):
    • Felines primarily rely on their claws for hunting and fighting. As such, Cringer is unable to do both very well after he was declawed until Duncan makes him metal prosthetics.
    • The Jawbreaker trope is normally treated as a fatal injury in fiction, but for Kronis, it's just a painful inconvenience. Likewise, as a wanted criminal hiding in a remote location, he can't get medical treatment for his injury and has to compensate with a self-made mechanical brace.
  • Hey Arnold!: "Eugene's Bike": Arnold fixing the titular bike. Although the bike comes out looking new, Arnold is still a nine-year-old boy. Soon after Eugene leaves, Abner comes by with the brake cable in his mouth. Eugene rides down a hill unable to stop, made worse when he rips the handlebars off trying to steer. Eugene crashes and is sent to the hospital.
  • High Guardian Spice:
    • "The Cave of Vinca": Rosemary aims at the traber queen using a dangerous tactic. Not only killing the boss monster make the critters even angrier, she gets injured and passes out on the next floor, spending most of the episode being carried by Thyme.
  • HouseBroken
    • The show averts the idea of a dog being an Extreme Omnivore without consequences. Chief eats Jill's vibrator and has to go to the vet to have it removed.
    • Usually in cartoons, dogs or cats getting fleas is just portrayed as them bouncing around or the dog/cat being itchy. In the episode "Who's Obsessed" we see the painful consequences of Chico getting fleas, we see several closeups of the blood being sucked from his fur and his body being affected by being sucked dry from them.
    • In the episode "Who's Afraid Of Boomsday?" Elsa tries to remove her safety vest in anger. Being a dog who lacks opposable thumbs, she is unable to do this.
    • In "Who Got Burned?" Shel tries to swim after the sea turtle he fell in love with. Because he's a tortoise and can't swim, he drowns instantly.
    • In "Who's Getting Up There?" Tabitha tries to start a revolution at the Pretty Kitty cat show after being placed in the Legacy section for cats too old to perform. You'd expect the other cats to join her, but they're so old none of them are able to (and one even dies right there)
  • Jackie Chan Adventures:
    • After becoming the titular villain in "Queen of the Shadowkhan", Jade steals the Demon Archive and tries to read it to unlock its secrets, only to discover she, a girl from modern day Hong Kong, can't understand a single word of ancient Chinese.
    • Throughout seasons 1 and 2, The Dark hand devotes much time and money traveling the world to find the talismans and open the demon portals for Shendu. By the beginning of season 3, it revealed the constant traveling and repeated failures have left the Dark Hand broke, unlike most cartoons where the villainous organization has an Arbitrarily Large Bank Account.
  • Kaeloo:
    • In Episode 64, Stumpy attempts to spy on his friends using the Mobile Shrubbery tactic. Usually, with that trope, Rule of Funny keeps anyone from noticing the obvious hiding spot, but here everyone notices that the bush was not there a minute ago and immediately sees through the disguise.
    • In Episode 105, Kaeloo says several sentences in succession without bothering to stop and breathe in the middle. Her face turns blue from the lack of oxygen.
  • The Looney Tunes Show has a few instances of classic Looney Tunes tropes and conventions being realistically depicted:
    • In "Jailbird and Jailbunny", Daffy attempts to engage in your typical Courtroom Antics after being brought before a judge who orders him to pay a littering fine. All that accomplishes is angering the judge, who promptly jails Daffy (and Bugs) for contempt of court.
    • In "Off Duty Cop", Daffy pretends to be the titular detective from his favorite TV show, only focusing on handcuffing people throughout the city even if they're not actively engaging in criminal activities. The montage plays this for laughs initially, but when he mentions this to a real cop near the end of the episode, he immediately has Daffy arrested for just that and impersonating a cop.
  • Magi-Nation: In the episode "Peak Performance", Evu and Orwin warn Tony, Edyn and Strag not to ascend the mountain too quickly. They don't listen, and eventually pass out due to lack of oxygen. Unlike what numerous fantasy-based media depicts, the air gets thinner the higher the altitude, and ascending too quickly without taking proper precautions will cause deliriousness.
  • The Mighty B!: In "Macro-Mayhem" while Bessie and her macrame skills are hardly realistic, the end result is. In a city like San Francisco where foggy and wet weather is frequent? A city covered in wool would quickly suffer the effects of it being wet and smelling rancid. Not to mention the excess weight and mush resulting. There's also the toll such a large amount of wool would have on supply and demand, not just from every craft store running out of wool entirely, but sheep being over-sheared and left freezing before winter.
  • The Oblongs episode "Father of the Bribe" shows that Talking Is a Free Action is not a thing, as, in the time it took for Bob to shame the crowd over their selfishness and for everyone to cobble together money to pay the firefighters to put out the fire that was consuming the high school gymnasium, the gym already burned to the ground.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
    • In "Powerpuff Bluff", three criminals successfully frame the girls using Paper-Thin Disguises, and the Mayor mistakenly has the real girls arrested. The girls break out of prison, defeat their imposters, and prove their innocence, but since breaking out of prison is still a crime, as Blossom tried to state earlier, the Mayor reminds them that they have to go back there.
    • This also applies to "A Very Special Blossom". Blossom steals a $2000 set of golf clubs Prof. Utonium really wanted. This lands him in jail after he's seen playing with them. Although Blossom does try to pin the blame on Mojo Jojo, she ultimately confesses, leaving the citizens of Townsville heartbroken. Though the Mayor does argue for letting her off easy, this just means she ends up having to do 200 hours of community service.
    • In "Super Zeroes", Bubbles (donning her new "Harmony Bunny" persona) attempts to answer the call of duty with her new mode of transportation, a pogo stick. It takes forever for her to arrive. Pogo sticks are intended to be a toy, not a reliable method of transportation. In addition, Blossom... er, "Liberty Belle", uses a vehicle for transportation, reminiscent of the Batmobile. She, too, is late, due to a traffic jam, something the Batmobile never had to deal with.
    • In "Fallen Arches", a trio of Evil Old Folks who call themselves "The Ministry of Pain" begin a crime spree. Though they're barely credible as a threat, Blossom refuses to let her sisters fight them because of a misguided belief in respecting one's elders. Instead, she tries to get Captain Righteous and Lefty, the now-retired forces of good who fought the Ministry in their youth, to do the job. After an extremely lengthy montage of the two getting ready, they head for the bank the villains are robbing at a snail's pace. In a matter of minutes, the Ministry, Captain Righteous, and Lefty are lying on the ground with broken bones, and they're rushed to the hospital for an extremely lengthy and painful rehabilitation treatment — what else was going to happen to five extremely old men with very little physical strength and endurance?
  • The Replacements:
    • In "Zoo or False", Riley believes her favorite zoo panther Sasha shares a bond with her. Later, when the replacement-of-the-week frees all the zoo animals from their confines, Riley so readily approaches Sasha. But she's genuinely shocked when Sasha is hostile and tries to hunt her. If Agent K hadn't been there to net Sasha, no doubt the panther would've made prey out of Riley. Agent K has to spell it out for Riley that there's a difference between a pet and a zoo animal.
    • On the flip-side some animals are intelligent enough to remember a face, chimps in particular are almost as aggressive as they're intelligent. More than smart enough to hold a grudge and comprehend the concept of justice. During their visit to the Zoo, Todd kept taunting the chimps. Already then did the chimps attempt to fight back and nearly succeeded. Once freed the chimps waste no time hunting Todd down as payback.
  • Rick and Morty:
    • "Ricksy Business": Although Cape Fear made it seem like pulling an Underside Ride with a moving vehicle is easy, it's actually a fast way to get yourself killed.
    • In "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" one of the shows is Man vs. Car. The man, after briefly pushing the car back to no effect, is quickly mauled to death by the moving vehicle. The host even lampshades this as he's giggling that "the cars always win".
    • "Promortyus" has Rick and Morty use "unnecessarily badass" mech suits that each have a BFS for each of them to slaughter the facehuggers with. Because neither of them has had any prior training in swordplay, they quickly hurt their arms after swinging their swords around for only a couple of minutes.
  • In the Rocket Monkeys episode "Once Upon a Monkey", Gus accidentally turns up the thermostat keeping an alien race's princess frozen for the last 1000 years (thinking it was the dial to the hot tub), causing her to thaw prematurely. When everyone heads to the freezer to meet the princess, out walks… a collapsing skeleton. Despite what fiction might have you believe, freezing a living creature and thawing them out a thousand years later will not result in them being alive and healthy in the future.
  • Rugrats:
    • In "Hiccups", when Tommy gets the hiccups, Angelica tells him the only way to cure him is to scare him, which she intended to do (in reality, she just wanted to give Tommy a bad scare). After some failed attempts, however, Angelica decides to use something called the "Scare Machine". She proceeds to put it together using various items she finds around the house. However, since she's a three-year-old with no experience building machines, and the Scare Machine was cobbled together by random debris, as soon as Angelica turns it on, it falls apart on top of her (though that scare does cure Tommy's hiccups).
    • In "A Step at a Time", the babies try to get Dil to learn how to walk. At the end of the episode, Dil sees Tommy walking and wants to learn to walk so he can play with him. He tries climbing up the way Tommy did when he first learned how to walk, but as this episode makes very clear, Dil is too young to walk all by himself, and sure enough, he falls over when he tries to pull himself up.
  • Samurai Jack: During the mausoleum scene where Jack fights the Daughters of Aku in episode "XCIII", he grabs the Battle Axe of the King/Warlord/General at the center of the crypt. In another story, a legendary blade would be a hero's salvation during their Darkest Hour. Unfortunately, legendary also means old, and it breaks after a few hits.
  • In The Simpsons:
    • It seems Homer needs to be taught at least twice that just because something worked on The Flintstones does not guarantee it will work in real life. In "Missionary: Impossible", he tries to use a pelican as a cement mixer, but the cement hardens in the pelican's mouth, causing it to collapse. In "Rome-Old and Juli-Eh", he attempts to use his feet to power his car, but all he can do is drag it along inefficiently.
    • In ”Homer Goes to College", Homer decides to liven up the newcomers' party at Springfield University by spiking the punch with liquor. Unlike the huge bunch of raunchy Wacky Fratboy Hijinx comedy films he saw as research, hard liquor is not a Perfect Poison that remains undetected until everybody is soused and uninhibited. The very next person who approaches the punch after Homer spikes it notices the strong change to the punch's taste with a single sip and warns everybody that the punch has been tampered.
  • In the Sonic Boom episode "If You Build It, They Will Race", Sonic and his friends build their own race cars with Tails' Build-it Box, and decide to race each other to see whose car is the best. Just as the race is about to begin, Mayor Fink stops them and tells them that in order to race on a public road, it must be an official event open to any and all racers, which requires a special permit. Sonic hopes getting a permit won't take too long, but getting said permit takes eight months.
  • South Park:
    • Cartman's attempt to make Somalian Ruthless Modern Pirates into pirates "worthy of Blackbeard" draws the attention of the U.S. Navy and gets his crew slaughtered. There's a reason why modern pirates use small fishing boats to extort ransoms instead of putting cannons on hijacked cruise ships.
    • In "Tom's Rhinoplasty", Ms. Ellen steals an Iraqi soldier's sword to defend herself with, but since she's never used one before, she accidentally sends it flying towards Kenny when she swings it. Swords — and most melee weapons in general, for that matter — take a lot more training and discipline than you think to wield them effectively.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, after helping to expose and arrest the Big Man, Spidey is outraged on reading the headlines and seeing that he was released on bail. He then confronts Captain Stacy about it, who assures him that the Big Man's criminal assets have been frozen, and that, now that his identity has been revealed, he has government agents keeping tabs on his activities. Just because the Big Man is no longer in a jail cell doesn't mean that he can simply continue operating as he had before.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Valentine's Day", Patrick goes on a rampage through a fair after thinking he's being ignored, and eventually turns his wrath onto a swing ride, shouting "Heart on stick must die!" At this point, you'd expect Patrick to develop some Rule of Funny-powered Super-Strength and take down the ride, but instead, he finds he can't even budge it because a: the whole apparatus weighs thousands of pounds (well, maybe a bit less in the undersea world, considering how small the main characters are compared to humans) and b: the swing ride is bolted to the pier. He gives up and settles for destroying a heart shaped lollipop from a child whereupon he is appropriately and briefly scolded by SpongeBob.
    • In "My Leg!", the doctor tells Fred that he will lose his leg if it gets hurt again. A body part can only heal so many times until the injury is degenerative.
  • Star Wars Rebels:
    • Darth Maul discovers the location of Obi-Wan Kenobi; the desert on Tatooine. Needless to say, when we catch up to him months later, searching an entire Planet that is nothing but desert, Maul is utterly lost and no closer to finding Kenobi.
    • Kanan gives himself an Important Haircut to signify his self-ascension to Jedi Master. Kanan has also at this point been blind for two years and had been carrying a Beard of Sorrow and grown his hair out a fair bit. His self-given haircut without being able to see what he was doing to himself results in a haircut that everyone else finds off-putting.
  • Stroker and Hoop:
    • One time, the heroes hide from the suspect on the slanted ceiling. Unlike other shows where this technique is used, he just walks in, sits at his desk, and calls for security to get them out of his office.
    • A Bad Boss keeps killing his ninja mooks for random failures, only to find that he killed all of them by the time the heroes showed up.
    • In one episode, Stroker is attempting to sneak into a facility. He knocks out the guards outside the building, and proceeds to sneak past the security guard who watches the security monitors. The security guard asks who he is, so Stroker disguises his voice in hopes of fooling him. However, the security guard reveals he was messing with Stroker, and watched him knock out the guys on the security monitors. Stroker was apparently counting on him to be asleep on the job. The security guard responds by saying he just really likes his job.
    • One episode has Stroker and Hoop mug two camera men for a disguise, with Stroker breaking a bottle on one guy's head, with the other freaking out, when the first man no longer moves. He convinces them not to knock him out (and possibly give him a concussion), by pretending to be unconscious. The two proceed to waste a lot of time getting the guys out of their clothes (with the conscious guy having to loosen his belt), and Hoop insisting on putting on one's underwear. The guy they're supposed to spy on gets mad when his "Camera Crew" turn up almost an hour late.
  • In the Superbook (2011) episode "King Solomon", when the two women claiming to be the mother of a baby come for Solomon to rule on which of them is telling the truth, Gizmo suggests that a simple DNA analysis will determine which of the women is the true mother. So he covertly gets hair samples from each woman and a spit sample from the baby, and then tells Chris and Joy that all he needs to do now...is send the items to a lab...with results in six to eight weeks. Yes, the approximate least amount of time that crime-scene lab work actually takes in real life, as opposed to what we usually see in hour-long police procedurals such as CSI. The kids are not amused. (Mind you, though, if Gizmo could have conducted an instant forensic test right there and then, the Bible's account of the Judgment of Solomon couldn't take place.)
  • Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go is not exactly known for applying real life train physics unlike its predecessor, which, among other things, include crashes that never seem to do much lasting damage (usually just for slapstick purposes) and trains' abilities to "jump" from one track to another. Kana is known for her extreme speed, which she's usually able to speed anywhere to with almost no repercussions. This made it super surprising in the Race for the Sodor Cup movie when she speeds around Cannonball Curve and her wheels lock, nearly causing her to derail. Kenji is able to save her, but he does so by speeding up to her as she's about to derail, and the extra friction causes major damage to Kenji's fender. Carly and Sandy can't fix him up in time for the race, because his fender is damaged beyond repair and he needs a new one. Later on, in that very movie, Kana attempts to race Farona and Frederico down Cannonball Curve. The latter two pause for a moment while Kana speeds ahead, and the latter locks up and derails. It takes the extra weight of Thomas, the cargo they are carrying, and Kana using her brakes for her to finally be able to make the curves without derailing. Cannonball Curve is a twisty turny track, and real trains and engines can't speed too much on curves, otherwise they will derail.
  • Total Drama:
    • Sadistic reality show host Chris McLean pulls off a lot of insanely dangerous stunts with no repercussions, since nobody is ever permanently harmed (well, maybe a few). He takes it to a new level in Revenge of the Island, though, dumping tons of toxic waste on the island, and bragging about it— on live national TV, remember. At the end of the season, authorities wait until the contestants are safe, then arrest him for creating a hazardous environment. Sadly for the world at large, the network posts bail and releases Chris so he can keep doing the show.
    • During the All-Stars season, Duncan, in a bid to regain his bad boy rep, blows up Chris' opulent "cottage". He's not only eliminated but also arrested. Duncan assumes he's going back to Juvenile Hall, but for what amounts to an act of terrorism, Chris has him sent to "Big Boy Jail".
  • Tutenstein: In "Green-Eyed Mummy" Tut wants to get rid of the wooly mammoth exhibit by moving it to the underworld, because it's taking Cleo's attention away from him. He and Luxor try to move it, but they're unsuccessful because it's a 6-ton mammoth and they're an undead 10 year old and a cat. He settles on using the Scepter of Was to move it.
  • The Venture Bros.:
    • In "Ice Station Impossible", Doctor Impossible flies Doctor Venture out onto the tundra to kill him. Impossible is actually gloating and telling Venture exactly what he's planning to do along the way, but since they're in an Expy of the Fantasticar, complete with open cockpits, Rusty literally can't hear a damn thing, due to the ambient wind noise.
    • The first thing Rusty does after taking over Ven-Tech is immediately fire all the employees. As a result, Ven-Tech's stocks end up plummeting in the next episode, leaving Rusty struggling throughout the rest of the series to fix it.
    • At the end of the first season, Brock encounters a gravely injured Race Bannon who ends up dying. The whole thing seems very dramatic... until Race craps his pants.
    • In "Handsome Ransom", Captain Sunshine drops the Monarch in jail. The Monarch is allowed to simply walk out because since he was neither formally sentenced nor even accused of a crime, there was no reason for him to stay there.
      The Monarch: Apparently nobody ever told [Sunshine] what due process was.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: In "Crystal Venom", when the gravity is shut down, Hunk attempts to swim to Pidge. It's likely Hunk is emulating cartoons, but in real life, swimming in zero gravity is impossible as there's nothing Hunk's hands can push out of the way to propel himself, meaning all he does is swim in place.
  • We Bare Bears
    • During the basketball game in "Our Stuff", Ice Bear distracts the opposing player with fancy dribbling skills ala The Harlem Globetrotters; the opposing player simply steals the ball away.
    • In "The Perfect Tree", Grizzly throws the Christmas lights onto the Parks' house expecting them to somehow elaborately decorate the whole house like in cartoons. The lights just end up hanging on the roof of the front door.
  • The Wild Thornberrys: Eliza’s cousin Tyler assumes hippos are big stupid friendly animals when he tries to pet one, and nearly gets his arm bitten off before Eliza stops him.
  • In a short of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, the coyote dresses in a Super-Costume and then jumps off a cliff expecting to fly like Superman, only to plummet to the ground.
  • In the Sick Episode of The X's, the family goes on a mission to the arctic and they get sick after they dress improperly, with the exception of Tuesday, who was the only one who bothered to wear her snowsuit.
  • Young Justice (2010):
  • In an episode of Yvon of the Yukon, Yvon and Tommy encounter a walrus who attempts to tell them its origin story. It begins barking and then a Flashback sequence begins, showing the audience what it is trying to say. The sequence ends to show Yvon and Tommy looking bemused.
    Tommy: Did you understand any of that?
    Yvon: Not a word.
  • Zeke's Pad: When Zeke creates a snowstorm out of nowhere in "Artful Dodger", the Palmers had no time to do the necessary preparations (e.g. stocking up on food and water). This results in them being Snowed-In with no food, no heating, and no running water.

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