History LiteralMetaphor / LiveActionTV

** In "Running", Selina walks through a glass door. Several people have to have it clarified that it's not code for something, it's what literally happened.

** In the episode "Camp David", Dan calls up Selina to tell her that Jonah just shot himself in the foot. Selina assumes he means that Jonah had made another gaffe during his Congressional campaign, only for Dan to explain that Jonah, who was filming a hunting-themed commercial, literally shot himself in the foot by accident.

*** In "Someone To Watch Over Me", Seven of Nine offers to get Tom Paris and the Doctor a drink, and the Doctor, being a {{hologram}}, says, "You know I don't drink. I don't have the stomach for it."

*** In "Latent Image", the Doctor learns has some memories deleted from his files about an away mission where Ensigns Harry Kim and [[RedShirt Ahni Jetal]] were both injured [[SadisticChoice and he had to choose between saving only one of them or risk both dying]]. He decided to save Harry, not out of medical pragmatism, [[FriendshipFavoritism but because he was his friend]], [[LogicBomb reasoning that did not mesh with his programming]], and he later suffered a breakdown over it, or a literal HeroicBSOD.

*** In "Things Past", during a flashback to Odo's early days of working security under the Cardassian occupation and his first meeting with Quark:

** In season 9 episode "Off the Grid", when asked how he managed to have BigEater Goa'uld Nerus leave the SGC while unknowingly carrying a subspace tracker, General Landry answers that "It was a piece of cake..." (of cupcake, to be precise).

** From the episode "1969":

** One is lampshaded in the episode "Icarus". After Hawkman jumps from a window with his wings on fire, General Wilson points out that he had intended the name to be a metaphor for Clark's fall from grace. Or to use the paraphrasing given [[http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/12/13/recap-smallville-episode-10-11-icarus/ in a recap:]]

* In the ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'' episode "The Sign of Three", Sherlock is giving a speech [[spoiler:as John's best man]] and reminisces about some of their more interesting cases (none of which were shown in past episodes). He mentions the "Elephant in the Room". Cut to the two of them staring at something big in a room and the sound of an elephant trumpet.

** "Bad Habits":

** "Smell of Success":

** Omar's WrittenInAbsence in "Ahead of the Times" is explained as him attending an appointment with an eye doctor. Said eye doctor is a person with [[FacelessEye one single hazel eye for a face.]]

** In "Nature of the Sandbeast", Oswald suggests that he, Osmerelda, Omar and Orla run from the Sandbeast before it can cover the entire Earth in sand. Orla responds by saying that the word "run" doesn't exist in her dictionary, followed by her pulling out a dictionary from her {{Hammerspace}} spine and explaining that it doesn't go past the letter L.

** In "Overdue!", Orla, at a loss now that she and Oswald have been caught breaking the Odd Squad Main Library's rules, laments that the Mobile Unit is "a day late and a dollar short". The group is quite literally one dollar short of paying Orla's overdue fine, something that Orla [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] by tacking on "literally" to her statement.

** In the first part of the Season 2 finale, "Who is Agent Otis?", Olympia takes the phrase "going behind someone's back" literally.

** The phrase "finding a needle in a haystack" is often taken literally, such as in "Other Olympia" when both Olympias are tasked with actually finding a needle in a haystack, and then finding a haystack in a needle.