Reality Ensues/Surprisingly Realistic Outcome cleanup

Yes, I was thinking of NCIS. Of course in real life you won't easily find a match, but as far as I know it's a very common media cliche to find matches for every DNA test.

The examples in question:

• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • When Naoki is searching for Daisuke, a delinquent who gets into fights, he walks up to the first delinquents he can find and demands answers. The leader of the delinquents, Aoi, bluntly tells him that it's a big town and not everyone in the underground knows everyone else. Naoki realizes that this method only worked in his game because humans in the Vortex World were rare and notable. This is just someone explaining why something wouldn't work, which isn't an outcome.
  • While chasing Soma and Kazuya, Lisa, Jun, and Eikichi get a good look at Kazuya's COMP. All of them know that there's a demon summoner in town, and the only person they know who uses a COMP is a friend who uses hers to summon demons. Except while they make the connection, it never crosses their minds that this punk is the summoner because a COMP in this universe is a known, an albeit rare, electronic with non-demon related uses. This one is too fantastical since COMPs and demon summoners don't exist in real life.
  • After the Agency gets a hold of Aoi and Naoki's blood, they immediately do a DNA test. Unfortunately for them, the government does not have the DNA of every citizen, so nothing turns up. I think this can be re-added if there's a clear attempt at Bait-and-Switch, and the story tries to make you think they are definitely going to get caught. If it doesn't, or does but this isn't clear from the example, then it's just "Plot Happens", meaning the example just describes an event without explaining why it's realistic in a way that goes against genre convention.

I understand. I'll reread that section when I'm able to so I can see if the spoiler characters and the police expected something to turn up or not.

I need some help with the quotes page for SRO. Can someone help me with if these quotes are valid?

Luckily, I spot an endangered eagle as I fall towards the earth!
Saxton Hale: Aha! I can use this noble creature to glide safely to the ground!
This turns out not to be the case! Instead, my weight causes the eagle to plummet also.

—Team Fortress 2, "Bidwell's Big Plan"

Girls und Panzer: Not enough context to tell if it's valid, so cut.

Portal 2: Not an outcome, since it's someone warning other people that a trope would not work. Cut

Family Guy (Peter Griffin): Keep. The bottom of the quote gives a context where you'd expect an unrealistic trope (Pooled Funds) to happen, and the quote itself lampshades that the trope failed to happen and why it could not realistically happen.

Family Guy (Stewie and Brian Griffin): Too fantastical. If it really was realistic, they wouldn't be Subbing for Santa. Cut.

Family Guy (George Jetson): Sounds like a character reaction. Cut.

Family Guy (Mayor Adam West): Valid, since earlier in the episode, the Griffin family did gain superpowers from toxic waste. Possibly add a note somewhere explaining that.

My Little Pony: This is an example of This Is Reality, not SRO. Cut and re-add to that trope's quotes page.

Inside Job: Not sure.

Twisted: Is an example of Deconstructive Parody, since the point of the play is to apply realistic consequences to the events of Disney's Aladdin.

Team Fortress 2: It's already been discussed before that this is a valid example.

Garfield: Not sure if it counts as a character reaction.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Character reaction. Cut.

Futurama: Too fantastical, since it involves spaceships. Sounds more like Didn't Think This Through.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Another example of This Is Reality. The second-to-last line sounds like it might be directly referencing SRO, so maybe keep that part and trim the rest.

Chicken Run: Too fantastical, since in real life, chickens wouldn't know what a military pilot is, let alone dream of becoming one.

Also, someone added a new video (from Not Okay) which seems like character reactions. EDIT: The video has been removed.

Edited by Someoneman on Aug 21st 2022 at 2:47:02 AM

Does anyone have any other thoughts on the Bob's Burgers examples? I haven’t seen the show so I can’t really comment on it.

I've reviewed that analysis of mine multiple times and don't see anything wrong with it. If nobody has any serious objections, we can just cut and dewick SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome.Bobs Burgers.

There are some more Bob's Burgers examples that I think might be valid:

• In ["My Big Fat Greek Bob"], Louise comes across a locked door to the "Room of Secrets" and tries to open it with a card. Nothing happens, because modern door locks are created with this exact kind of lockpicking in mind. It says this is a deconstruction shoehorn, but it sounds more like a subversion, which would make this a valid example
• In "Christmas in the Car", Bob is forced to gun the car backwards across a bridge as a truck driver barrels for them from the other side. Bob yells at everyone to hang on, and jerks the steering wheel to do a 180 spin around...only for the car to only do a halfway jerk. Bob sheepishly admits he was trying to do a movie thing and puts the car in gear again. Sounds like there's set-up for something cool to happen, only for it to fail due to being unrealistic, which fits the trope.
• Later in the episode ["Friends with Burger-fits"], Teddy signs himself (and Bob) up for boot camp to help him lose weight. One of the exercise routines involves jumping through a fake window. Near the end of the episode, Bob gets into a fight with a restaurant owner trying to serve Teddy a Mega Meal Challenge and he gets thrown out the window... and Bob is seriously injured afterwards, with Teddy noting he lost some blood and Bob insisting on visiting a hospital. Turns out jumping through fake windows doesn't exactly prepare you for getting thrown through a real window. I don't get why this is marked as "not surprising" since Soft Glass is a trope that is common but unrealistic, so it happening as it would in real life, with serious injuries from the broken glass, would be surprisingly realistic, especially if Teddy is shown playing the trope straight (albeit with a prop window) earlier in the episode.
• In "The Wolf of Wharf Street", Bob handcuffs Teddy to the coffee table and tries to Swallow the Key, only to realize that it's a lot more difficult than it seems. Bob then wonders how people in movies do it so easily. I don't get how this is a ZCE. You've got a set-up (someone is handcuffed to a table), an action (swallowing the key) that happens enough in fiction to have its own trope, and that action fails because of realism (in real life, if you tried to swallow a key, it'd be very difficult).
• In "Just One of the Boyz 4 Now for Now", a fan of Boyz 4 Now tried to sneak through the air vents to one of the auditions. Unfortunately, she ended up getting stuck and needed to be rescued by Emergency Services, which is exactly why you shouldn't do this in real life. This one also seems valid since Air-Vent Passageway is a common but unrealistic trope, so it's surprisingly realistic when someone tries it and fails.
  Security Guard on TV: Not safe, girls. Don't do it.

Fair, I've added those to my Western Animation writeup shortlist. You can cut and dewick if that's all. Also, Kipper Skip and mammothhide just added blatant misuse.

• Jojos Bizarre Adventure: Araki doesn't shy away from depicting the implications of a character's actions when defying the Rule of Cool:
  • Stardust Crusaders
    • When the heroes are faced with an assassin on a plane using a Stand in the form of a fly that can ripe out the tongues of its victims, only Kakyoin's Hierophant Green can reliably fight back due to the risk that Star Platinum's super strength and Magician's Red's pyrokinesis could endanger the other passengers by damaging the plane they were on. Too fantastical.
    • Hol Horse's attempt to use his Stand, taking the form of a gun, to intimidate a pair of regular people fails due to the fact that people without Stands cannot see them. Too fantastical.
    • When DIO gets punched in the head by Star Platinum after nearly cutting off Jotaro's head himself, it fractures his skull and undoubtedly impacts his brain directly. For a few minutes afterward, DIO is left trembling, his legs twitching out of control, and complains of intense feelings of nausea. He's left to crawl on the ground and hold onto a speeding car to move around at all. Being an immortal vampire able to regenerate by sucking blood doesn't mean anything when suffering severe brain damage without any immediate means to heal. DIO had to trick Jotaro into launching him via Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs near to the body of Joseph to recover from the trauma. Too fantastical.
  • Diamond is Unbreakable
    • Yoshikage Kira, being a serial killer, relies on quiet and stealthy measures to kill people - however, in a one-on-one fight with somebody on equal footing, he easily gets his ass kicked, as his first encounter with Jotaro can attest to. Not surprising.
    • Josuke, Okuyasu, and Shigekiyo find an abandoned lottery ticket and try to cash it in. However, none of their names match the endorsement on the back, and so the three are nearly arrested for fraud before Josuke uses his Stand to change the signature. Afterward, Josuke's mother freezes his bank accounts since she doesn't trust him with that much money. Too fantastical.
  • Vento Aureo
    • Mista shoots Doppio, soul-swapped into Bruno's body, multiple times and claims the shots are non-fatal. Because the team is forced to leave the body behind and he never gets medical attention (alongside Bruno's body being severely damaged to the point of having no sight or hearing left), Doppio still bleeds out even if none of the shots were instantly lethal. Too fantastical.
• Sweet Home: Quite a few examples...
  • No matter how much of a badass someone is, getting in a fight against someone like The Beefcake is not good for someone who does not have speed on their side, as Seop Ahn sadly demonstrates. Not surprising.
  • After preventing Jisu from suffering a Heroic Sacrifice to protect him from the flying monster, Hyun embraces her on the floor and they have a moment. Talking Is a Free Action is promptly averted when the monster immediately comes back. Too fantastical.
  • When the monsters try to get into the lobby, the shutters stop them before Wook quickly manages to lead them away. The next chapter reveals that their shaking and pushing through the shutter knocked the inside barricade over and the group has to scramble to get it back up. Too fantastical.
  • One of the criminals claims to be a martial arts expert and believes this to be enough to overpower Wook. Instead, he gets completely slammed because of one key reason; Wook's huge compared to him. Your level of skill doesn't matter in a fight alone, especially not if your opponent can just simply outmuscle you. This isn't necessarily more realistic than the alternative.

Edited by Idiosyncratic on Aug 22nd 2022 at 11:55:04 AM

Sorry I haven't done my analysis yet, I've been busy and when I haven't been busy I've been unmotivated. I'll try and get to it today if you still want me to.

So I'm reading through Spy x Family at the moment, and I wanted to get feedback on this example I wrote before adding it to the page:

• When Kenny falls into the pool in Mission 16/Episode 11, the usual traits of Hollywood Drowning are completely absent: he can't scream at all due to the water, and the shock plus his already weak legs leaves him unable to move and stir the water. After he's rescued by Anya and Loid, the adults in the nearby pool express shock over how they didn't even notice him fall him, and Loid explains that drowning is silent and death from it is usually because those around think that if someone was drowning, they would hear it.

Wouldn't that just be an aversion?

Yeah, aversions aren't a deliberate Bait-and-Switch.

Celestial Draco and Anon Fangeek Girl just added blatant misuse.

• Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series:
  • In the first episode, Kaiba calls Yugi and announces that he kidnapped his grandfather. Yugi's first question is to ask who he is. Plot happens.
  • In episode 6, unlike in canon, when Mako throws a harpoon at Yugi just to stop him from leaving, Yugi immediately calls him off for almost skewering him and refuses to stay anywhere near him. He even calls Mako a psycho for that stunt. Deconstructive Parody shoehorn, and also a character reaction.
  • In episode 54, Yami points out that even if the Big Five won their duel and stole the heroes' bodies, they can't just walk in and take over KaibaCorp because nobody would take a bunch of teenagers claiming to be former executives seriously. Not an outcome.
  • Mokuba refuses to forgive Noah after his sudden Heel–Face Turn. While he's about to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save them it's his fault they're all trapped in the virtual world and in danger of being killed in the first place. No character reactions.
  • In Episode 71, Rafael forces Yugi to play the game properly instead of joking around and making references, and Yugi realizes he has no idea how to actually play the game. Not surprising.
  • Episode 83 has a few examples:
    • Due to being easily hacked and taken over by Dartz, investors are pulling out of KaibaCorp due to a lack of faith in their security. Plot happens.
    • Kaiba is too busy to participate in the tournament, because he is the CEO of a company, and can't always go off gallivanting whenever he feels like it. Every other time, his company was either doing fine (Battle City), or his gallivanting was to save the company from malicious forces (Pegasus, the Big Five, Dartz). When the company is in danger from mundane market forces, participating in duels won't help, and his energies are best focused on running the tournament. Not an outcome.
    • The computer in the KaibaDome is programmed with all of the experiences of the previous duelists. However, because it only uses one deck, the different strategies turn it into a melting pot of bad deck-building. Irrelevant, potentially too fantastical.
• Ace Attorney:
  • In the backstory, the police try using a spirit medium in desperation in a case with no real leads. It fails, but not because the spirit channeling didn't work- the victim of a case is effectively an eyewitness like any other, and in this case the channeled spirit named the wrong guy because he had incomplete information. He was unconscious at the time of the murder, and so he didn't see the moment of his own death. He assumed one of the two others trapped in an elevator with him did it (and the guy he didn't accuse was his own son, so he'd have a good reason for lying), because the real murderer was outside the elevator and only entered after everyone inside had passed out from oxygen deprivation. Too fantastical.
    • The Divination Seances from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice are subject to a similar instance of the trope. Nobody doubts that they are indeed the last things the victim saw before they died, but as it pertains to court it's no more valid than a particularly well-placed camera. Too fantastical.
  • In Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Shi-long Lang gets around a villain using Diplomatic Impunity by contacting his country's authorities with evidence of what said ambassador's been up to and getting them to remove his ambassadorship. Yes, diplomats can get away with a lot of misbehavior, but an ambassador who uses his position to get away with murder is an international incident just waiting to happen. We already deemed this one to be invalid a while back.

Edited by Idiosyncratic on Aug 24th 2022 at 8:51:47 AM

My theory for all the misuse is that people still have the name "Reality Ensues" in their minds when adding example, and they also think that "Reality" means the world that the story's characters inhabit, rather than the one the reader is reading the story in (AKA Real Life), and that "Ensues" just means that an event or action in said "reality" influences the plot.

The thing is, "something happens in the story's reality, and it has an effect on things" is possibly the Super-Trope to almost every single trope ever. So anything can be shoehorned into it, but none of them are really interesting to read since there's no actual shared meaning between different examples of the trope.

You forgot to clear-cut the Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series examples.

Also, the work pages for the Ace Attorney games have more examples than the ones that were added to the trope page:

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All:
  • Also in the final case, with how many clients Nick had that were innocent, he'd eventually get one who's actually the culprit. Luckily, when you choose the correct evidence and once he safely can, he happily concedes Engarde to the guilty verdict he rightfully deserves. Not sure. Good Lawyers, Good Clients applying 100% of the time wouldn't be realistic, but that's how the series worked up until then, so this could be seen as surprising to the audiences. However, it has major impact on the plot, which most SRO examples don't.
  • Adrian Andrews is still arrested, because she tampered with the crime scene to frame Matt Engarde, though he really is guilty. At least she's not in for murder any more. Plot happens. Evidence tampering is a serious crime, so someone getting punished for it isn't surprising.

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies (examples were all bunched together on the page, and have been broken up into separate bullet points for this post)
  • First, after Phoenix and other defense attorneys spend years exposing prosecutors for playing dirty in court and for being outright criminals in several instances, the public finally learns the truth and the prosecutor's office is largely discredited. Character reaction
  • Second, someone has to pick up the pieces and both reform and rebuild the reputation of the prosecutors' office (which would be Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth's task) because they are a necessary part of the legal system, but they cannot be so if no one trusts them. Plot happens, and it's not a momentary outcome
  • Finally, both prosecutors and defense attorneys start taking an attitude of "do whatever it takes to win," since if the public doesn't trust them anyway, who cares what they think? Character reaction and plot happens
    
    This is Truth in Television, and a major part of the game that was Ripped from the Headlines. A few years prior to the game's release, the very extent of how dirty the Japanese courts were was exposed in a number of major cases. The most famous of these cases involved a suspect's innocence finally being proven after decades when it was revealed that the prosecutors had hidden crucial evidence, and forced a confession from him through methods that could be seen as Cold-Blooded Torture. And MOST suspects were treated this way. Which is why only a few years ago, things started to be changed within the Japanese legal world.

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice
  • The game suggests that Edgeworth has fired a lot of crooked prosecutors while cleaning up the Prosecutor's Office after Dual Destinies. This has resulted in a shortage of prosecutors, making him call on Nahyuta for several cases and even take one himself, to his obvious displeasure. In addition, the ones he fired are going to more sympathetic settings where prosecutors can still have everything their own way. Plot happens. This doesn't really defy normal genre conventions in favor of real-world logic.
  • After a mistake made by Bonny in "The Magical Turnabout" had Retinz improvise due to spreading blood on the coffin Manov was allegedly killed in by swapping the panels around, which left the fingerprints inside reversed. When this is questioned in court, Apollo points out that if the blood was wiped and put in the correct side and thus removing the fingerprint anomaly, the police would immediately suspect foul play due to luminol tests, which would also have Trucy being framed a very likely explanation from the start. Not an outcome
  • In case 3, Tahrust lampshades the fact that having an alarm clock in the rebel hideout would give it away if it kept sounding, so they turned it off. Not an outcome
  • Upon discovering that there's a price of 3 million in local currency on Datz's head, Rayfa plans to petition the queen to lower it down to one million since if the reward money was claimed, it would come out of taxes from the civillians. Not an outcome
  • Case 4 has the possibility that the defendant, Bucky Whet, wears perfume, explaining why the prime witness recalled smelling some off the murderer who stood over him. Bucky, however, shoots this down by pointing out that if this was true, he wouldn't make a good delivery boy since the perfume would get into his bento boxes and ruin their taste. He gives everyone one to prove this statement. He turns out to be right. Not an outcome
  • Case 5 at one point has Apollo dust a suitcase for fingerprints. When the most obvious spot (the extending handle) doesn't have enough residue to get a full reading, Apollo is suggested by his peers to think about where else you would touch a suitcase such as opening or closing it. The correct location is on the lid, as Datz likely put both his hands on top of it to close it. Not an outcome or surprising
  • After lawyers are reintegrated into the Khura'in legal system, Apollo has over 300 clients at his desk due to being the only lawyer in the country. Too implausible, since it depends on something that would probably not happen in real life.

Found this on WesternAnimation.Slick Hare. It's a pretty blatant misuse for the unusual reason of just being a correct portrayal of a person rather than anything related to the actual definition, but I still felt like bringing it here before cutting it in case it could maybe be moved somewhere else.

• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Bogart’s portrayal in this cartoon is surprisingly realistic. Yes, he plays up his macho tough guy side, but in the end he’s more concerned about Bacall instead of just being tough for toughness sake. He was genuinely that devoted to Bacall.

I don't know what the entry is getting at. It's very "in-character" of Humphrey Bogart to be tough and unsentimental but ultimately show a noble side.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law S1E2 "Superhuman Law"

• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Jen saved the everyone in the courtroom from a supervillain... and it cost her the case because the defense immediately took advantage of her heroism to claim that the jury would be unfairly biased in her favor. Afterwards, the "controversy" of her alter-ego makes her virtually unhireable in spite of her credentials, making her desperate enough to be hired by the very firm she was in opposition to by that very case.

Is it too fantastical?

TBH, that all strikes me as very unrealistic - it would just mean that a different attorney would run the case.

Yeah, that's not this trope. Its Hollywood Law because while a defense would certainly make such a claim, it wouldnt lead to Jen's side immediately losing the case. They would either get a different attorney and/or a different set of jurors.

Jen being a superhuman making her lose her job is fantastical but also not surprising (in NYS you can lose your job for basically any reason without a prior contract in place).

Since it’s been several days since people last discussed it, I’ve cut listed the Bob’s Burgers page.

Sorry for the double post, but since the Bob's Burger page was cut, the next page in line is for The Loud House. Any additional thoughts on it?

Edited by costanton11 on Aug 27th 2022 at 2:10:31 PM

"The Loudest Yard" and "Net Gains" sound like they might be valid. The rest are just the show's reality ensuing.

Yeah, you can cut and dewick SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome.The Loud House.

Danny Phantom: A Trip to Tomobiki just got a Reality Ensues entry with three examples that would be blatant SRO misuse. Remove it from the page.

• Reality Ensues: It is revealed that because the ghost zone is infinite, the Guys in Whites missile wouldn't have actually destroyed either the ghost zone or the earth, at most it would have just destroyed some of the near-bye doors. Too fantastical.
  • Jack and Maddie's jump-the-gun and trigger happy reactions to things they think are ghosts gets them into trouble while in Japan. Cuttable ZCE.
    • They attack Squid Girl, breaking a table in the process resulting in them being attacked by Eiko and they are forced to pay for the damages. Plot happens.