Reality Ensues/Surprisingly Realistic Outcome cleanup

We don't want to clog this thread since Surprisingly Realistic Outcome is an Overdosed Trope. Before posting here, check if the example you're analyzing qualifies for summary deletion from the three criteria below by keeping this trope's rigorous definition in mind.

1. Does the example involve Applied Phlebotinum (Functional Magic, Science Fiction, Artistic Licence) or a character reaction? If so, it instantly violates the definition's second bullet point's realism requirements, and you should delete it without question.
2. Is the example a Discussed Trope or an instance of Conversational Troping? If so, it violates the definition's third bullet point's emphasis on only counting outcomes, and you should delete it without question.
3. Considering the definitions, would the example qualify better for Deconstructed Trope or Deconstructed Character Archetype from the trope page's rules? If so, move it to the appropriate one on the spot.

If the example survived all three tests, it satisfies the second and third bullet points, so you don't need to change it immediately. If you feel like it meets the first bullet point's requirements for being surprising, you can leave it. However, if you believe it doesn't meet the first bullet point or aren't sure, talk it over in the cleanup thread before deciding.

Many Stock Phrases you'll see used in this thread describe a particular type of misuse:

• Not surprising. — The outcome described isn't a Bait-and-Switch and merely follows expected genre conventions.
• Plot happens. — The example merely describes an event or series of events but not why we would expect something different.
• Too fantastical. — The causes/outcome described included the presence of stuff Impossible in Real Life such as Applied Phlebotinum, Functional Magic, or Science Fiction, meaning they're too unrealistic by default.
• No character reactions. — The outcome involves a character reacting in a certain way or having certain emotions, which we can't gauge the realism of because people's emotional reactions vary far too much.
• Not realistic. — Exactly What It Says on the Tin, but this one requires you to write a short description for why it isn't realistic.
• Too implausible. — The outcome describes an outcome that happened because of things too unlikely to count as relatively realistic compared to what they were subverting.
• Cuttable ZCE. — Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Not an outcome. — The example is either a Discussed Trope, Lampshade Hanging, Conversational Troping, or happens over too much time to be momentary.
• Too unclear. — The example is too convoluted or obtuse to judge.
• Irrelevant. — The example describes stuff utterly irrelevant to the definition of SRO.
• Bad indentation. — Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

-Edited with permission from the OP-

Edited by lalalei2001 on Aug 10th 2022 at 5:47:25 AM

^ It would be helpful if you numbered your examples.

Regarding #1. The fact that Dominator doesn't have character development towards friendship is odd in this setting. One could perhaps find a better trope like Averted Defrosting Ice King but in absence of more details, the Reality Ensues factor is at play IMO.

Someone becoming a friend or not isn't more or less realistic. There are a lot of characters who simply don't become friends, regardless of attempts. At the very least, the example lacks context for explaining why they should absolutely become friends according to narrative logic.

Using someone's weight against them might at most be a Logical Weakness, but it's really more Spidey fighting smart.

Getting sunburnt and exhausted is a very frequent consequence of being lost where it's hot and sunny. At most works often gloss over the sunburn bit once the situation is over with (like many lasting injuries), but even that isn't a given.

Being in any position of authority or having a job more important than private life is a common trope. Not even remotely an example.

If a work is centred around Murphy's Law and how people deal with it, people dealing with it in a realistic manner is entirely within expectations. There is no narrative convention to protect them when the narrative itself is about those things.

No idea what that example about Hiro is supposed to be an example of. What part of that follows reality in a way story conventions wouldn't?

Cut the relevant examples.

Noticed more potential misuse in Ralph Breaks the Internet.

• Reality Ensues:
  • Vanellope becomes increasingly concerned about the princesses' sanity and well-being as they describe what happened to them in their own films.
  • J.P. Spamley drives in to catch Ralph with his car while he's falling. Ralph is too heavy and going too fast; all that happens is that the car's floor gets broken, and Ralph keeps falling.
  • When the Sugar Rush wheel breaks, the arcade owner mentions that the company that made the game went out of business years ago, thus making replacement parts expensive and near-impossible to get; he doesn't want to order the replacement wheel because it's $200 at minimum, more than that game brings in during an entire year.
  • Ralph and Vanellope win the Ebay auction by up-bidding the Sugar Rush steering wheel to $27,001 in the last minute of the auction. Cue Oh, Crap! when they realize that number has to be paid in real money they don't have.
  • Just because Ralph became an overnight internet sensation doesn’t mean everyone on the internet will like him. In fact, some user comments outright express hatred at Ralph. Not that this keeps Ralph down for long: he’s used to 30+ years of people in his own game hating him, so this is nothing new. The Ralph memes also don’t stay popular for long, requring Ralph to keep pumping out new silly memes to keep himself trendy.
  • After finding out that Ralph intentionally put an Insecurity Virus in Slaughter Race to keep her from wanting to stay there, Vanellope temporarily breaks all ties with him. Messing with your friend's dreams is a good way to ruin a friendship.

I always thought some of the examples in RealityEnsues.Steven Universe were on the nose, especially since there's a lot of them.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Jul 15th 2019 at 11:48:43 AM

"On the nose" means "precise," so do you mean they're valid examples or precise examples of misuse?

The latter.

Sorry to double post, but I believe these examples on Steven Universe S5E27 "Escapism" perfectly encapsulate what I'm trying to say.

• Steven tries to swim to Beach City, only for the ocean's current to send him back to the island.
• A watermelon bird tries to fly, only to immediately fall because it's much too heavy for its wings to support it.
• Steven in the Watermelon form tries to verbally tell Bismuth and Greg that the Crystal Gems on Homeworld need help. But they don't understand his Watermelon gibberish and shrug their shoulders. They also can't understand his drawings. So he writes out a message instead — "HELP! WE NEED BACKUP!" — before his temporary body dries out.
• After the long day they had, Connie falls asleep while holding onto Steven.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:45:47 PM

Yeah, none of those seem like examples except the first one and even that's a stretch.

Had to clean up more examples, mainly from recap pages, and noticed this on Reality Ensues.Other.

• The Pharaoh let the Israelites go after the 10th plague killed his son. However, once the people are gone, the Pharaoh and other officials realized that they just let go all their workers and now they're economically screwed, so he leads his army after them (cue Red Sea falling to drown them after the Israelites cross).

From Webcomic.Team Rocket Roots.

• After being put on probation, Jessie decides that she needs some time to herself and leaves her two friends. James lets her go. As Ash tells Misty, it'd be unwise for James to try and run after her, beg her to stay, and pledge his undying love to her. Jessie needs time to recover from her trauma.

This was deleted for not counting, but does it not really count?

I don't think it counts. It's just something that happens. No one did anything and expected things to go the story way rather than the reality way. Two characters showed understanding, one was told that understanding. That's not the trope.

Misty expected James to run after Jessie, but Ash explains why that's unlikely. Would that count as lampshading?

A lampshade requires the trope to happen. It also requires the lampshade to be about the trope that's happening. There could be a point about some love-cures-trauma trope, but that would obviously be a different trope, not Reality Ensues.

From the latest episode of Steven Universe recap page, so spoiler alert. Most if not all of these simply look like something occurring as a consequence of something else.

• Reality Ensues:
  • After being locked up for hours with only energy bars to eat, Steven and Connie wolf down all the food that they packed for the trip. On a similar note, when Steven is crying due to Blue's aura, Connie's worried that he'll get dehydrated.
  • Keeping quiet about problems would only lead to said problems accumulating until they reach the breaking point. Yellow and Blue had noticed eons ago, but out of fear and desire to please White, they didn't act on it until Pink openly rebelled as Rose Quartz and died to give birth to Steven. By the time the conflict with the Diamonds is resolved, Pink is gone forever, and her family will never be able to personally apologize to her for eons of emotional and mental abuse.
  • Blue is the nobility and the aristocrat, while Yellow is the military leader. Thus while Blue is able to put up a serious fight, Yellow is clearly the better fighter of the two and Steven has to save Blue in the end.
  • Connie suggests the Diamonds do what she did with her parents and just finally confront White on how she makes them feel. Unfortunately, unlike Connie's parents who genuinely love her enough to change their rules for her sake, White is a genuinely Abusive Parent with a very high opinion of herself, and reacts violently when confronted on it.
  • The Diamond mecha is intended to be controlled by all four Diamonds at once. White has to control it via herself and the mind controlled Blue and Yellow while superseding control of the leg ship from Steven. As such, its movements are shown to be much more clunky and sluggish than when the parts are controlled independently, with its attacks being wide swipes rather than the more fluid movements shown elsewhere. After Sunstone throws off her attempt to stomp on them, it notably takes her a while to regain control, with Sunstone making it a good distance up one of the legs with the other Crystal Gems before she swats them off.
  • Connie's attempts to carry a weakened Steven to Pink Steven are slowed by the fact that Steven is quite a hefty kid. Connie has a hard time carrying him due to being lighter in comparison.
  • White Diamond's entire worldview is built on her perceived perfection, including how she sees herself and everyone else. As a result, when that fact is disproved, she has a complete existential crisis.
  • When a blushing White Diamond reaches out to them in desperation, Blue and Yellow Diamond— who were just previously mind controlled by her— understandably flinch and back away from her in fear, as well as expressing disgust of her being "Off-Colored".

Yeah, none of those seem like legit examples.

The mech one kind of seems like it could fit, but we haven't actually seen it in action enough to tell.

I don't think being the only one controlling a mecha created to be controlled by four people is expected to be as fluid as with all required people present. A single person might be expected to pull that off if it's some kind of a Heroic Spirit moment, or if there's sufficient foreshadowing that the person would be able to pull it off (which also means people believe it In-Universe).

But yeah, all of them are "consequences happen". That's not the trope. It's about realistic consequences as a subversion to tropes.

I've cut the following examples from RWBY (the examples cover the work and trope pages):

• In Volume 2, Sun and Blake infiltrate the White Fang by disguising their appearances. They don't hide their hair styles, their Faunus traits or their signature clothing. All they do is wear the White Fang mask, which only covers the top half of their face like superhero masks do. At the end of Volume 1, the pair fight Roman in close combat; he's at the meeting they infiltrate giving a speech. As soon as he spots them he recognises exactly who they are.
  Reason: This is a subversion of Paper-Thin Disguise for the purpose of setting up a highly unrealistic Rule of Cool Mecha fight in the middle of the city.
• In the Volume 2 finale, Team RWBY fights the White Fang and their stolen Paladins on top of a high-speed train. The train is being chased by many Creatures of Grimm and carriages are periodically exploding, which lets even more Grimm into the tunnels. When Paladins are thrown off the train, they break from the impact. When Faunus get tossed off the train their fate isn't immediately obvious. When the villains later discuss the consequences of the fight, they make it clear that those Faunus died in the tunnels. They also fear that the Faunus will no longer be willing to work with them as a result of so many deaths, indicating that the trope We Have Reserves is not in effect for the White Fang.
  Reason: Subversion of We Have Reserves for the purpose of introducing the long-awaited Faunus villain (Adam) via an Establishing Character Moment that he doesn't care about Faunus lives to create the season's cliffhanger. Note that the heroes don't think twice about the Faunus lives they've just taken (not even the Faunus heroine does).
• Ever since his arrival in the story, Sun has spent more time helping Team RWBY than with his own team. When Blake went on the run, Sun sent his team back to Haven and set out after Blake. While a common narrative trope, Sun acknowledges that such behaviour does have consequences. It's made him a bad leader to his own team, so has planned to spend more time with his team on bonding exercises and then taking them all to his original home, Vacuo.
  Reason: This is a Put on the Bus scene, to end Sun's role in the show for now, with heavy lampshading that The Bus Came Back will kick in at a later date. Note that Sun was only a minor character to begin with, who came into the show purely as an exchange student, so he was never going to be part of the long-term plot.
• In the Volume 3 finale, Pyrrha is killed following a duel with Cinder. Despite the former's reputation as The Ace, she is still a seventeen-year-old girl going up against an adult Lady of Black Magic, and even Pyrrha's control over polarity only takes her so far. Additionally, the fight brings up the biggest flaw in her armor - while visually appealing, the low cutout gives Cinder a perfect shot at her heart.
  Reason: This character was designed from the outset to be the Sacrificial Lion that establishes the villain cred of The Heavy and act as a Traumatic Superpower Awakening for The Hero who witnesses it. (Note that the arrows are magical, one has already gone straight through Pyrrha's leather boot to take out her ankle after first disintegrating, flowing around Pyrrha's shield and reforming on the other side, so claiming leather armour could defy narrative convention if only it had covered her heart is shoehorning by speculation.)
• Late in Volume 6, Maria attempts to trick an Atlas military base into thinking she is one of their pilots, confident that her knowledge of military jargon will get them through. She fails miserably, as the comms officer points out that none of their pilots are elderly women.
  Reason: Given the sheer amount of works that always fall back on dramatic moments where the hero has taken out the mooks only for the radio to kick in, creating the problem of them being identifiable as the wrong person if they speak over comms, it's already unlikely to be Reality Ensues when that actually happens — this scene is Played for Laughs initially, but its narrative purpose is to ensure the military commander realises her Sitcom Arch-Nemesis is piloting the plane so that she goes into Unstoppable Rage and engages in Disproportionate Retribution to set up the end-of-season battle.

I also found the following on the show's Recap pages, and have removed for the following reasons. I admit I'm not a hundred percent sure about the point being raised in the sub-bullet, so that could definitely use a second opinion:

Recap.RWBYV 6 E 12 Seeing Red

• Reality Ensues: Despite her coming forward in leaps and bounds, the mention of their prior fight at Beacon by Adam causes Yang to momentarily develop her nervous shakes and lose her resolve. Post-traumatic stress isn't going to be solved that easily, especially when faced with the source of her trauma.

  Reason: Yang does momentarily have the shakes when Adam asks her if she thinks she's faster than she was at Beacon, but it not only doesn't affect the fight in his favour, it allows her to prove a point that she may not be faster but she spent her recovery learning how to fight smarter whereas he's using tactics she can exploit. So, the narrative set-up here is for an empowering Moment of Awesome to occur a short while later.

  • Blake breaks down crying after she and Yang kill Adam. No matter how terrible a person is, killing them isn't easy. Especially if they were someone you were once close with.
    Reason: This is a case of a hero not enjoying the fact that she's had to kill her abusive ex-boyfriend, and we haven't had a narrative circumstance in this show where we'd ever think differently as the heroes aren't being trained to kill people, they're being trained to protect people by killing the world's monsters. The fight revealed what he'd been hiding behind his mask all this time, in a move designed to make the audience sympathise with the idea that monsters are created rather than born, and there's no denying it's a nice touch to see the heroine break down over what's just happened, but it doesn't seem to be Reality Ensues either because her entire storyline as been about the emotional mess she's been trying to lock inside and which she hasn't been able to truly move on from because he keeps haunting her life.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 9th 2019 at 5:07:21 PM

Sorry for the double-post, but I've found a bunch of other Reality Ensues entries for RWBY on other Recap pages that have not been crosswicked anywhere else. I haven't automatically removed these, as I want other people's thoughts into whether or not they should be removed. I think most of them can be removed, but there are one or two I'm not sure about.

Recap.RWBYV 2 E 11 No Brakes

• Reality Ensues: What happens when you try to use Mini-Mecha on top of a moving train with little room to move on? A single hit knocks them off their feet and the physics of a moving train takes care of the rest.
  The heroes are in the middle of a fight that is powered by Rule of Cool and what's getting thrown off the train are the mooks. I don't think this is Reality Ensues. Remove

Recap.RWBYV 3 E 10 Battle Of Beacon

• Reality Ensues: The students of the academies are trained to fight monsters, but they are not prepared for a disaster level scenario. Regardless of their training, they're still teenagers and they're scared, many fleeing and breaking down crying as they leave on the ships.
  The kid heroes stand and fight while the nameless background students flee in panic is a standard narrative trope, not Reality Ensues. Remove.

Recap.RWBYV 3 E 11 Heroes And Monsters

• Reality Ensues:
  • Neo can't open her umbrella while on the outside of the ship, as the winds would drag it, and her, right into freefall. So Ruby opens it for her.
    If there was any reality involved here, the parasol wouldn't drag anyone anywhere. It would instead turn uselessly inside out from the sheer force of the wind being generated by the moving plane they're standing on (the wind is is blowing madly around them during this scene). Instead, the parasol catches the wind, lifts Neo off the plane and she floats away like Mary Poppins. Remove.
  • The episode title is a callback to Ruby's motivations in The Shining Beacon, Pt. 2. She heroically launches herself up to the hijacked ship and takes on Roman and Neo herself. However, she's completely outmatched and nearly killed. Roman not only mocks her idealism, but is stopped by a Grimm, not her, that's attracted to the negativity of his Motive Rant. At the same time, however, she's gotten smarter in her actions and she refuses to lay down, thus she's taken Qrow's words to heart.
    Hero is still a Wide-Eyed Idealist and not yet ready to fight the villains. Seems like standard storytelling to me. Remove.
  • Blake's goal of gaining equality and peace is thrown back in her face; such lofty concepts aren't easily attained, especially when others like Adam are actively fighting against it. Rather than using her Semblance for mere evasion, she uses it to defend Yang. Despite her determination not to run again, she is ultimately forced to do so.
    Hero is not yet ready to fight the villains. Remove.
  • Yang wanted to be a Huntress not to be a hero, but for the adventure. She stated that she wants, "a life where I won't know what tomorrow will bring." She's got it now; Vale has descended into chaos, her fiery, straightforward approach to battle has cost her dearly, there was no last-minute save from her mother this time, and her fighting style will never be the same again.
    Thrill Seeker is facing a Character Development storyline. Remove.

Recap.RWBYV 4 E 6 Tipping Point

• Reality Ensues: In-Universe. Ruby, like some viewers, believes that the trek to Mistral would take a short time period before getting to new things, about two weeks at most. Such a trek would take her and her team across an entire continent, so the sheer amount of walking would be far longer.
  Third season sets up the 'heroes journey across the world and have adventures' storyline of the fourth season. At some point during the fourth season, The Heroine admits that she didn't think the journey would take this long in a Played for Laughs scene. It doesn't see like Reality Ensues to me. Remove.

Recap.RWBYV 5 E 1 Welcome To Haven

• Reality Ensues: Yang spent most of Volume 4 struggling to come to terms with her injury, experiencing lethargy, depression, flashbacks and nightmares. When she realises her father cannot go after Ruby to protect her because he has to look after Yang, she decides to put on the new cyberarm that Ironwood sent her and get back to fighting fitness. At the end of Volume 4, she's racing across Anima on her motorcycle looking completely recovered. However, when she stops in this episode for refreshments, a stranger comes onto her and won't stop until she punches him. As she reaches for her drink after he's gone, she releases a long shuddering sigh and has to stop her arm from shaking, indicating she's nowhere near as recovered as she wants to appear.
  Not sure about this one. Thoughts?

Recap.RWBYV 5 E 5 Necessary Sacrifice

• Reality Ensues: Adam's violent temperament isn't ignored just because he's the leader and makes a convenient tool. Corsac and Fennec are concerned by how unstable he's acting. They imply he only became leader as a result of their support; if his vendetta against the Belladonna clan does damage the White Fang's ability to achieve its goals, such as making a martyr out of Ghira that turns Menagerie against the White Fang, the brothers indicate they will remove him and replace him with someone else.
  Scene to show the audience that two apparent subordinates are kingmakers with their own agenda. Given that we've got tropes like The Starscream, I don't think this is Reality Ensues. Remove.
  • While discussing Ghira's planned assassination Fennec worries that it will only turn Menagerie against the White Fang, rather than silence those who would speak out against them.
    Plot foreshadowing. Remove.

Recap.RWBYV 5 E 9 A Perfect Storm

• Reality Ensues: Salem's stated goal is destroying humanity, something Raven is acutely aware of. Raven pointedly notes to Vernal that the tribe is dead the second Salem's group gets what they want, a viewpoint not helped by Raven having acted against her in the past and Cinder casually mentioning they would have destroyed the camp if the Spring Maiden wasn't there. Helping an Omnicidal Maniac, especially one you've gotten on the bad side of previously, won't get you off of their list. Ever.
  The Neutral Anti-Villain shows she knows the Big Bad better than The Heavy does, giving the audience some insight into both the Big Bad's personality and Raven's plan. Remove.

Recap.RWBYV 5 E 13 Downfall

• Reality Ensues:
  • Hazel's Feel No Pain Semblance doesn't keep him from taking damage. Both Nora and Weiss land critical blows on him because of this. It also means he can't ignore damage after a certain point, as Weiss' attack leaves him struggling to get up.
    Villain takes an unexpected hit to show the audience how unusually powerful Weiss is after being given a very temporary power-boost, so we'll assume that he's done for. What this entry doesn't tell us is that, when we next see him in the following episode, he's completely ignoring the injury he's just received, still fighting, and destroys Weiss's attack. So, Remove.
  • Nora's Semblance doesn't make her immune to the effects of electrocution; when Hazel holds her down to prevent her from escaping his constant lightning attack, she screams in agony until her Semblance powers up enough for her to throw him off.
    Scene shows a poweeful villain who is a personal enemy of the Big Good doing a monstrous thing to a teenager who's not yet strong enough to fight him just so he can rant at the Big Good that it's all the Big Good's fault for putting children into harm's way. This might be some kind of 'look at what you're making me do' trope, but it's not Reality Ensues. Remove.
  • The long awaited Team RWBY reunion. Neither a grand, epic moment where Blake heroically swoops in and saves the day, nor a tender, tearful scene where the four share a group hug. Instead, everyone freezes up and just stares at each other, at the worst possible moment, given the important fight going on. Ruby quickly breaks it up, ordering Yang to go after Raven and Cinder; she and Blake have just enough time to nod an acknowledgement to each other before they're pulled back to their respective fights.
    Dramatic 'everyone sees each other for the first time in months' moment before putting off the actual reunion until the end of the following episode. Remove.

Recap.RWBYV 5 E 14 Havens Fate

• Reality Ensues:
  • The White Fang will hardly follow a leader that abandons their men when the going gets tough. Adam running from Blake and Sun cost him most, if not all, of the support he gained and leaves the White Fang divided.
    Villain turns out to be a coward and runs away, leaving his men to take the fall, so other characters inform the audience verbally that the rest of the organisation is now going to turn on him because all the heroes needed to do was show the villainous organisation how craven their leader is. Doesn't seem like Reality Ensues to me. Remove.
  • Taiyang may have good memories of Raven and tried to tell Yang her positive aspects, but she still ran out on them. He's not happy to realise that, even after all these years, she's still using her portal link to him for her own misdeeds.
    This is from The Stinger at the end of the season. These tend to be 30-second moments that give the audience a hook to keep watching next season. The Stinger doesn't always turn out to have a pay-off next season, so the relevance of it is left up to audience speculation. That's what's happening here. The purpose of the scene, how Taiyang feels about it and whether or not this is the first time he's ever realised she still uses her portal to him is complete guesswork at this point. Remove.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Feb 9th 2019 at 6:37:57 PM

Do these apply? They're from gen:LOCK:

• Reality Ensues:
  • Kazu in Episode 2 is still not used to moving in his Powered Armour and as a consequence starts running... only to underestimate his speed and faceplant into a wall.
  • After the incident with Simclair and watching him die painfully, the gen:LOCK recruits understandably want nothing to do with the program anymore. It takes a little time as a Holon, some persuasion from Dr. Weller, Chase, and Yas, along with seeing a medical transport dropping off wounded refugees for them to stay.
  • When Col. Marin chews out Weller for having to rely on substandard recruits, such as prisoners, teenage hackers, and cooks as Holon pilots, angry that he hasn't focused more on improving gen:Lock compatibility to make it easier for her to get trained, military professionals into the mechs; he replies that that's what happens when you rush highly-experimental technology and that he's only one person.
    Weller: I can't [improve gen:Lock compatibility], recruit, and make the program field-ready all at the same time! I'm only one person! I can't just... clone myself! Believe me, I've tried.
  • The reason the Holons are all initially identical save for color is simply due to the fact that Weller only had the time to have one model designed and made. This causes Cammie to have some initial trouble controlling her Holon compared to Kazu and Valentina since the longer legs in proportion to her own body mean that her center of gravity is completely different. Although she manages to learn how to walk in her new body with enough practice, in the next episode she's still having trouble, which is part of what nearly gets her killed by Nemesis.
  • The Union wants to use the infrastructure in the areas they take control of, so their usual M.O. is to advance slowly, pushing the Polity and their sympathizers out with the minimum collateral damage possible.
  • When the gen:LOCK team goes on their first mission in Episode 4, it's clear from the onset that Cammie is way out of her element. Being both the youngest and the only one who doesn't have any combat experience, she's a jittering wreck for the first half of the mission. When faced with shooting the Union troops she hesitates and instead shoots one of the spider tanks. When Nemesis comes for her she goes into a panic state and makes a run for it only to get cornered. All she can do is panic fire. It doesn't do her any good.

From The Tick (2016)

• Reality Ensues:
  • As a child, Arthur witnesses the murder of his father and childhood heroes at the hands of The Terror before the killer eats young Arthur's ice cream. Arthur has crippling neuroses as an adult, a long history with medications and trouble holding down jobs, and his sister is legally his caretaker.
  • Overkill is the only superhero who kills criminals. This warrants a rather cautious reception from other heroes who don't follow his code while the general public considers him an unstable individual.
  • While Arthur assists The Tick and Overkill in taking down Ramses, the series never fails to point out that, despite the suit, he's still a regular person with no superhero or fighting experience and spends the bulk of the series trying to figure out how the suit works. So it will take some time before he really takes a level in badass.
  • The series shows what happens when a superhero universe doesn't bend to the Status Quo that your regular superhero universe does. Even though the attack on The Flag Five was decades ago, the city is still reeling from the events of that attack, and The Tick, Overkill, and Arthur's heroic actions have consequences.
  • When a hero's secret identity is revealed to the public, a super villain would not hesitate in going after their friends and family the moment the hero is in no position to protect them.

These really don't seem like examples.

RealityEnsues.Game Of Thrones

• When the final battle comes at last, it becomes a Curb-Stomp Battle with Stannis's army being annihilated by the Bolton cavalry. It doesn't help that with the loss of said horses, the remaining men were forced to walk to Winterfell in the mud (due to said thaw) with all their armor and equipment, making them too exhausted to engage the Bolton army. However this is slightly subverted, as the damage to the supply lines comes in the form of Ramsay and "20 good men" destroying Stannis' food supplies, equipment and killing hundreds of horses without even being seen, which is laughably implausible and is widely believed by the fandom to have been present just so the writers could get rid of Stannis.
• Actually subverted during the Battle of the Bastards. Prior to the battle, Ramsay opens by making a big, theatrical show of his plan to kill Rickon by shooting him with an arrow while Rickon attempts to run away and reunite with Jon. After intentionally missing his first two shots, (in one case he wasn't even looking at his target) Ramsay carefully aims and takes that all important third shot... and narrowly misses, seemingly showing how even for a master archer a bow isn't a weapon with 100% accuracy, that they are far more effective when you have large groups of archers trying to hit large groups of enemies instead of a single archer aiming for a single moving target, and that Ramsay's desire for a big fancy show full of variables and uncertainties has actually resulted in allowing his hostage to escape. The subversion kicks in when Ramsay negates all that by fatally shooting Rickon with a fourth arrow because he's Ramsay.

Cutting because complaining? If there's anything worth salvaging, add that back.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Feb 15th 2019 at 12:12:31 PM

Those really don't seem like examples.