What Reality Is Unrealistic Moment Stood Out The Most For You?

Reality Is Unrealistic is quite the paradox, right? You would think "reality" and "realistic" should go together, but fictional works have shown that they apparently don't.

For me, a RIU moment that stood out the most for me was when I read this one letter to the PC Gamer magazine, and it went like this:

Did we swear?

Recently while playing BF 3, I had to stop and think about what I was hearing from my character and the other soldiers around me while under contact. I turned to my colleague playing on his laptop and asked: "Did we swear this much under contact in Iraq or Afghanistan?" We looked at each other.

"No," we decided. "I don't think we swore much at all."

Why do game designers seem hellbent on turning casual games based on war into a bit of a joke? To most people out there, swearing in a game might not be a big thing, but from someone with tours of Iraq and Afghan under their belt, my experiences have shown that you don't really have time to swear. Apart from anything else, it glorifies the concept of war. If any of us had found ourselves in situations as frantic as those in BF 3, we'd be too busy dealing with the #@!% running down our legs to swear.

I wonder how many impressionable kids playing BF 3 now think it's awesome to be a soldier and want to go join up. They're in for a shock.

The staff of PC Gamer said this in response:

It's all a result of hyper-realism - people have come to expect swearing and killing hundreds of people, so games where soldiers act calmly and professionally simply feel off. In most cases, these enemy barks also serve a practical purpose, like letting you know what the AI is doing so that it feels more tactical. At heart though, it's fantasy, and we suspect the vast majority of players know the reality would be less fun.

If that exchange wasn't a RIU example, then I'm a monkey's uncle!

Well, two of them actually. The first one was actually not that long ago. I saw a guy that had been hit by a stupid teen with a car and was very seriously bleeding out in the middle of the street. Blood doesn't look at all like it does in Tv-movies, and the guy was apparently talking fine, so I said "He doesn't look too bad, he'll probably make it."

He didn't.

The next is that time I was stung by a particularly venomous stingray and I spent about half an hour in a bit of pain. Usually when you see someone that was bit by anything venomous, guy falls over dead. No pain, no muscle spams, that's it. He either dies or goes into a Vision Quest. Not here, it was just pure unadulterated pain with a side dose of HOLY SHIT I CANT MOVE MY LEG and WHY AM I BLEEDING SO FUCKING MUCH?

The Gender Bender thing...

Once I dress as a girl for Halloween, almost every guy that I met that night and was not from my group of friends wanted to chase me...

Even after The Reveal...

It seems I'm a pretty decently hot girl

Maybe an aversion?

edited 8th Aug '12 3:37:55 PM by MrsRatched

When I got my hands dipped in molten asphalt (~250 degrees Fahrenheit), I felt nothing other than vaguely warm. There were no screams, no tears. I just stood up and walked away.

Of course, twenty minutes later I would literally tear my palms off and try to dial 911 with my tongue. But still. It's not realistic for a baddie to be writhing in agony as he sinks into lava; there aren't enough nerve endings left.

edited 8th Aug '12 7:03:36 PM by Muramasan13

In that case, how are you typing this right now?

Regarding the OP, swearing takes times and makes your communication less clear. It belongs in the mess or on the parade ground, not under contact.

I remember hearing people swearing like motherfuckers when hurt, though, if they weren't just screaming.

Maybe that's why I swear so very, very, very much in conversation? Got to make up for all that swearing deficit?

I'm assuming his flesh grew back eventually. A human body can recover from a surprising amount of abuse.

-shudder-

I work as a cashier in a grocery store, and sometimes, it feels like I live in the matrix. either a lot of the people in my town look the same, or they forget to buy something really often, because I could swear that some people go to the shop at least four times a day.

Two words.

Simo Hayha.

Yeah, there's a Cracked.com article listing off the following five Real Life people as Badasses:

1. Simo Hayha
2. Yogendra Singh Yadav
3. Jack Churchill
4. Alvin York
5. Audie Murphy

These five pulled off stuff in war situations that are mostly not even shown in fiction. And if they were, people would think, "You're making these horse apples up, right? RIGHT?"

edited 26th Oct '12 6:13:51 AM by TiggersAreGreat

Two more words.

Leo Major.

He captured a town, overthrew a garrison of hundreds, liberating 50,000 Dutch citizens from 1,000 Germans soldiers, by himself, with one eye, only two months after breaking his back in three places, both of his ankles, and 4 of his ribs. During his rampage in Zwolle he captured a bunch of Nazis too. And, before that, at the battle of Scheldt, he captured 93 Nazis, by himself.

Then, in Korea, he and 19 other Canadians took a hill from 40,000 Chinese troops, and held off their counter attack for 3 days, until us lazy Americans decided we ought to help them out (you know, since they took the hill our 10,000+ troops couldn't take).

He was the god of war.

edited 26th Oct '12 7:33:43 AM by dRoy

Hmm, I just had one.

Why the fuck did that man not get the Victoria Cross at least once? Was it because he called that Montgomery person incompetent?

Which a lot of the men killed in Operation Market Garden would agree with...

That's a shame.

This exists.

May I just say that as genius as that looks, it also is loaded with Squick? I mean, who would want to handle a dead animal with their bare hands and play around with it like that? I can imagine people crying CGI!

Here's an interesting tidbit from Reality Is Unrealistic:

Adolf Hitler embodied so many Villain Ball Contrived Stupidity Tropes that World War II would never have passed muster as a fiction series. Just the fact that he escaped some 40 plus assassination attempts is probably enough to kill the series. (Even though most of the assassination attempts failed because they were abandoned, or the assassins got cold feet, or a Body Double was killed, not because of anything Hitler did)

Just goes to show that contrived stupidity can happen in Real Life! If you think over 40 assassination attempts is enough to break Willing Suspension of Disbelief, try Fidel Castro. The USA tried to assassinate him 638 times, and every single one of those attempts failed. Considering that the CIA was behind the attempts, that just makes them look like a joke!

edited 31st Oct '12 12:35:12 PM by TiggersAreGreat

Another real life badass who would be condemned as implausible in fiction.

Lachhiman Gurung.

A grenade completely exploded his hand, severely wounded his face (which almost turned him blind), body, and legs. Then he took on 200 Japanese soldiers. Alone. For four hours. Killed 31. Lived to tell the tale. With just one arm.

Well, I can't exactly speak for Castro, but Hitler had the greatest luck of any human ever. Surviving a buttload of plastic explosives going off a few feet away that should have killed you and every other person in the room because of a dang TABLE LEG? That, my friends, is luck to the highest degree.

Frane Selek's life...just wow, this guy isn't human.

Yet another article from Cracked.

Yes, you can drive these fuckers in the street.

Flying and looking out the window.

The image of the clouds and all that is just... Woah.

Agreed. I love looking at clouds so much.

Necro.

This is basically Grand Theft Auto minus guns.

Sheesh, those are some pretty violent crashes. I hope nobody was actually in each car when they collided!

I like the bit about mice not liking cheese, but they like peanut butter, seeds, nuts and chocolate. Funny enough, I played this one Sweeney Todd game where you play as a policeman trying to catch Todd. At one point, you need to get an item in a mousehole or rathole, but you'll get a message pointing out that it's not a good idea to stick your hand into a hole where a mouse/rat would bite you. So you need to get a mousetrap, make some peanut butter, combine the mousetrap and peanut butter together, and put it next to the hole. The mouse/rat will go into the trap and get killed by it, allowing you to grab the important item from the hole!

It's impressive when a fictional work actually averts Reality Is Unrealistic!

Pavlov's House. Call Of Duty would have trouble showing it holding out for weeks.

Oh yeah, it was featured in this article.

Also featured in Cracked:

The most badass RPG session in existence.