Surprisingly Realistic Outcome / Live-Action Films

• Air Force One: In the climax, the titular plane takes a few bullet holes in the tail and some shrapnel from a plane exploding next to it. There's no nail-biting emergency landing by the hero. The plane is now incapable of landing and has to be ditched in the ocean.
• The 1994 version of Angels in the Outfield does this for a key plot point, as a way to show that protagonist Roger was Dramatically Missing the Point. Roger, who is a foster child, asks his estranged father when they'll be a family again. Roger's dad quips "when the Angels win the pennant" in Sarcasm Mode, since at the time, the Angels were in last place in the American League and had a long shot at best to get to the World Series. But Roger thought his dad was being literal, and prayed to God for a miracle. Even though the Angels start winning with divine intervention, Roger's dad doesn't come back. Instead, a scene in the middle of the film shows Roger's father giving up custody of Roger to the state of California, as he feels that it's in Roger's best interest. Roger is thus quite heartbroken when he realizes what his dad was actually saying, and breaks down into tears.
• In The Awaken Punch, a 1970s Kung Fu movie, the hero tracks down the leader of the gangsters responsible for murdering his family and kidnapping his love interest, and kills him after a brutal fight. S.O.P., right? Well, then he gets arrested for nine major offenses, including the deaths of six other gang members. The End!
• Black Hawk Down: One of the helicopters unleashes a hail of minigun fire to ward off some Somalis on a rooftop. Unfortunately, Eversmann is crouching directly underneath the helicopter and receives superficial burns from the spent shell casings.
• Black Rat: After falling down the stairs and impaling herself on her machete, Akane pulls the blade out and starts advancing on Misato again, only to expire from blood loss.
• Bodyguards and Assassins: The final assassin is a highly skilled martial artist. Death in close quarters, he mows down a lot of bodyguards, including several named characters. One of the last survivors gets his hands on a pistol and pumps the assassin full of lead, ending his streak.
• Commando (1985): A group of terrorists sabotage Matrix's truck and run away with his daughter, leaving him in middle of a mountain with no other vehicles to follow them; Matrix decides to improvise things by pushing the broken car down the hill to gain momentum and taking shortcuts to get ahead of them. An over-the-top car chase scene followed by an epic Car Fu? Nope. Matrix's chase is cut short as his truck quickly loses control of itself, further busted by rough shortcuts, and eventually tips over onto its roof. The terrorists take this chance to capture Matrix, instead. It's a surprising display of realism in an otherwise unrealistic and incredibly campy movie.
• Deadpool 2:
  • Wade has a habit of making jokes while fighting thanks to being near unkillable. Unfortunately, as he is in the middle of a quip and backthrows a knife to kill a mook, he misses and Vanessa is killed by the mook. Wade is unable to laugh about this mistake.
  • When Cable fires a barrage of bullets ar Deadpool, the merc uses his swords to deflect them. While he manages to succeed at the start, he fails to hit a majority of them and is instead riddled with bullets.
• Death Wish (2018): Kersey's first outing as a vigilante result in him getting a nasty gash on his left hand from having an improper grip on his gun. "Slide bite" is a relatively common injury among untrained shooters like Kersey, as the two police detectives investigating the shooting quickly notice.
• Enchanted: The movie often contrasts between the animated world and reality. For example, in the animated opening, Giselle falls from a great height from a tree but is caught effortlessly in Edward's arms (on a horse) and she is unhurt. On the other hand, in New York when Giselle falls from a billboard (a much lesser height) and Robert tries to catch her, he does manage to cushion her fall, but they are both hurt and end up in an undignified tangle to boot.
• Escape Room: Tournament of Champions: Just because Ben and Zoey made it out of their game with no lasting physical injuries doesn't mean the others didn't. Brianna has a noticeable facial scar (obtained in an exploding hall of mirrors), which cost her her social media influencer career, and Theo suffered a burst eardrum in his game (as a result of being in a submarine and a burst of air pressure while escaping), necessitating his use of a hearing aid and a long slash on the side of his face.
• The Equalizer 3: It doesn't matter how much of a Badass you are, even in the Equalizer universe. Getting shot In the Back hurts. A lot. The pain is so great that when it happens to McCall, he is Driven to Suicide — except he has no bullets left. The resulting pain leads him to pass out while fleeing the winery, and he likely would have bled out were it not for the arrival of Gio, who rescues him and brings him to Altamonte.
• Ghostbusters (1984): The Ghostbusters rush up the stairs of Dana's apartment to defeat Gozer. 18 floors later, and the quartet (who all are middle-aged smokers and subsist on junk food and takeout) is completely winded. There's a reason buildings weren't built past six stories before the invention of elevators.
• Hocus Pocus 2: After enchanting a crowd into dancing under their control, like in the first movie, the Sanderson Sisters order them to hunt down Salem's mayor, and as they fly off into what seems to be a grand and epic chase... we cut to the witches realizing that the people's constant dancing means they advance very slowly, frustrating them enough to pursue the hunt all by themselves. They only succeed in their task because Traske ends up driving back to the event, whereupon they find him and then immediately disperse because the spell is complete.
• In Incident At Loch Ness, the skeezy producer shooting a film about finding the Loch Ness Monster attempts to put in some gratuitous fan service by shooting some footage of a beautiful woman in a barely-there bikini taking a swim in the Loch. It takes less than ten seconds for her to come out a shivering, shaking mess, nearly hypothermic from the Loch's frigid water.
• It (2017): Before one of the visits to the house on Neibolt Street, Richie grabs a glass bottle and smashes it against the railing to try to invoke the movie trick of making a makeshift knife from a broken bottle. After doing it, though, all Richie is left with is the neck of the bottle that he was holding onto.
• Jennifer's Body: Needy's ultimate fate. She doesn't get away with killing Jennifer nor achieves a victory of any kind, nor is she hailed a hero. She's put in a prison psych ward, likely to spend there rest of her days there, and probably only avoided general population due to her absolute conviction she was fighting against a succubus and the fact she's still a minor, which surely got her deemed psychotic. On top of that, all the trauma and suffering she went through the movie turns her into a bitter, cynical person with a particularly bleak stance on life and fellow humans who beats up orderlies regularly, then violently murders several men (who all definitely had it coming, but still). At the end she's free, but will likely have to remain as a fugitive for the rest of her life.
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum:
  • In the armory fight scene, John and his opponents throw several knives at each other but many of them fail to land point first. In additions, the ones that do stick in don't penetrate very deep, so it takes multiple knife hits (or one directly to the head) to fully down an assassin.
  • Bullets that aren't designed to be fired upon underwater wouldn't work like they are supposed to, as their lethality and velocity would drop drastically. In addition, guns are more likely to jam underwater since they can't eject bullet casings efficiently. John must shoot from no more than point-blank range to actually take down his enemies underwater.
  • Both times someone goes up against someone larger, it takes some time to defeat them one on one. John only manages to beat the very tall Ernest with some improvised weaponry, and later on beats Zero's best students once he manages to separate the two, as he's at least a head taller than either.
  • There are a few shots where Wick staggers heavily armored goons by shooting them in the mask and throat so he can close the distance and get a confirmed kill. The masks can block the bullet but it's like being pelted and the throat and other joints in any armored suit must necessarily be exposed to allow movement. Also during the fight even though shots to the head with standard bullets don't pierce the helmets they're still bullets and hit with more than enough force to stun and knock them flat on the ground.
• Jumanji:
  • Van Pelt has a run-in with the then-newly-enacted Brady Bill when shopping for a new gun after his lever-action rifle runs out of ammo (which is long out of production); he's told he has to wait for some time and fill out paperwork before he can acquire the new gun. Yes, even a magic game has to follow the rules of where and when it's being played. Bribing still works, though.
  • Continuing from the first entry, it turns out that firing an unfamiliar weapon with an improperly set sight is just as tricky for a magically generated Great White Hunter as for anyone else. As such, despite having a good vantage and plenty of time to set up his shots, Van Pelt is unfamiliar with his semiautomatic USAS-12 (and hasn't had time to dial in the scope properly) and misses Alan the first time he uses his new shotgun. In fact, he later misses a few shots that, for an experienced hunter, should be very simple to make.
• Lethal Weapon 2: Murtaugh sits motionless on the toilet all night to prevent a bomb from going off in the toilet. By the next morning, Murtaugh being stuck in that position for that long means he can't stand up on his own, which Murtaugh realizes to his horror since this means he won't be able to escape the bomb blast because of a Dead Man's Switch. Riggs ends up having to yank Murtaugh off the toilet and throw him into the bathtub in a split second to survive the blast.
• In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), as Solo finds out, not being strapped in during a boat chase will make you fall out during a sharp, high-speed turn.
• Mission: Impossible Film Series:
  • Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation:
    • Ethan runs down a narrow hallway while bad guys try to shoot him, kicking up a bunch of dramatic debris but not stopping him. Then we find he did, in fact, get wounded, though he survives.
    • During the Morocco motorcycle chase, a Syndicate mook pulls out a gun, turns to aim at Ethan, and smashes headlong into a car he didn't see coming.
  • Mission: Impossible – Fallout:
    • Fuel isn't pure water, where you get doused in it and only end up wet. August Walker is shot in half of his face by aerial fuel from a burst helicopter fuel pipe, and it's excruciatingly painful, chemically burning him.
  • Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning:
    • Grace attempts to escape trouble by stealing a police car. However, having no experience in car chases, she ends up hitting a lot of other vehicles, slowing herself down enough for Ethan to catch up easily, and eventually hitting another vehicle head-on.
    • Similarly, despite all his own experience Ethan manages to crash the IMF subcompact he commandeers almost immediately, while fumbling with the controls, before gradually improving with it. Experience doesn't mean you know how to drive every vehicle flawlessly right from the beginning, especially a heavily modified one like the IMF uses.
• The Muppets Take Manhattan: When the Muppets come to New York fresh out of college to pitch their musical for Broadway, they expect the producers to jump at the chance. But since they have no professional experience, and no one has heard of them, everyone turns them down. It takes months before Kermit even gets an offer, and even then, he just got lucky because the producer just happened to be looking for that kind of show.
• At the end of Need for Speed, Tobey proves his innocence in Pete's death (as well as Dino's involvement in same) by winning the De Leon race in the car Dino used to kill Pete... and gets sent to jail for six months for illegal street racing and parole violation.
• In Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu, Van Helsing kills Dracula. He is then arrested for murdering a foreign dignitary. End of film.
• The Other Guys: At the beginning of the movie, two badass cops played by Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock leap off of a tall building in pursuit of a suspect, complete with a heroic rock song behind the scene. The two hit the ground... and instantly die.
• Pain & Gain: One of the Sun Gym Gang's victims is accidentally killed thanks to a tranquilizer overdose. Two direct injections of a sedative intended for veterinary use with horses tends to do that.
• Parasite (2019): Moon-gwang's Tap on the Head doesn't just knock her out for a while; it gives her a concussion and, left untreated for hours, kills her.
• A Perfect World: The movie follows Butch, an escaped convict, and Phillip, a young boy he's taken hostage but whom he bonds with, who is being pursued by Texas Ranger Red Garnett. Garnett, along with some of his deputies, Agent Bobby Lee, and criminologist Sally Gerber, is riding around in a trailer attached to a car. When Sally happens to spot Phillip as Butch is driving the other way, the deputy driving the car turns it around and gives chase. Instead of your normal high-speed chase, because the car is going above the recommended speed limit with the trailer attached, the trailer starts floundering around, causing everyone inside to fall down (unless they're hanging on to something), and eventually, the trailer detaches itself from the car and ends up crashing in a field.
• Pete's Dragon (2016): While chasing Meacham and the kids as they haul away Elliot in a flatbed, Gavin tries to block their path to the bridge while placing his own truck across the road. The flatbed plows right through Gavin's truck like in an action film...only to then immediately break down and stall seconds later from the damage it sustained.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: The crew of the Black Pearl gets into a Mexican Standoff right after getting out of Davy Jones's Locker by flipping the ship upside down. All the crew's guns end up with wet gunpowder as a result, leaving them unable to fire.
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles:
  • When the state trooper tells Del that the burned-up rental car will have to be impounded, he tells the trooper that if he isn't allowed to keep the car, he won't be able to get Neal home for Thanksgiving on time. Neal has a hopeful look and the trooper seems friendly enough. The next scene cuts to a tow truck impounding the burned-up car.
  • A lesser example is when Del, seeing that Neal could get a motel room for about half the cost of rent plus his expensive watch, offers the motel clerk a couple of dollars and a cheap watch hoping for the same result. The clerk (politely) declines Del's offer. The next scene is Del sitting in the burned remains of his rental car on a snowy night, with no windows or roof before Neal decides to let him into the room.
• Pulp Fiction:
  • In the opening section of the movie, a man exits the bathroom of Brett's apartment and fires a Hand Cannon while waving it around and screaming like a madman. Much to the surprise of everyone in the room, the gunman misses his targets by a mile. Everyone has a Delayed Reaction, with Vincent and Jules taking a few seconds to realize that neither of them has been shot before they just blow the guy away. Firing a large-caliber gun under extreme stress and with no attempt at accuracy is just going to result in an empty weapon and your targets emerging unscathed. The uncomfortable silence that follows shows that even Vincent and Jules can't believe they got out of that one unscathed, to the point that Jules has a Heel Realization when he came that close to death.
  • Vincent names a trope by accidentally shooting Marvin in the face. While Vincent claims the car went over a bump in the road, Vincent was still waving around a loaded gun with his finger on the trigger. It was only a matter of time before somebody got shot. The aftermath of the shooting also shows just how messy that shooting someone in the head actually is. The disgusting work of cleaning up a crime scene is what follows the remainder of that section of the movie, as Vincent and Jules have to literally pick Marvin's blood and brains out of the backseat before they can take it to a friendly place.
  • Upon seeing Marsellus Wallace out in the street, Butch tries to run Marsellus over with his car. Butch hits Marsellus and knocks him to the ground, but since Butch barely had any room to accelerate, Marsellus is dazed but not badly hurt. Also, Butch suffers some injures himself after striking Marsellus because he zoomed straight into a busy intersection, immediately got hit by another car, and he wasn't wearing a seat belt.
• In Richie Rich, Big Bad Lawrence Van Dough spends the entire movie trying to break into the Rich family vault to steal their money. However, by the time he actually makes it in, Van Dough finds that it's full of nothing but keepsakes, photo albums, and "priceless possessions" that hold sentimental value to the Rich family. None of the items in the vault hold any kind of monetary value, making it a Worthless Treasure Twist. As the senior Richard Rich explains, the family's actual money is in banks, stocks, and real estate. Van Dough ends up so frustrated by the lack of anything worth stealing in the vault that he starts actively trying to kill the Rich family, beginning the film's climax.
• Rurouni Kenshin: Sanosuke's BFS certainly looks cool enough, but the damn thing is so big and cumbersome that Kenshin easily evades each of Sanosuke's strokes with little effort.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: An alternate ending that was never filmed would have had it be revealed that Scott and Ramona were arrested for having murdered seven people.
• Scream 3: Shortly before the climax, the killer throws his knife at Dewey. Cue slow-motion as the knife reaches him... only for it to bounce off his head and cause him to tumble down the stairs, instead of impaling him through the skull like what normally happens in fiction.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2020): During a bar brawl, Sonic attempts to break a beer bottle on a thug's head, having been inspired by watching "way too many action movies". The bottle doesn't break, leaving Sonic momentarily dumbfounded. It's because the glass in movies is made of a substance that's designed to break easily. Real glass is much tougher than that.
• In Starsky & Hutch, the big climatic scene includes Starsky & Hutch going off of a dock with their car to try to land on a boat. In contrast to what you expect, they MISS! Roger Ebert pointed out that it's something we've been waiting to happen for years.
• T2 Trainspotting: During their fight at the pub, Sick Boy tries to use a glass shard from a broken glass bottle to stab Renton. He only succeeds in cutting his own hand instead.
• Thanksgiving (2023): Scuba is not familiar with firearms. As such, when confronted with the killer it takes a while for him to even remember to take it out, and it ends up being useless since he forgets to take the safety off.
• Uncharted (2022):
  • Sully ends up getting delayed because the keyhole he needs to access is behind a solid pane of glass, and throwing a chair at it isn't enough to break it. It takes three gunshots and Sully throwing an entire person at the glass for it to break.
  • When one of the ships gets dropped into the ocean, it seems to be floating for a few minutes. But it ultimately sinks because a wooden ship that has been sitting abandoned in a cave on a remote island for the last five centuries is not going to still be seaworthy.
• At one point in The Whole Ten Yards, one of the hitmen sent against the main characters gets shot in the foot and taken hostage. After some time is spent planning a possible hostage exchange for Oz's wife, they discover that said hitman bled out and died.
• Witness:
  • Without access to modern medicine or a trained doctor, John spends two days just regaining consciousness after getting shot, barely living through the heavy blood loss and fever. It takes another few days for him to get back on his feet.
  • Revolvers hold a maximum of 6 bullets and usually one chamber is left empty as a safety measure. After going dry, both Book and McFee can't shoot anymore and are forced to flee from each other.
  • When he's confronted by the entire Amish community, Schaeffer realizes he has no chance of escaping justice with so many witnesses and gives himself up rather than try to kill everyone in town.
• Wonka: The Chief of Police attempts to coerce Wonka into giving up his chocolate business by roughing him up, his chosen method being to dunk his head into the nearby fountain while ordering him not to sell chocolate in town. Wonka politely informs him that he couldn't hear him while underwater.
• X: Getting shot in the face, even with a shotgun, won’t necessarily kill you immediately, as poor Lorraine demonstrates.

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