Reality Ensues/Surprisingly Realistic Outcome cleanup

• In "Skwisklok", Toki gets an endorsement deal with a candy company and spends the entire episode eating nothing but candy. By the end, he's suffering from mood swings, his teeth are implied to be falling out, and he's diagnosed with diabetes after he slips into a diabetic coma. That last one comes back in a big way in "Dethcamp", where Toki almost dies after a bully force-feeds him a piece of cake. Not surprising, plot happens.
• "Dethkids" is a complete subversion of the Littlest Cancer Patient trope: Toki learns of a little girl with a terminal disease, whose last wish is to meet him. But in protest of his Friend to All Children image, Toki refuses her request and adopts a brutal, psychotic attitude, rampaging around Mordhaus. When Offdensen gives him a DVD of the girl singing a song about how brutal and metal life is, Toki changes his mind and finally agrees to meet her... But she's already died, and the episode ends with Toki suffering a mental breakdown and fierce hallucinations of her maggot-ridden body accusing him of killing her. No character reactions, plot happens.
• In "Dethwedding", Pickles makes his brother Seth the head of Dethklok's fan club in Sydney, Australia as an apology for beating him up at his reception. Since Seth is apparently as frivolous with his money as the band and Dethklok is an N.G.O. Superpower, he diverts all the city's resources to keeping himself, his wife, and their newborn child safe from the Revengencers while the city descends into chaos. No character reactions, plot happens.
• In "Dethfashion", the band is fat shamed by a world-famous clothing designer when the outfits he makes for them don't fit^note Toki is the only exception, since he's the only member of the band who's physically fit, but the designer fat shames him too. The designer also based their measurements on a Dethklok album cover that shows them all shirtless and absolutely ripped., so they go on their idea of a diet, where they eat one gigantic meal a day. They all end up gaining twenty pounds because their so-called "diet" destroys their metabolism, and the enamel on Murderface's teeth is dissolving since he's been throwing up so much. When their doctor points out that he would have lost weight, Murderface just comments that throwing up made him hungry again, all of which implies he became bulimic. Plot happens.

• When the anarchist revolution begins at the end of V for Vendetta, the film briefly shows a man wearing one of V's masks robbing a corner shop at gunpoint, acknowledging that some people will resort to violence and theft in the absence of laws. Not surprising.
• Wall Street: While several actions noted as bad would count as immoral, the fact that the movie takes place a couple years before it was filmed means that several of the actions shown were not actually illegal during the film's time frame, despite Bud Fox's fears of losing his Series 7 license or worse. After realizing his mentor is actually a selfish man who plans to raid Bluestar Airlines' pension and break up the company, Bud concocts a plan to retaliate against Gordon Gekko by engineering a scheme to force Gekko into dumping his interest in Bluestar at a lower price so they'll be picked up by rival corporate raider Lawrence Wildman, but Bud should have realized that he broke the law by disclosing confidential information about his client (Gekko) to a competitor and using said info to cost his client millions. Too unclear.
• Warcraft.
  • After supreme leader Gul'dan cheats by using magic in a sacred single combat, many of the Orcs begin to revolt and a few openly walk away from him. Since Gul'dan is a high-powered sorcerer extremely skilled in death magic, this goes about as well as you would think.
  Gul'dan: (after draining the life from the first few rebels) Anyone else? Too fantastical.
  • When Blackhand ambushes Lothar, Lothar pulls out a pistol on him. Blackhand, either not knowing what the weapon does or thinking he is just that badass, tries to grab it. Lothar pulls the trigger and Blackhand loses his hand. Not surprising.
• Watchmen: If you have never read the comic then a lot of the backstories and eventual fates of the Minutemen will be alien to you as for the most part all you get is the intro and that's it. However, we get everything we need to know about the superheroine Silhouette in a very short section of the Minutemen montage: passionately kissing a woman in front of a camera and even attending Silk Spectre's media-covered retirement party arm-in-arm and sitting on one another's laps, during a social era where being LGBT was enough to get you killed (the women behind her during the kiss even make obvious faces of disgust before the cut to black)... and then later in the montage, we're shown the scene of her and her partner's double murder in their bedroom, with homophobic abuse scrawled on the wall behind their bodies. It is understandable why she made such a mistake given how she was riding high on the joy of the worst war in human history coming to an end, but she nevertheless willingly or accidentally forgot that the Nazis were the biggest, but not the only people in the world opposed to her way of life. No character reactions.
• Wendy: Children left alone on an island, even if magically kept young, will get into danger. Some of them even die, or suffer serious injuries. Too fantastical.
• Whiplash: Terrence Fletcher's teaching methods are horrifically abusive, such that even those students who manage to excel at music end up psychologically scarred, making it questionable if the excellence Fletcher strives for is worth it at all. Late in the film. this comes back to bite him in the ass when he cuts Andrew Neiman from the band following a car accident, with Neiman tackling Fletcher to the ground, ready to beat the shit out of him before he gets pulled off. It eventually leads to him being fired from his teaching job once it comes to light that those same abusive teaching methods were a contributing factor in one student's suicide, with Neiman providing the testimony that leads to Fletcher being sacked. Plot happens.
• 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. Oz spends the next 30 seconds wondering how that's even possible. Valid.
• In Wild Wild West, when West is up against a mook, said mook fights with elaborate kicks and punches, saying "I learned that from a Chinaman!" West simply kicks a shovel up into his hand and bashes the mook over the head, stating "I just made that up." No character reactions.
• Willy's Wonderland:
  • The teens mostly played the standard cliches of idiotic horror movie victims — smoking weed beforehand, splitting up during an escape, getting distracted during an escape, having sex in a dangerous place, or even trying to befriend the villain. So it wasn't a huge surprise that all but one of them were killed by the villains. Not surprising.
  • Being a supernatural serial killer only means you are good at killing terrified victims. It doesn't necessarily mean you won't be attacked yourself, and it doesn't necessarily mean you are good at self-defense either. After years of murdering helpless people, you will have trouble adapting to a victim who doesn't fear you and is just as murderous as you. Too fantastical.
  • As much of a badass as the Janitor is, he isn't bulletproof, so he's left with no choice but to put his hands up both times Sheriff Lund holds him up at gunpoint. Not surprising.

• Zombieland:
  • Columbus attempts to unlock his car at the beginning, drops his keys, so he runs another lap of the parking lot, gets back to the car, picks up the keys... and sees the car was already unlocked. Of course it was. There'd be no point in locking it during a Zombie Apocalypse as it would cost precious seconds to unlock and could mean the difference between life and death (as Columbus almost demonstrated moments earlier) and there'd be far fewer people around to steal the vehicle. Too fantastical.
  • Wichita and Little Rock, thinking Pacific Playland is zombie-free, turn on all the lights and attractions. While the park itself may have been zombie-free, the immediate-surrounding area wasn't, and the lights and noise attract hordes of zombies which Wichita and Little Rock can't hope to fight off alone. It's a good thing Columbus and Tallahassee decided to go after them, otherwise Wichita and Little Rock would have either been killed or zombified. Too fantstical.
  • As Bill Murray had learned, trying to scare people who have weapons is not going to end very well. Not surprising.
• Zombieland: Double Tap:
  • Cars that work are hard to come by. Columbus states that years of neglect mean that most cars have broken down and you can't be picky about what you drive. Not an outcome.
  • Madison immediately sleeps with Columbus when she gets the chance because it's been years since she last had human contact. It's understandable that she'd react very strongly to the first guy she's seen in years. Hilariously foreshadowed when she meets up with Columbus in the mall and immediately hugs him. No character reactions.
  • Tallahassee tries to drive a monster truck, and then crashes twice because he has no experience with a truck that big. Not surprising.
  • Babylon melts down all guns. In the climax, this leaves them hard pressed to defend themselves. Not surprising.
  • Doing donuts in a tall monster truck could very easily tip it over. Not surprising.
  • Anything heavy dropped from a great height is deadly if it hits you in the head. Babylon's people dropping heavy things into the horde of T-800s from atop their tower kills several. Adding on to this, the density of the horde means the dropped items will hit a zombie. Not surprising.
  • After Little Rock shoots the zombie clinging to Tallahassee dead, he points out he's still dangling over the edge of the tower and needs to be pulled to safety before he loses his grip. Too fantastical.

• Godzilla: The Series: Godzilla Jr. is repeatedly shown to be far more powerful than his parent, shrugging off damage as a teen that killed the original as an adult. As a result, the actual fight between Godzilla Jr. and Cyber-Godzilla is a complete Curbstomp Battle in Jr.'s favor. Even with the mechanical weapons, Cyber Godzilla's base frame is still the original, much frailer and weaker (not to mention decomposed) Godzilla, and Jr. is smart enough to evade those weapons and shred it in melee. Character stronger than another character.
• Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters: Ever wonder what happens if a child of Godzilla wasn’t a Gentle Giant or Raised by Humans and was raised by his father? Ever wonder what happens if you did lay a finger on one should you harm it? Well the movie explores this, and Godzilla is very angry that his son was killed, and attacks his son’s murderers without warning. This is why you don’t harm his children. Deconstructed Trope shoehorning.

• Whenever the monsters attack, the infrastructure is crippled and people are forced to find whatever shelter is still standing. Too fantastical.
• As Girly Yaya found out the hard way it doesn't do you any good protesting military operations against giant monsters when said monsters leave you squashed like a bug. Too fantastical.
• A trio of rednecks try to go up against Anguirus... only to get smashed by his tail. Too fantastical.
• When Steven goes up against Anguirus in MechaGodzilla, he believes he's brought it down before his opponent gets back up and retaliates. Too fantastical.
• The father who lost his children in the first issue attempts a bomb run on Godzilla. The man gets incinerated due to all the explosives on him while Godzilla only gets a nose itch. Not surprising.
• In the epilogue, we see the governments of the world preparing themselves should the Kaiju regain their senses and attack. No character reactions.
• The US military attempt to use poison on Anguirus while he's still recovering from his fight with Godzilla. It manages to kill any survivor who didn't make it out... and Anguirus just stands up and the gas doesn't even hurt him. This is tried again by the Germans on Rodan... who just uses his wings to blow it back their way. Not surprising.

• Godzilla (1954): A giant animal, let alone a large prehistoric monster, isn't some mindless beast hell-bent on destruction. Godzilla has a brain, and knows exactly who he's targeting. The film also doesn't gloss over the destruction he creates, let alone leaves behind. Being a large radioactive beast meant that anyone who is even remotely near him can die of radiation poisoning. Too fantastical.
• Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla:
  • When Project KIRYU is first announced, several of Japan's neighbors are nervous due to the weapon's clearly offensive nature (Japan is not officially allowed an offensive military, having used their last one to start World War II). The PM must publicly state the machine is designed for dealing with giant monsters only, and that Japan has no interest in building an empire. No character reactions.
  • After Kiryu goes rogue, people begin questioning whether or not it was a good idea for the AMF to even so much as consider building something like that. No character reactions.
  • There is no Omnidisciplinary Scientist but several brought together for specific parts of Kiryu. One for how to power the whole thing, one on artificial life, one for software, one for the absolute zero cannon and so on. Plot happens.
• Godzilla (2014) has a few of these:
  • Godzilla is shown having trouble with both Hokmuto and Femuto when they gang up on him, because they work well together and being outnumbered in a fight is a massive disadvantage, no matter how strong you are. Otherwise, he outright destroys them when going one-on-one with them, since the fight is now a contest of strength that Godzilla has in spades. Characters stronger than other characters.
  • The military is more than willing to let the public know about giant monsters the moment two of them appear and turn Honolulu into a friggin' battleground. It's a national crisis, and there's no way in hell that the military can cover it up (not that they wanted to in the first place). Too fantastical.
  • Godzilla's so massive he is able to create a tsunami just by rising from the ocean, since all that water the kaiju's displacing has to go somewhere. Too fantastical.
    • Shortly after, a group of soldiers open fire at Godzilla as he lumbers through the city from the shore. Because of the utter size difference, Godzilla doesn't notice them in the slightest. This is a recurring thing in the whole Monsterverse—for the most part, kaiju don't really notice or acknowledge humans unless they give them a good reason to, something on a scale that it could actually be relevant to them, more like if a cat was clawing at you rather than a fly landing on your arm. Too fantastical.
  • When Ford destroys Femuto and Hokmuto's nest, he is flung several yards into the air via explosion, likely breaking a few bones in his body. Not surprising.
  • We actually get to see the monsters' rampage/fight from a civilian standpoint and it is terrifying. They are beings that can destroy whole city blocks with one good punch, and it is not a fun time to try surviving such things. Not surprising.
  • When the female MUTO's EMP springs Joe from Monach's cell, he's too curious, and then shocked, to run with everyone else. And then the walkway he's on collapses, because he doesn't have Plot Armor. There's no scene where Ford finds him in the debris, digs him out, and tearfully clutches Joe's hand as he expires; Joe dies while he's being moved, with full emergency medical treatment ongoing. Also, Ford is an experienced EOD tech who knows how to hold back his emotions when necessary, and he's still visibly upset in the successive scene where Serizawa reads him in. Plot happens and no character reactions.
  • The movie heavily implies that The Unmasqued World will result from the Kaiju's rampage during the movies (with the sequels outright confirming this), but more than that, Stenz realizes (earlier on than more generic leaders in his position would) that any chance of keeping up the masquerade has gone out the window the moment a pair of Kaiju as tall as high-rise buildings battle in the middle of a populated city on Hawaii. Not surprising.
  • Unlike a more generic cast in their position, the HALO team sent into San Francisco, once they reach the nuke and find they can't unseal it to disarm it, do not waste time continuing to try and pry its casing loose while it's counting down to detonation with less than half an hour left — they decide very quickly to go straight to Plan B and get it on a boat headed away from the city. No character reactions.
  • When Ford finally gets to the bomb on the boat, it's too damaged to even access, much less disarm. All he can do is aim the boat far out to sea, collapse from exhaustion, and watch it tick down. Luckily a Navy chopper arrives to save him, but he's still near-comatose on the way out. Plot happens.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
  • Humans are naturally terrified after the discovery of Godzilla and that there are more monsters as ancient and big as Godzilla populating our earth. They have been on high alert since San Francisco and MONARCH has gone public and publicized their mission, actively recruiting civilian operatives. Too fantastical.
  • Because of their size, Rodan and King Ghidorah cause massive damage from the shockwave and wind they generate simply by flapping their wings or flying at high speeds. Too fantastical.
  • All the flyers have gigantic wingspreads for their proportions. They would need it as anything that huge will need an extremely large wingspread just to fly. Too fantastical.
  • Mark Russell is among the many who don't see Godzilla as a hero for causing death and destruction five years prior. Especially since Mark lost his son Andrew. No character reactions.
  • Ghidorah, having three heads, has occasional disagreements between the heads, as one would expect a creature with three separate minds controlling one body. Too fantastical.
  • The Oxygen Destroyer kills all the fish around Isla de Mara. In The Stinger, it reveals the fishermen have lost their livelihood and are desperate enough to accept any money offer from Jonah after they dredge up one of Ghidorah's heads. Plot happens.
  • Godzilla intercepts Ghidorah at one point and drags him underwater to continue their fight, where Godzilla, amphibious creature, is easily able to dominate the fight compared to Ghidorah whose massive wings only got in its way. Character stronger than another character.
  • Previously a top-secret government agency, Monarch has given up the game and gone fully public in the aftermath of Godzilla's fight with the two MUTOs, since it would be almost hilariously impossible to cover up the fact that three giant monsters half destroyed at least three cities and rampaged across two states, and there's now no reason for them to try. Their mission has now shifted from trying to keep the existence of Titans a secret to prevent a public panic, to trying to reassure a rightfully-terrified public that all possible action is being taken for a hypothetical resurgence. Too fantastical.
    • However, Monarch's actual activities are still classified, and the public doesn't know exactly what they're up to. Just because everyone knows they (and the subjects of their study and efforts) exist doesn't mean they have access to everything Monarch is doing. And many are not happy they don't get a say in what Monarch does and how, precisely, they do it. Plot happens.
  • The death toll in the previous movie was likely in the thousands or the hundreds of thousands. In this film, it's implied by the news report exposition in an early scene and even more so in the novelization, that thousands of families' loved ones being among the death toll of the previous film is actually one of the main reasons why the majority of the public are calling for the government to try exterminating all the Titans indiscriminately. Plot happens.
  • Naturally, with the massive human death and destruction that occurred in the previous film, U.S. government figures and a lot of other people are going to treat Monarch's findings that the Titans are essential to the planet's ecosphere (and therefore humanity's own survival) as little more than an afterthought. Not an outcome.
  • Monarch is literally on-trial because the government originally founded the organization to find a way to kill the Titans before they woke up, and they've deliberately avoided doing that. Not surprising.
  • While it's clear Godzilla doesn't have an issue with humans he isn't exactly the perfect defender of the Earth like he was in the 70s films. Right at the start we are reminded that Godzilla accidentally causes human collateral, such as Andrew Russell. Even when he comes to the rescue the good giant monsters are still dangerous. In Antarctica Godzilla steps over the downed Osprey and his dragging tail shoves it near a dangerous crevice which nearly kills much of the cast. Then during the finale after Madison smiles in relief as Godzilla arrives she realizes it's time to get out of the way of the two fighting giants or else she will suffer the same fate as her older brother. Even Mothra, as she duels Rodan, can't stop her enormous wings from accidentally knocking helicopters and jets out of the sky, or Rodan's as she grappling with him. Too fantastical.
  • A creature's biology that telegraphs its long range move, Godzilla's scutes lights up, looks really cool but is a huge warning sign to dodge. Harder for humans on foot to dodge but for King Ghidorah it is easy unless he's completely distracted or is too close to effectively dodge. During the Antarctica battle Ni and Kevin are clearly watching Godzilla's tail start to light up and know what's coming. Too fantastical.
  • Ghidorah might be Immune to Bullets, but missiles can still distract him, much like a bugbite can distract a human. This probably saves Mark and the other key Monarch brass in Antarctica from ending up like Dr. Graham, and it allows humanity to meaningfully take part in the Final Battle by laying into Ghidorah and keeping him distracted during his battle with Godzilla, helping give Godzilla the upperhand. Too fantastical.
  • Just because the tide turns in humanity's favor when Godzilla shows up to battle Ghidorah in Boston, narrowly saving Madison from being vaporized by the three-headed psychopath, doesn't mean madison's "Hell, Yes!" Moment is going to last for more than a few minutes — she quickly slips from it into a Heroic BSoD when she's running from the titanic creatures' battle. No character reactions.
• Godzilla vs. Gigan: While he's definitely Overdrawn at the Blood Bank, Godzilla gets progressively more fatigued the more blood he loses, as if he were going through the early stages of shock. After he gets shot in the face by the Godzilla Tower's laser beam, Godzilla seemingly loses consciousness, allowing Gigan to viciously attack him while he's lying on the ground. Valid.
• Godzilla vs. Kong:
  • Godzilla may have saved humanity twice over but at the end of the day, humans still see him as an unstoppable atomic monster. Once he seemingly starts attacking cities without reason, public opinion quickly turns against him and there is little motivation or reason for most to try understanding his behaviour as most people prioritize people's safety over an animal's motivations. No character reactions.
    • For that matter, there's a specific recorded warning which plays during Godzilla's first attack in the film which informs people that a titan is approaching, not just a stock "find shelter" advisory or warning of any other existing natural disaster like an earthquake or even along the lines of an inbound nuclear missile. Since titans/kaiju like Godzilla are a publicly-known and acknowledged part of the world now and everyone knows it, it makes perfect sense that governments and corporations would have started thinking of evacuation plans in the event that one decides to take a stroll through a major population center, let alone attack one. No character reactions.
  • Most of the Iwi tribe were killed when the storm surrounding Skull Island made landfall. Kong can protect them from the Skullcrawlers but he cannot save them all from nature's primordial forces. Plot happens.
  • Josh, being a high school student, is unable to hack or guess Apex's security password. After too many tries, he is locked out, which does happen when someone entered too many failed passwords for any kind of important system. Not surprising.
  • Apex was able to create a robot strong enough to challenge Godzilla but it's active for only a few minutes using conventional power sources due to the sheer power required to activate it. Which is why Apex requires Hollow Earth energy to keep the mecha running. Too fantastical.
  • During the Hong Kong fight, Godzilla grabs Kong and hurls him across the city and this results in dislocating Kong's shoulder. Compared to other instances where other monster would shrug it off and continue to fight, this becomes a Game-Breaking Injury for Kong. Too fantastical.
  • Kong's intelligence and Homefield Advantage may have given him an edge in the final battle but Godzilla's superior strength, endurance and eons of experience fighting other Titans allows him to thrash Kong once Godzilla decides to get serious. Character stronger than another character.
  • Godzilla ends up with his own injuries fighting Kong and is worn out from using his atomic breath frequently, leaving him weakened and easily beaten when Mechagodzilla emerges. Even when Kong joins in, Kong is just as overwhelmed as Godzilla, seeing how both were badly injured in their prior fight. If Team Godzilla didn't tamper with Mechagodzilla's system, Godzilla and Kong would have died. Not surprising.
  • Godzilla and his species have an old feud against Kong's species. Iwi legends states Godzilla's species were the aggressors while Godzilla's POV presents it the other way around and their legend hints that someone broke a taboo on their side. Regardless, Godzilla is old enough to remember it first hand. Meanwhile, Kong, unlike the rest of the Titans, was born in the modern age and the feud does not seem to be In the Blood on his end. The result is that Godzilla sees Kong as a threat on principle but Kong doesn't have a clue what's going on. Too fantastical.
• King Kong vs. Godzilla:
  • The advertising men go to a lot of trouble to capture King Kong and bring him to Japan...only for the government to declare Kong a threat as well as an illegally smuggled good. No character reactions.
  • The first encounter between the two monsters seems to build up to an awesome battle as the pair size each other up, roaring and posturing, until Godzilla unleashes a blast of atomic breath at Kong, who looks down at his scalded fur and... turns around and walks away. No character reactions and too fantastical.

• Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg:
  • If the Chinese Triads take over the Legation Cities, it usually results in several major powers (including Japan and the Entente) deciding that a collection of cities run by a ruthless criminal syndicate is something they cannot allow on their borders, so they declare war on the Triads. Oddly enough, the ragtag Chinese gangsters tend to get horribly fucked in the resulting war, as unlike Japan and the Entente, they don't have things like organized armies and a navy and air force. Curb-Stomp Battle shoehorn
  • If the Entente succeeds in retaking Britain and restoring the United Kingdom and doesn't ban the socialist-leaning Progressive Party, then they will run in and almost certainly win the first general election. The British people have lived under a socialist regime for more than a decade until now, a regime that came into being because of massive popular resentment against the monarchy and a brutal reprisal against a miner's strike. Probably a character reaction. Either way, it's just the game's reality ensuing, which isn't what this trope is about.
• Kerbal Space Program, as an extremely accurate simulation of space flight, naturally has these. Parachutes for one are realistically portrayed; they won't deploy properly if you are traveling too fast (i.e: still firing off a rocket) and/or aren't oriented properly, and for reasons that should be obvious, don't work in a zero-atmosphere environment like space. It's also recommended you don't try building your favorite sci-fi show's iconic spaceships at first. Disappointment, and plenty of explodiness, will probably ensue. Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay shoehorn
• killer7:
  • KAEDE is the only one of the Smiths to lack an Unorthodox Reload (while everyone else just effortlessly flings empty shells and magazines out of their guns and slaps in new ammo in less than a second, she takes the time to slide her magazine in properly). Unfortunately, this also means that she has the slowest reload in the game, and if she reloads while zoomed in, it causes her to fumble with the magazine while putting it in, making it take even longer. This eventually proves to be her downfall in the fight with the Handsome Men, as Handsome Light Brown reloads faster and takes her out while she's reloading. Character has weakness
  • Kevin, in turn, is probably the easiest of the Smiths to aim with because he settles for throwing knives instead of a gun. While this means he has a slower fire rate than most of the others since he effectively has to "reload" after every toss, he won't be stuck with an actual reload at an inconvenient time and he doesn't have to worry about recoil throwing off his aim. Character has strength.
  • Since your main resource for healing and upgrading is the blood of your enemies, how easy or hard it is to get that blood also depends on this. Kevin, again, sits on one extreme, with his knives causing noticeable amounts of the stuff to bleed from whoever you hit with them because that's how knife wounds work. On the other extreme is MASK - except for the few enemy types that only he can kill, MASK never gets blood from enemies, because even in cases where his grenade launchers could cause wounds that would bleed if they were made with a knife or a regular bullet, the heat generated by the grenades' explosions would instantly cauterize them. Not realistic since blood doesn't work like this in real life
  • Coyote holds his gun practically upside-down. It may look cool, but his recoil and accuracy are absolutely terrible as a result. Character has a weakness. Not an outcome
• Killing Floor's Specimens were created as part of an experiment in "neurological redundancy", i.e. removing the brain won't immediately cause them to die. Shooting them in or otherwise removing the head is still the single most efficient way of dealing with them, though, because while they might not need that primary brain to keep functioning, they do still need blood pumping through them, and removing the head opens up some pretty big arteries for that blood to escape from - if a Specimen doesn't die immediately from a shot or slash that takes off their head, they'll still keel over from the blood loss through their neck-stump after a few seconds of blindly hobbling about. Justified Trope shoehorn
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance:
  • Henry mouthing off to his "betters" doesn't go well. This is the early 1400s, so the medieval caste system is in full effect and Disproportionate Retribution for failing to show the expected respect is a very real risk, although it's repeatedly mentioned that the only reason Henry isn't punished for it is because his father was a close friend with one of them. If Henry backtalks the Custodian of Sasau, however, he spends the night in the stocks. Character reaction
  • Unlike a lot of games, fast travel isn't teleportation, just fast-tracking the journey that would have taken place for the players' convenience. Because he lives in bad times, there's every chance for Henry to get nabbed by a snare while traveling the road, get kicked out of fast travel, and have to actively run from or fight off a bandit ambush. Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay shoehorn
  • The game's climax. Is it an epic battle? A seige for the ages led by the daring Henry? No it isn't. It's a nighttime stealth mission in a barely fortified castle, a total surrender once the infiltrators open the gates, and a tense hostage situation that results in the Big Bad getting away scot-free because his hostage was too important to risk bringing him to justice. Henry in particular is furious about that last part, but ultimately has no say in the matter because he's (at best) a knight, and the one calling the shots in the matter is his liege. Anti-Climax shoehorn
  • Much like in other RPGs, Henry can improve his skills by reading books. Unlike other RPGs, since Henry is a medieval peasant, he starts the game illiterate. Henry has to go through an entire sidequest to find a tutor willing to teach him how to read and once he learns, he still hasn't gotten it completely down, which is reflected in learning skills from books taking less and less time the more Henry reads. Not an outcome if it's how he starts
• In Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, during the House of Valor questline (focusing on Gladiator Games), the reigning Champion, who has been sabotaging all of your fights, sends the Player Character to meet with an "agent" in a secluded spot. The agent is an assassin meant to kill you, but with a fairly easy persuasion check, you can just tell him that you've been slaughtering entire teams of hardened, deadly gladiators almost singlehandedly. The assassin will realize he's vastly out of his league and promptly hightail it out of there. Not an outcome
  • When Agarth meets the protagonist and sees their ability to change fate for the first time, he is utterly terrified. While the player might think that being able to Screw Destiny is cool, anyone else would find such a thing horrifying. Character reaction to fantastical events
• The King of Fighters XV: Q: What would happen if you oversaw a martial arts tournament which culminated in the stadium getting trashed and many spectators being put at risk? A: 75 lawsuits, losing practically all of your fortune settling them, and your reputation getting dragged through the mud. Ain't that a shame, Antonov? Maybe, but it depends on the absence of fantastical elements.
• In Episode 3 of Kings Quest (2015), Graham learns from a magic mirror that his future wife is locked away in a tower on the other side of the world. He grabs a ring and sets off. When he arrives and climbs to the top of the tower, he finds two princesses and immediately proposes to one of them. She immediately rejects him on the not entirely unreasonable grounds that she has absolutely no idea who he is. When he goes to propose to the other one, she cuts him off by pointing out that she was present when he proposed the first time, and also points out that she doesn't really like the idea of being Graham's Plan B. Courtly true love just leads Graham to an embarrassing Epic Fail. Didn't Think This Through shoehorn
• Kunio-kun:
  • The final boss of River City Girls Zero is the only enemy in the entire game to use a gun. Unless you're at full health, if you get shot by that gun you will die - being one of the two toughest high-school brawlers in Japan doesn't mean you're tough enough to shrug off bullet wounds. The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others shoehorn (seriously, that trope really needs a better name
  • Likewise, in Tokyo Rumble, the final boss has a gun and can one-shot Kunio unless his stats are so high that most enemies will just scratch him. However, the same game also adds Yakuza guys carrying a knife, who are often seen if you assault a specific civilian in any area and attempt to talk to them, and that knife is almost as deadly as the final boss's gun. Same as above
• La-Mulana:
  • What happens when an explorer goes into ruins designed to be utterly and totally deadly? He dies. A lot. These death traps were designed to kill intruders and the unworthy that fancied themselves the heroes of prophecy, so of course they'll be highly lethal if not instantly fatal gotchas that you gotta watch out for, and they're all over the game! Lemeza's only real advantage over the hundreds of bone piles of failed adventurers is that he (according to the manual) has Ninja training from being half-Japanese. Not surprising since it's the point of the game.
  • Also Lemeza tried to go to the ruins with a full armament, only for airport security to call foul on someone trying to sneak through a plane with lethal weaponry, resulting in all of it being confiscated except for his whip, which he only got through by throwing a huge enough fit over it being a "harmless antique" that they gave up. You can eventually buy a gun from one of the villagers, but the ammunition for it is the most expensive item out of any shop in the game at 400 gold because the shopkeeper explicitly says he's smuggling it for Lemeza's sake, so he has to force him to pay out the nose so the reward is worth the risk. Not an outcome
  • In the backstory, all sentient life was the creation of an Alien being known as Mother. Mother wished for nothing more than to return to the stars and birthed 8 races including modern man to accomplish this. However, several races fell into infighting over Mother's power, whether it was right or not to let her leave them alone, or just outright wishing to usurp her, resulting in Mother wiping them out. You're eventually told that because Mother IS the ruins her dream was impossible from the very beginning because there's no way that any civilization, no matter how advanced, could move a body that massive back into space, especially not with Mother's tendency to wipe them out if they reached that level of advancement out of fear of being left behind. Ultimately, the best option is to Mercy Kill her because her dream is impossible, she's decayed and suffering on earth, and she's already preparing the creation of the 9th child to wipe out humanity for ignoring her plight. Too fantastical
  • And going into the sequel, having granted Mother the aforementioned Mercy Kill and the La-Mulana ruins having crumbled in response is Lameza heralded as the hero who saved the world? Nope, he's seen as a crazed terrorist who destroyed a world heritage site for the sake of some ridiculous fables and is on the run from Interpol. Character reaction to unrealistic events
  • The 2nd Children were a race of giants who destroyed themselves in a civil war over returning the Mother to space. In the first game, you're told in the mausoleum dedicated to them that the factions were the rebels led by the traitorous Sakit whose first strike was to kill Leto, and the loyalists led by the noble Abuto. In the sequel you meet Sakit himself (the boss in the first game being a replica) and he mournfully explains that he was the loyalist, Abuto was the traitor, and Leto was Sakit's wife who he loved dearly and mourns for even now (especially because he killed her in self-defense because she bought Abuto's manipulation). Abuto wrote history to villanize Sakit and make himself look like a paragon because at that point the giants had wiped themselves out, so he wanted his enemy to go down in history as the villain who damned their society. Plot happens
  • Also in the sequel, the traps in Eg-Lana are far more deadly, well-hidden, and plentiful than even the most treacherous areas of La-Mulana. La-Mulana was designed by the 7th Children to kill the unworthy while leaving room for a chosen one to emerge victorious. Eg-Lana was a prison the 1st children designed for those who wished harm on the Mother, they didn't want anyone getting in and especially didn't want anyone getting out, so of course the instant-kill gotchas will be much more severe and gratuitously used. Justified Trope shoehorn
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel:
  • Just because Rean has just acquired a Super Robot and has knowledge of how to pilot it implanted in his head, doesn't necessarily mean that he can pilot it effectively. Sure he could take on a Real Robot and coast on through the superior firepower that his mech has, but against a guy who has more experience in piloting his own super robot? Tough luck. Cue the Bolivian Army Ending of the first game. Too fantastical
  • When Rean wakes up at the start of the second game, he starts off weaker than he was at the end of the first game. He's been in hibernation inside Valimar for a month and thus has become rusty due to a lack of training in that time. Bag of Spilling shoehorn
  • While the Soldats devastated the Imperial Army at the end of the first game, this is because Soldats were a new technology that was being developed in secret, so everyone was taken by surprise. Once the army learns more about how the Soldats work, the battles against the provincial armies become more even, as while Soldats have more mobility than tanks, they lack their firepower, so the Imperial Army is able to develop counter-tactics to deal with Soldats. Strength/weakness exist
  • The Golden Ending of Cold Steel IV has Rean expel the curse from his body and eliminating Ishmelga for good. Unlike the Normal Ending, he doesn't have to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to get rid of Ishmelga. Also, Crow and Millium get new bodies, meaning they also survive unlike in the Normal Ending and get second chances at life, so it's safe to assume that all's well that ends well. Wrong, because a war is still going on and ceasefire conditions have to be negotiated. When word gets out that Erebonia tried to frame Calvard for the failed assassination of Emperor Eugent and use it as a Pretext for War, other countries across the continent become pissed off at Erebonia, ruining the country's foreign relations. Calvard is also able to pressure Erebonia into paying astronomical reparations for their actions. Plot happens
• Leisure Suit Larry:
  • Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards:
    • You can get an STD that destroys your genitals from unprotected sex with a prostitute, be shot by a clerk for stealing from his shop, and try to leave a cab without paying its cabby only to get beaten by him. Plot happens
    • Giving the pills (which are an aphrodisiac) to Faith. She will chug them down, become VERY desperate for sex... and immediately run to her boyfriend. Why would she have sex with an ugly, low-status man like Larry when she already has someone far more attractive? Character reaction
  • A non-lethal example happens in Leisure Suit Larry 2: Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places), where Larry goes to the home of Eve (the woman he ended the previous game with), only for her to not only forget about him but angrily demand he gets his stuff out of her garage before going away. Turns out having what was a one-night stand with a woman doesn't mean she'll stay fond of you, let alone remember you. This happens again with the next game, which has Larry's wife from the last game tell him she's dumping him for another woman. As Larry learns the hard way, you saving a woman's island doesn't mean the two of you won't have any marital problems or that any annoying behavior of yours she notices after getting to know you won't offend her. Character reaction
  • Patti in Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals can try to offer sex for a male stripper, only to get shot down by said stripper refusing then pointing out how her experience has made her an STD risk. Patti gets told upfront that the stripper won't touch her unless she shows him what is, in his words, a clean bill of health. Character reaction
• Lethal League: The titular Blood Sport is a mix of dodgeball and baseball that involves hitting your opponents in the face with a ball that can fly at the speed of Mach 1. Somebody wound up dead, and the entire sport was banned. Plot happens, also not realistic
• The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince: The Princess, who is actually a wolf that has hunted for her food all her life in the forest, gives the Prince raw meat, thinking he'll enjoy it, and is completely caught off guard when he spits it out instead. The Prince has to explain to her that people eat meat after cooking it because eating it raw will make them sick. Not surprising
• Life Is Strange:
  • It seems that Nathan is a typical popular jock at school. He's in with the Vortex Club (the popular clique) and if you accuse him of having a gun in Episode 1, the general reaction from faculty will be "but he's a Prescott!" However, his steadily-increasing unsettling behavior—violently lashing out, threatening students, and other sketchy doings—eventually catches on. Even members of the Vortex Club will admit to being freaked out by him. Character reaction
  • Chloe uses the junkyard as an impromptu shooting range. You can tell her which targets to hit, like bottles and tires. However, if you tell her to shoot at an old car bumper, the bullet will ricochet off the metal and into Chloe's side, necessitating you to rewind time to prevent it. Maybe surprising, but not in the sense of this trope. This is just the game's reality ensuing
  • The game gives a fail scenario if you shout a warning too soon about Max's kidnapper lying in wait for the rescuer. After all, he is in range to slug Max; why would he not silence her? Plot happens
  • By the time Victoria has won the Everyday Heroes Award she's had a Heel Realization and seems to be trying to change. During her acceptance speech, she makes a seemingly sincere dedication to Kate, who is either currently hospitalized or dead. Victoria, being a renowned Alpha Bitch throughout the school and who's barely tolerated even by the Vortex Club (save Nathan, Courtney, and Taylor who actually do like her) and is known as having been The Bully to Kate gets exactly the kind of reaction you'd expect. Character reaction
    Alyssa: You suck, Victoria!
    Crowd: (cheers)
  • Although she's not nearly as bad in the proceeding episodes as she is in the first two due to her Heel Realization, she does still show Manipulative Bitch tendencies and can be quite rude to Max if the player hasn't been kind to her. Given she just had the aforementioned realization that week it's understandable that she still hasn't overcome her toxic behaviour, even if she does want to. That kind of self-development can take time. Character reaction
• Life Is Strange 2:

  • Daniel and Sean are on the road after a cop accidentally kills their father, causing Daniel to use his powers in a state of panic. A terrified Sean is forced to become the guardian and lead them both to the border. He tries to keep the reason a secret but such a catastrophic event is predictably broadcasted on the news and Daniel learns what happened in the worst way possible. Too fantastical
  • The racist, Hank, was hailed by the police as a hero for locking up a kid in the basement and hitting the other. Why? These kids were outlaws, he hid his reasons for doing this and the security footage looks like they assaulted him when they looked for supplies. Then stole a dog for good measure. Plot happens. Villain with Good Publicity shoehorn
  • Daniel takes said dog without permission and it becomes a travel partner. However, the dog doesn't survive the first quarter of the second episode since it comes across a wild puma and is promptly killed and eaten. As harsh as it is, all three of them are living in the wild and you never go there alone without a form of protection or escape. Plot happens
  • Rather than use his power with great responsibility, Daniel just messes around with his powers and Sean has the choice to encourage this by playing a prank on someone. By Wastelands, Daniel has started becoming arrogant and thinking little of others. Too fantastical, also a character reaction
    Daniel: I am the one with power.
  • At the end of the second episode, Sean and Daniel have to flee from their grandparents' home because the police managed to find them. Even if you don't use the phone or the computer, thus leading the police to the house, Sean and Daniel are fairly infamous at this point in the story. So, naturally, someone will recognize them even in the small town of Beaver Creek. Plot happens
  • You can choose to hide the truth from Chris, letting a 9-year old boy believe he really has superpowers. This naturally results with him trying to do something dangerous and potentially getting seriously hurt. Plot happens
  • Merrill is extremely reluctant to have Daniel roaming around the cannabis farm and only allows Daniel to be there out of empathy with Sean. The second Daniel messes up, Merrill fires both Daniel and Sean, then refuses to pay the wages of the other workers. Character reaction
  • When someone with unexplained powers is brought to a public place, someone is bound to assume that they are a sign of a higher power. Character reaction to unrealistic events
  • Daniel has no idea on what his mom looks like and after finally meeting Karen for the first time in Episode 4, all he can say is that he doesn't even know who she is despite wanting to know her in the past episodes. Plot happens
  • If Sean has sex for the first time, he doesn't actually last very long and Cassidy is understanding of this since she knows it's his "first time". Contrary to popular belief or school rumours, when people lose their virginity it's a short-lived occasion since everything is a new experience. Sean is also very nervous and can refuse the offer if he wants to, also reflecting how teenage boys can be insecure and anxious about their first time. Character reaction
  • One of the racist guys who find Sean in episode 4 forces him to say things in Spanish for their amusement, or they'll beat him up. One of the options Sean can say repeats the phrase the man wants him to say, and it throws in an insult to the man's mother. Unfortunately, he knows what "madre" means, and is able to glean the rest of the insult's meaning pretty easily after that, leading him to beat Sean up, anyway. Just because someone doesn't speak a foreign language doesn't mean they don't know the meaning of certain words. Bilingual Backfire shoehorn
  • Episode 5 still has Daniel having flashbacks towards what happened to him in the last episode. Even though the Reverend is either dead or too far away to do anything to him and that there is a roughly three-month time skip, the trauma he faced from his brainwashing still makes him paranoid of her and having PTSD nightmares which isn't easy to remove even with treatment (which due to them being on the run with authorities, is impossible for him to get). Character reaction
  • In episode 5, the players meet David Madsen (Chloe Price's stepfather from the first game) and he gives a sad reality punch for the player. If Arcadia Bay was destroyed, then David lost everything he held dear while Chloe and Max drove away into the sunset without saying goodbye to him. It took him a long time to finally try making amends with them since they pretty much abandoned him without offering any form of emotional support after a tragedy on that scale. If Chloe died, then he and Joyce eventually divorced because they couldn't cope with their loss or look past the vitriolic relationship between Chloe and David. Whether you like David or not, he's still a man who lost everything because of Max's actions - though, in both cases, he seems to be more at peace with himself and his own past, and he has a much healthier relationship with either Chloe or Joyce, depending on which ending was chosen in the first game. Character reaction
  • The police have a really hard time believing Sean and Daniel's stories, since nobody would believe that Daniel has telekinetic powers and it's hard to explain how a series of "random accidents" managed to follow them everywhere they went. Character reaction to unrealistic events
    "Listen, once is an accident... twice is luck... three times is enemy action."
  • Sean's plan to escape to Puerto Lobos, and the consequences of it for himself and Daniel, are examined more critically in the final episode. The endings in particular are bitterly realistic: Plot happens
  • If Daniel makes it with Sean to Mexico, the brothers are implied to have fallen into a life of crime with no implied contact with anyone from their lives in America, defending themselves from gangsters while Sean runs a repair shop (and they pull some jobs on the side). If Sean dies during the attempt, it's even worse - Daniel is stranded in a foreign country with no family left, surrounded by a language he doesn't speak. That ending shows that he continues down the amoral path Sean started him on, fending off other criminals with his power when threatened and doing plenty of crime himself. Puerto Lobos is hardly a great place to raise a kid, much less be one on your own - one of many reasons why Esteban came to the US in the first place. Plot happens. Didn't Think This Through shoehorn
  • If Daniel doesn't make it to Mexico, either surrendering with Sean or bailing out after helping his brother, he's sent to live with the Reynolds' and has a happy, healthy life in the US with his family. If he continues to Mexico, Sean is able to make a good living (the nature of it is unknown, but he appears happy, and from the other ending we can assume he's a mechanic) with his partner of choice, or alone if that particular path was taken though Daniel has an anklet tracker because the government now knows he has powers. If Sean surrenders, he is sent to prison for 15 years, but is able to become a successful comic book artist while behind bars, eventually being released to the waiting arms of his brother, mother, and potentially best friend. This is the only ending in which we know for sure that Sean does not settle into a life of crime. Plot happens

• Life Is Strange: True Colors:
  • If specific actions aren't taken, every one of the council members will refuse to help Alex. Even a romanced or highly befriended Ryan can side with Jed over Alex. No matter how nice you've been to them, you're still someone they haven't known that long accusing one of their most trusted friends of murder. Character reaction
  • Trying to help Charlotte by taking her anger away results in her becoming detached from everyone around her and refusing to stand up for Alex in the council meeting. Trying to fast-forward someone's grieving process can only result in more negative effects. Character reaction
  • The lantern Alex finds in the mines will go out not long after she lights it. A lantern left in a mine for over a decade isn't going to be in the best working order, as evidenced by the large crack it has in the side. Maybe. It's common in video games for tools found lying around to still work properly, so this goes against convention for the sake of realism
  • While not a popular playstyle, the game gives Alex the chance to be distant toward Gabe. Being separated for over a decade doesn't exactly do wonders for someone's psyche or attitude towards someone. Alex can potentially acknowledge this by explaining her foster past to Gabe on the roof of the Black Lantern. Character reaction
  • Stealing Diane's USB drive with information on Typhon eventually results in Alex being arrested by Deputy Pike. Furthermore, Pike will initially refuse to use Diane's USB drive as evidence in the investigation of Gabe's death because it was stolen. Plot happens. The last part is a separate "Illegal evidence" trope that doesn't exist yet but should
  • Wavelengths has Steph being unlucky with her time at a dating site — not, as you might expect, due to a shortage of sapphic women in the Haven Springs area, but because either her own emotional baggage or that of her date ends up stalling the relationship every time. She actually gets plenty of matches initially but finds repeatedly that two people both being WLW isn't itself a stable basis for a relationship. Character reaction
• Little Nightmares II:
  • The Hunter's preferred method of killing Six and Mono is by attempting to blast them with his shotgun. However, the game averts Bottomless Magazines by having him reload his gun before firing, giving his prey ample time to escape. Character has weakness
  • Speaking of the Hunter, Six and Mono take him down by blasting him with one of his shotguns. The noise made by the shotgun is extremely loud and Mono isn't wearing any sort of noise canceller, so he is temporarily deafened by the extremely loud noise. (This is represented by the game not playing any audio for a few seconds.) Possiblby valid since Steel Eardrums is a common unrealistic trope in video games.
• Live A Live: Masaru will join your party without a fight in the Final Chapter if the Sundown Kid is present. Why? All your martial arts skills mean jack-shit if your enemy has a gun. The Lethal Connotation of Guns and Others shoehorn
• Frequently in The Long Dark:
  • Fighting a wolf in hand-to-hand combat, even with a weapon, will almost always result in extreme injury or even death. It's impossible to fight back against a bear, which will just pin you down and rip you to shreds as your character screams in pain and terror. Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay shoehorn
  • Eating uncooked meat will result in getting food poisoning, and drinking untreated water will result in getting dysentery. Not surprising
  • The cold is a constant threat and even just a few minutes of exposure can cause great harm. If you catch hypothermia, getting better from it will require several hours of rest and keeping your temperature above a certain level. Not an outcome
• The Flash game Luis Launch tasks the player with slingshotting the titular protagonist into outer space to celebrate his birthday. Once they actually do so, he runs out of oxygen and suffocates within seconds. Probably not realistic due to the method used, although it is common in Launching Games for characters to be able to survive in space, so it might still count since humans going to space is physically possible.

• Living in a waste-filled area will, of course, lead to a lot of birth defects and mutations as most of the residents of the Valley usually suffer from, from Bob having no arms or legs to Milo having a lot of diagnosed and undiagnosed childhood ailments (physical and psychological/neurological) to Biff and Chip being conjoined twins to Jawless Peggy not having a jaw to a nameless girl character having a bird beak.Not realistic, plus it's the show's premise, so it's not surprising.
• The pilot episode starts when Bob's boss, George, takes away Bob's medical insurance due to too many claims. As such, they can't afford for Milo to go to a school for mentally disturbed kids and allow Milo to go to a normal school. Plot happens
• "Heroine Addict": Pickles wins a shopping spree, but to do so has to smoke a lot of cigarettes to find the winning filter. On the day of the spree, she barely makes it past the starting line before getting winded and can't recover in time before time runs out. When she realizes that smoking caused her to fail, she decides to quit...which comes with its own set of problems (gaining her sense of smell back and realizing everything stinks, punching Bob due to bouts of irritability and mindlessly lighting her finger on fire, thinking it's a cigarette) and leads to her becoming addicted to thrill-seeking. Not sure about the first part. The second and third sound like it's just the show's reality ensuing
• "The Golden Child": After Bob discovers that Milo's homemade energy drink (Manic) was sold in morphine bottles that were never washed out, George suggests that they put morphine in the Globicide version of Manic, until one of his lawyers tells him that it would be considered illegal. Not an outcome
• "My Name Is Robbie": Bob goes to an amusement park with the family but because he has no arms or legs, he's denied being allowed on any of the rides due to being too short. He ultimately manages to sneak on a twirl-a-whirl but no sooner than it starts up, it ends up flinging him right off it and halfway across the park. Not surprising. If a character disobeys the rules, the expected outcome is for this to backfire on them.
• "Father of the Bribe" shows that Talking Is a Free Action is not a thing, as, in the time it took for Bob to shame the crowd over their selfishness and for everyone to cobble together money to pay the firefighters to put out the fire that was consuming the high school gymnasium, the gym already burned to the ground. Maybe, since it involves an unrealistic trope failing to happen.

• Various episodes go to great lengths to show just how fragile our main characters really are given they’re only babies (plus a couple of big kids) in a cartoon that is for the most part grounded in reality. In "Touchdown Tommy" it only takes Tommy bumping his head just slightly to get his first bruise; a MASSIVE ONE at that which makes him cry bloody murder. In "The First Cut" Tommy getting his very first cut, however small it is, makes him nearly inconsolable and legitimately traumatizes him. Not surprising. Also includes some character reactions.
• In "Hiccups", when Tommy gets the hiccups, Angelica tells him the only way to cure him is to scare him, which she intended to do (in reality, she just wanted to give Tommy a bad scare). After some failed attempts, however, Angelica decides to use something called the "Scare Machine". She proceeds to put it together using various items she finds around the house. However, since she's a three-year-old with no experience building machines, and the Scare Machine was cobbled together by random debris, as soon as Angelica turns it on, it falls apart on top of her. Though Tommy seems to have been cured of his hiccups, which he reasons that when the Scare Machine fell on Angelica, Tommy got scared she might be hurt. Not familiar enough with the show to tell.
• In "In the Naval", when Angelica's Cynthia doll is swallowed up by a giant fish, Tommy and Chuckie decide to drop her toy boat into the water. Their reasoning is that, when the fish sees the boat, he'll realize that the "Wavy Seals" (Navy Seals) have come, get scared, and spit Cynthia up. The fish just eat the toy boat. Since they explained what their plan was, the expected outcome is for it to fail.
• In "Princess Angelica", Angelica decides she's a princess, and puts herself through several tests to prove this. The last one was a recreation of The Princess and the Pea, wherein Angelica stacked several pillows on top of each other. When she tried to climb to the top, she pulled all the pillows down on herself. Just a normal gag. The point of this scene isn't to show how it's not done realistically in other shows, so it's not an example
• In "Chuckie Gets Skunked", Chuckie gets sprayed by a skunk. Chaz, Chuckie's father, mentions that he tried using tomato juice and tomato paste to get rid of the smell, but it didn't work and it just ruined the bathtub. Despite what fiction tells you, tomato juice/paste doesn't get rid of the smell of skunk spray; it only masks the skunk smell. Would have counted if we were shown this, but if it's only mentioned, then it's not an outcome
• In "Chuckie Loses His Glasses" when anyone besides Chuckie puts on his glasses they get extremely distorted vision that makes them dizzy and their heads hurt. Chuckie wears a prescription pair of glasses meant just for him; which anyone else wearing wouldn’t take to very well. Angelica learns this the hard way when she goes a long time wearing them getting dizzy and eventually vomiting all over Drew. Not surprising
• In "The Big House", Tommy and a few other toddlers try to break out of Golden Apple, a daycare center that looks and feels like a prison. When they try to unlock the front door with a key made out of Play-doh, the key is too soft and bends out of shape. Additionally it’s almost a guarantee none of the babies would’ve been able to escape. Unlike most of the adults in Tommy’s life the staff at Golden Apple Daycare are highly trained professionals whose jobs depend on them being able to keep a watchful eye on babies and small children. And as Tommy’s friend Wiseguy points out? A lot of kids have tried breaking out, and getting caught leads to serious consequences (a friend of his tried to break out, but ended up getting transferred to another daycare). The first part is not surprising. The second part is not an an outcome.
• In "A Step at a Time", the babies try to get Dil to learn how to walk, with motivations such as a cookie, arguing, and a fear of clowns. While the adults are excited over the prospect, Tommy wants Dil to learn at his own pace. At the end of the episode, Dil sees Tommy walking and wants to learn to walk so he can play with him. He tries climbing up the way Tommy did when he first learned how to walk, but as this episode makes very clear, Dil is too young to walk all by himself, and sure enough, he falls over when he tries to pull himself up. The first part isn't an outcome. The second part might count.
• In "The Baby Vanishes", Tommy, Chuckie and Angelica play with some "vanishing cream" of the latter's mother and use it to appear "invisible" to the adults, who are distracted by playing a difficult board game. Whereas the babies are able to put a few dabs of it on, sneak into the kitchen and eat some pie that Drew had brought over unnoticed, Angelica, convinced that it will work for her too, has the babies goop it all over her. Drew (and the other adults) spot her immediately when she walks in. Aside from the obvious reason of the cream, she would have still been noticed for a variety of reasons; 1), she was already on their minds due to Drew being upset about her behavior, 2), in addition to how inattentive the adults are towards the younger, voiceless children, she's a talkative toddler and much more noticeable and 3), even if nothing else factored in, she's such an Attention Whore that she would already demand that people acknowledge her (which Drew and the others were actually encouraged not to do by Didi on to her advice of a Dr. Lipschitz book stating not to give bratty children negative reinforcement to the bad behavior). Not surprising. This is just a Justified Trope
• In "Sister Act", Angelica feels left out when she's the only one who doesn't have a sibling, so she hires the babies to be her younger siblings. When she hires Tommy to be her little brother, the two go to an arcade, where she has him help her win enough tickets to buy a Cynthia beach house by cheating at skee-ball. She ends up getting caught by the arcade's manager and is forced to give him her tickets. Not surprising. If a character cheats, the expected outcome is for it to backfire.

• In 8 Mile, Cheddar Bob generally shows how holding the Idiot Ball in the real world can get you killed (his friends bail him out but repeatedly chastise him for it). Purest example being when Cheddar Bob shows what happens when Artistic License – Gun Safety is applied to real life. Deconstructive Parody shoehorn

• 21 Jump Street:
  • The main characters are tasked with going undercover in a local high school, their youthful look being the reason why they're chosen. They try their best to behave the way they did when they were in high school years prior, but on the first day, they're met with a student culture which has evolved and radically changed since they left. Students no longer act in strict social cliques, and are unimpressed with their environmentally unfriendly and fuel inefficient car. Jenko's attempts to assert dominance by punching a guy arguing with him only shock and disgust the other students, and his further attempts to mock the guy by accusing him of being gay only further buries Jenko when it turns out the guy is actually gay. Character reaction

  • Many of the students and faculty have trouble buying that Jenko is high school aged because his muscular development is far beyond that of a normal high school senior. He has to explain that he was held back a few years to get them to believe he's a high schooler. Character reaction

  • Shooting a fuel truck probably won't make it explode, nor does the propane tanks by just falling out. Averted with the chicken truck. Subverted Shoot the Fuel Tank

  • Hanson and Penhall get distracted during an argument, resulting in the Big Bad shooting and killing them both. Even in a comical movie like this one, a ruthless criminal isn't going to just let you stand by and talk when you are the only thing stopping them from escaping. Subverted Talking Is a Free Action

• The infected in 28 Days Later still have physical needs like hunger and thirst, but have been driven too insane by the virus to be able to address them. It doesn't take long for all of the infected to die of mass starvation a few weeks after the initial outbreak. Too fantastical

• The A-Team: The team clears their name, and the bad guy, a rogue CIA agent, is taken away by his employer to a nonspecific future. Then the team is arrested for breaking out of jail, and because the Government needs someone to blame for all the damage they've done. They should have bought Wrongful Accusation Insurance. Aversion of Wrongful Accusation Insurance

• A cut scene from the original script for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective had Ace trying to dispatch Einhorn's Mooks by releasing a metal hook that is hanging from some chains, causing it to swing downward towards the bad guys. Instead of just rendering the men unconscious or sending them to the floor, the momentum and weight of the chains would actually decapitate the goons, causing a horrified Ace to scream that he just wanted to knock them out. Plot happens

• Adam (2019): Gillian actually realizes Adam isn't trans early on, due to his lack of knowledge on queer subjects and then suddenly learning, but in a rote way as he memorized things. She's okay with it, realizing that she likes cis men too, but they still break up because their relationship was entirely based on deception. Character reaction

• Air Force One:
  • The terrorists know that they might be able to wreak havoc against Secret Service agents armed with only pistols, but if the plane lands at a military airbase, they're no match for the heavily-armed soldiers that will storm the plane. Not an outcome

  • Later on, a terrorist gets hit with a burst of MP5 fire. The first few rounds are stopped by his body armor, but the last round hits him squarely in the head, killing him instantly. Not surprising

  • A terrorist has the bright idea to stick an oxygen bottle in a locked door and shoot it to get it to open. While it doesn't create an earth-shattering kaboom, it rocks the plane enough to break the fuel hose connecting it to a refueling plane destroying it and sending several people tumbling out the open cargo bay door. Plot happens

  • 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. This plane is now incapable of landing. Valid

• In Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, Elliot Gibson, the boy who posted the pictures of Alexander with "boobs", gets suspended. This is exactly what would happen to a student responsible for a cyber-bullying attack like that. Not always the case, unfortunately

• Aliens has several examples of this, largely to emphasize how unprepared the Colonial Marines are. It has been said more than once that the film is "the sci-fi equivalent of Vietnam".
  • Ripley awakens 57 years after the events of the original film, and expects that someone will believe her story based on her experiences, the fact that she's the Sole Survivor and the damage caused by the xenomorph to the escape pod as it was Thrown Out the Airlock. However, Weyland-Yutani executives, who have never encountered such a scenario, chalk it up to an industrial accident and revoke Ripley's flight license, forcing her to find menial work at Gateway Station's loading docks for several months to earn a living. Not helping Ripley's case is the fact that the planet where the xenomorph was first encountered has been colonized for the past twenty-odd years, and not once had anyone reported encountering any lifeforms matching the xenomorph's description. Character reaction

  • The film's most famous example occurs in the first major skirmish with the titular xenomorphs, which occurs roughly an hour into the film. The Marines, a group of trigger-happy jarheads who are overconfident and cocky, are sent into the bowels of an atmosphere processor, which is heavily confined with alien structures lining the walls and a confusing layout. Even without the events that followed, this would have caused any sensible commander to pull back and reassess the situation. Hence, when the xenomorphs do appear, the squad quickly falls into panic due to the sheer confusion of the area and the enemy they're fighting against, which doesn't obey traditional laws of warfare (using three-dimensional movement, hiding in walls). Character reaction to fantastical events

  • In an act that is later suggested to be a deliberate act of sabotage by Carter Burke, Lieutenant Gorman reveals during the flight to LV-426 that although he's a highly-accomplished leader within simulated combat drops, he's only ever performed two real-life drops (including the one he's currently on the flight for). As a result, when circumstances turn messy in the hive, he is unable to think quickly on a course of action, and his inaction would have led to the entire unit's massacre had Ripley not intervened. Plot happens

• American History X: After learning the error of his ways, a former member of a Neo-Nazi gang is shot dead by the black boy he pissed off at the beginning. In real life, Easily Forgiven is very rare, and requires at the very least some attempt to make amends to the people you wronged. Ironically, the boy who is shot to death was mostly a Jerkass when he was a Neo-Nazi, while the older brother who survives his own redemption committed actual atrocities. Character reaction

• American Renegades: The heroes set out to find a bunch of lost Nazi Gold and see nothing wrong with splitting it between themselves and the impoverished locals. Once Admiral Levine finds out what the team is doing, he chews them out for this idea and quickly determines that the gold was originally stolen from the French government. Since the French, not the locals or the discoverers, are the rightful owners, Levine then returns the gold to them. Half of it, anyway. Character reaction

• Played for Laughs in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (like everything else in this movie) after the absurdly over-the-top fight scene between the news teams. Deconstructive Parody shoehorning

-Ron: Boy...that escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast.
Champ: It jumped up a notch.
Ron: It did, didn't it?
Brick: Yeah. I stabbed a man in the heart.
Ron: I saw that! Brick killed a guy! Did you throw a trident?
Brick: Yeah! There were horses and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident.
Ron: Brick, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. You should find yourself a safe house or a relative close by. Lay low for a while, because you're probably wanted for murder.

• Related: Angelina Jolie did an interview where she took fans' questions submitted online, and one of them was (to paraphrase), "Based on your background in action/spy movies, what would you suggest do if you suspected your partner of cheating?" Her response? "I'd just leave. If you have to play those kinds of games, clearly it's not working out. So just leave." Character(?) reaction

• Several times throughout Annie (2014).
  • Pepper, the oldest foster kid, hides her feelings behind affected cynicism. But her real feelings come out early on, when she points out that she's almost thirteen, and almost nobody wants to adopt a teenager. Character reaction

  • Unlike other versions, this one depicts the bureaucracy around adoption. Just getting Annie to move in with Stacks temporarily involves lots of paperwork, and an eye is kept on Ms. Hannigan by social service workers. (Hannigan is still terrible, but the girls cover for her in front of the city inspectors because they'd rather not have to move to yet another home.) Plot happens

  • As mentioned elsewhere, the educational system has failed Annie. The movie starts with her in school giving an essay. But she can't read and can only write a little besides her own name. Plot happens

  • A political analyst whose paycheck depends on his client winning might just do anything to make that happen. Character reaction

  • Trying to kidnap a famous girl in New York City in a car in the age of smartphones and helicopters does not go very well at all. Plot happens

• The alternate ending of Army of Darkness shows that just because a sleep is magical in nature, it doesn't stop you from oversleeping just like you could every other time. Too fantastical
  • Ash's reaction to time displacement is similar to Marty Mcfly's. Seeing as he's just lost all his friends, has only a dead end job waiting for him back in the 1980's, was behind the times in his attitudes, and can practically be a god in medieval Europe with his martial arts prowess and tech-know-how, you might think Ash would accept the offer to stay and become king. Nope. He's leaping at the opportunity to return to the one time he's familiar with through the whole film, and he only sticks around long enough to stop the deadites and save people. Character reaction

• Atomic Blonde has main character Lorraine undergoing the effects of taking part in car crashes and various fights.
  • The movie is told in flashback after all this action. Thus, the first sight of Lorraine is rising from a bathtub with a body covered in bruises, a black eye and her knuckles cracked and swollen. Plot happens

  • Lorraine engages in a brutal five-minute plus fight with several men in a stairway and an apartment, taking various blows while smashing up furniture. By the time it's done, a bloodied Lorraine can barely stand let alone fight. Not surprising

• Attack of the Killer Donuts: When John and Michelle remember selling donuts to Mrs. Scolari after discovering the donuts are alive and bloodthirsty, they head over to her house to check on her. A neighbour spies them across the street around her house, and upon seeing Michelle climb up to the second floor from the outside, calls the police to have them arrested for trespassing. The police respond to the call, show up, and have them detained. Character reaction

• In The Awaken Punch, a 1970's 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! Valid

• The Back to the Future films:
  • Back To The Future:
    • Word of God describes the premise this way. If a modern teenager somehow wound up in the past, they'd hate it because everything would be completely different from what they were familiar with, and would want nothing more than to get back to their own time. Too fantastical

    • Just because George punched Biff doesn't mean that he'd completely changed his personality. When Dixon cuts in on him and Lorraine, George is shaken before he gets his second wind. Character reaction

    • Doc's decision to use a DeLorean is given this treatment. Sure, it looks like a Cool Car, but the DeLorean at the time was poorly built and infamous for mechanical failures, and Doc Brown's modifications to it have not helped. Marty gets stuck in the past because the car broke down after the jump through time. At the film's climax, Marty almost misses his return window to 1985 because the car stalls at an inopportune time. In later installments, Marty finds himself scrambling against stuck gull-wing doors to get out of the car. Too fantastical

  • Back to the Future Part III:
    • Marty has dinner with his future great-great-grandparents in 1885. During the meal, he has to spit out some birdshot pellets, and he gets a glass of very dirty water. Too fantastical

    • Marty shows proficiency as a sharpshooter thanks to video games, but he learns that it won't help against an experienced gunslinger like Buford Tannen when the picture of Doc's tombstone changes showing "Clint Eastwood" instead. Marty eventually beats Tannen without using his gun by out-thinking and punching the crap out of him. Not surprising

    • Both Marty and Doc nearly find out the hard way that just because Doc dies of a gunshot wound in the unaltered timeline doesn't mean it's the day Buford shot him; being shot doesn't necessarily mean Instant Death Bullet. Just before Buford intends to shoot Doc on a Saturday, Buford says he figures that Doc will be dead "around suppertime Monday", a result of a slow and painful death. Luckily, Marty throws off Buford's aim so that the gunshot misses. Too fantastical

    • Yes, Doc Brown can repair the DeLorean time machine to working order. No, he can't do it using the technology from 1885. They have to improvise a solution for getting the car up to 88 miles per hour using technology that actually exists. Too fantastical

    • When the DeLorean's gas line leaks, Marty isn't worried due to believing that Mr. Fusion could still provide enough power to make the trip back home. Doc himself has to point out that while Mr. Fusion powers the time circuits, the DeLorean still requires gasoline just like any other car. Not an outcome

• Better Watch Out: The paint can attack from Home Alone is re-enacted and Played for Drama to a gory, fatal result. It likely wouldn't invoke the Chunky Salsa Rule like it does here, either, but it's enough to be fatal. Luke even lampshades it, having discussed it with his friend earlier. Deconstructed Trope

• Beverly Hills Cop II:
  • Chief Lutz is an egotistical moron who's abusive to everyone around him and takes credit for "solving" the Alphabet Crimes. In the film's climax, Lutz and the Mayor of Beverly Hills show up to find that Axel, Taggert and Rosewood have uncovered how the Alphabet Crimes were all a massive mix of insurance fraud and gun running scheme. Rather than be happy they stopped a huge gun shipment, Lutz refuses to listen to any of the obvious evidence they bring, insists he still "solved" the crime (despite the true perpetrator being pushed into a squad car), screams at the trio for showing him up and vows to drive all three of them off the force and into jail. At which point, the Mayor announces he's sick and tired of Lutz's abusive attitude to his own men and obvious incompetence and fires Lutz on the spot (adding he wishes he'd done it months ago). Character reaction

  • The first of the alphabet crimes, the Adriano's robbery, goes off without a hitch. Except that one of the Mooks arms himself with an AMT Automag loaded with a combination of genuine .44 AMP rounds and modified handloaded .308 casings. Since the former wasn't even being commercially made anymore and the latter requires gunsmithing skills, the casings left at the crime scene leads the police to a gun club owned by the Big Bad. Plot happens

• In Big Daddy, Sonny convinces his own cynical father that he has learned to be a responsible adult and everyone in the courtroom applauds... only for the judge to point out Sonny has broken the law by "kidnapping" Julian and should still go to the jail. Kevin, Julian's biological father steps in and refuses to press charges. In the end, Sonny is still refused custody of Julian due to his actions but he stays friends with Julian while Julian goes with Kevin. Not realistic, because victims can't refuse to press charges.

• In the finale of Big Game, Oskari finally manages to draw a bow properly and shoots at Morris. Cue gratuituous slo-mo, epic music and... arrow bouncing off harmlessly. Like every Secret Service agent, Morris is wearing a kevlar vest, after all.^note In real reality, though, a kevlar weave vest will not stop sharp things like arrows or knives, unless the arrow hit the ceramic or metal inserts used in many vests to add protection over the heart. Not realistic for reasons already explained

• Big Trouble in Little China: At the start of the climactic battle, Jack lets off a blast from his semi-automatic weapon into the ceiling, causing debris to fall on him and knock him unconscious. Subversion of Firing in the Air a Lot

• Played subtly at the start of Blazing Saddles. No, quicksand is not an all-consuming demonic force of nature that swallows up everything in its path, and you won't even go in up to your neck, even if your waist does go under. The two men who sink in the quicksand pit are even able to get themselves out with just enough effort. And then, since quicksand is a construction hazard, the railroad company is forced to find a different path for the track as soon as the quicksand pit is discovered in its way. Aversion of Quicksand Sucks
  • Bart spends part of the movie trying to earn acceptance by a bunch of racist rubes, which to his frustration, doesn't happen overnight. His first day on patrol gets him called a "nigger" by an old lady. When Bart brings down an outlaw, the old lady does apologize, but still would prefer not be seen with him in public. Personal prejudices can be overcome, but it rarely happens overnight. Character reaction

• 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. Valid

• The Book of Masters: The main character is The Chosen One and finds himself fighting the forces of evil. However, he is a young stone-cutter, not very strong and with poor fighting skills, and in combat he can't hold his ground against the village drunkards, let alone invincible armed soldiers. But then he gets himself a shining Cool Sword that can cut through stone… and he still can't last a minute against invincible armed soldiers, because he is as inexperienced as before and vastly outnumbered. He ends up giving that sword away without having properly used it. Character inexperienced

• In Bowfinger, Bobby Bowfinger is trying to film his dream project Chubby Rain, despite having No Budget. But Bowfinger convinces his crew it can work, saying "Movies cost millions of dollars you say? That's after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash, every movie costs $2,184". Turns out no it doesn't, Bowfinger goes broke during production, so he has to steal Daisy's credit card to finance the rest of the film. Plot happens

• The Brady Bunch Movie has the Brady family being lauded by the judges for their act and get a high score in the show. That doesn't necessarily mean the audience agrees. Character reaction

• The Break-Up. When Gary and Brooke split at the beginning of the film, Brooke engages in wacky hijinks intended to make Gary jealous before reconciling. Instead, Brooke's efforts only alienate him even more. By the time she admits what her true intentions were-to force Gary to get his act together and appreciate her-Gary asks Brooke why she didn't simply tell him that instead of expecting him to read her mind. When Gary finally does make the typical Grand Romantic Gesture, Brooke tearfully admits that she no longer feels affection for him. When they part ways for good, Brooke also has the decency to admit to her role in the relationship's failure (unlike many romantic comedies which will make the woman blameless). The final meeting between Gary and Brooke in the film's epilogue indicates that even though they've made peace with each other, the relationship is permanently over. Character reaction

• Of all films, Bridget Jones' Baby double subverts this. Bridget and her friend Miranda are so desperate to get their baby father's identity they sabotage a live interview to get the info, which ends up being All for Nothing when the interview is rescheduled at the last minute. One would think due to being the lead that she'd get away with it, as everyone seems to forget... but that is quickly revealed to be because everyone was instead focusing on a new CEO being installed. Once the new boss settles in, they immediately fire Bridget and her friend, who had genuinely forgot about it. She promptly chews the new boss out then and there, effectively kissing any goodwill and chance at being rehired or gaining unemployment... and the camera follows her all the way to her house as she only realizes her new reality when looking in her fridge and realizing she had absolutely nothing to eat. Plot happens and character reaction

• Brightburn:
  • It doesn't matter how awesome your parenting is otherwise, nothing could prepare you for a kid developing superpowers, becoming influenced by technology beyond human understanding and suddenly revealing that his nature wasn't as human as you thought. Kyle and Tori did a great job raising Brandon, but are completely blindsided by the aforementioned factors and ultimately handle it... poorly. Character reaction to fantastical events

  • Being a Flying Brick means that you can't just slam into someone at full speed and expect them to come out fine. Case in point with Chief Deputy Deever, who's turned into paste as soon as Brandon hits him. Too fantastical

  • What you think of as a Grand Romantic Gesture can come off as extremely creepy if you're not careful about it. Caitlyn is rightfully freaked out by Brandon intruding in her bedroom and messing with her laptop. Character reaction

  • A heartbreaking example. Near the end of the movie, after Tori Breyer was calmed down her son Brandon after his rampage, she takes off his mask and hugs him. She tell him that, despite all he has done she still thinks there is good in him, and Brandon tells her he wants to do good. As they hug, Tori tries to stab Brandon in the back using a shard of the alien spacecraft that can hurt him. Despite the love she has for her son, after seeing the damage he has caused she can't trust him. Even more tragically, it is implied that Tori did get through to Brandon, but being betrayed by her destroyed whatever good he had left in him. After she tries to stab him, he killed her, and went on a rampage across the world massacring more people. Character reaction

• In Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman, Santiago attempts to buy a gun, but is told that he can't without a licence. In the end, he has to settle for an airsoft pistol: the most realistic looking replica the clerk is allowed to sell him. Plot happens

• Zig-zagged in Bruce Almighty.
  • Bruce kneels down in the middle of the freeway, gets hit by a truck and is instantly killed. The reality of what happens when you do that is lampshaded by God. However, he then wakes up in a hospital and is greeted by a doctor who says "somebody up there must like you". Not realistic. People don't come back to life

  • When Bruce actually gains God's powers temporarily, the trope is played straight as part of delivering the film's aesop: that God can't say yes to every prayer. Pulling the Moon closer to Earth to make a more romantic scene results in widespread flooding and other natural disasters, and granting everyone's prayers to win the state lottery results in thousands of winners receiving $17 each, causing a riot over accusations that the lottery is rigged. Too fantastical

  • One deleted scene has Bruce answering lots of prayers individually. Another one has God showing Bruce that they only benefited in the short-term, not in the long-term. For instance, one boy who was the constant victim of bullying prayed for strength to climb a rope. He got strong enough to fend off his bullies...and became a bully himself, eventually becoming a pro wrestler, testing positive for steroids, and ending up managing a fast food joint, when he originally would have channeled his memories of bullying into becoming a best-selling author. Too fantastical

• The low-budget film A Cadaver Christmas has a group of people fighting zombies in a university campus that's empty for the holidays. At the end of it, the survivors have managed to incapacitate all the zombies and hauled the bodies out to burn them. Cue a police patrol arriving to investigate the bonfire and the main characters arrested under suspicion of mass murder. Too fantastical

• Cast Away doesn't shy away from pointing out how unrealistic desert island survival is in television. At one point, the main character is shown having rather severe diarrhea thanks to a diet mainly consisting of coconuts and coconut milk. Robinsonade trope and also
  A case of Reality Is Unrealistic as in fact most deserted islands do offer plenty of fresh water and food provided that you know where to look and there are numerous recorded cases in which even people with little to no experience of living outside the conveniences of modern civilization managed to survive for quite a while before being rescued.

- "Gotta love crab. In the nick of time too. I couldn't take much more of those coconuts. Coconut milk is a natural laxative. That's something Gilligan never told us."

• Chappie:
  • The police laugh Vincent off when he tries to sell them on the Moose, because why do they need a giant robot that can take on military bases and aircraft to fight street crime? Character reaction to fantastical events

  • A fight between a normal human without heavy weapons and a Super Strong, Super Tough robot ends about as poorly for the human as you might expect. Which is exactly what happens in the final confrontation between Vincent and Chappie. Curb-Stomp Battle shoehorning

• The slasher movie Cherry Falls, the teens throw an orgy after discovering the killer is only targeting virgins. But an Ax-Crazy murderer isn't going to simply take their ball and go home just because their prey found a loophole. The killer basically says "screw it" and just starts killing his trapped victims at random. Character reaction

• Chronicle:
  • The whole film is this to Spider-Man and other teen superheroes. In that story, the angsty teenage outcast who gets superpowers winds up learning about his great responsibility and heroically fighting all manner of dastardly evil. Andrew, however, acts exactly like one would expect an angsty teenage outcast to act when given superpowers. It doesn't help that instead of an Uncle Ben, Andrew is stuck with an abusive, raging alcoholic for a parental figure. Deconstruction shoehorning

  • As the only one who both survives and learns his lesson, Matt is a Reconstruction. Also, considering that he actually cares about his cousin and was trying to steer him in the right direction, he might be the real Uncle Ben of the story. Reconstruction shoehorning

  • The movie also plays things much more different than classic depictions of teens displaying their powers. In the mall, while the three kids are just messing around, it's pretty funny and cool to see their powers. During the trucker scene, it is decidedly not funny. Deconstruction shoehorning

  • Andrew attempts to rob the neighborhood thugs by disguising himself with his dad's old uniform, including a face concealing mask. They all knew it was him. Subversion of Paper-Thin Disguise

• In Cinderella (2015), it shows exactly what would happen if a magically enchanted coach, coachmen, horses and footmen all revert to the original form while on the move. Cinderella is almost squashed inside the pumpkin while it shrinks. Some of the mice revert back to normal first, causing them to cling to the reins for dear life. The goose's hands becoming wings again causes the already unstable carriage to lose control. Too fantastical

• In The Clearing (2004), a kidnapper gets away with the ransom money after killing his prisoner anyway. A short time later, he is caught when he actually tries to spend the money. The clerk calls in the bill's serial number. Plot happens

• Collateral shows the downside of repeatedly using a Signature Move: it's extremely predictable and easy to exploit by anyone who knows your fighting style. When they're fighting in the train, Max manages to use this knowledge to get the upper hand on Vincent despite being much less experienced, as Vincent's use of the Mozambique drill means that the bullets only hit the carriage door of the train, while Max is able to shoot Vincent in the stomach by firing randomly at him. Deconstruction of Signature Move

• In Commando, Sully is slaughtering cops left and right during the mall shootout. His money man decides to join in. Just as the money man draws his gun, a cop quickly shoots him dead. Not surprising

• Cool Runnings: Throughout the film, Derice is shown to be in awe of the Swiss team, constantly mentioning them whenever he can ("The Swiss team this, the Swiss team that"). In one of the team's most depressed scenes, he starts "When the Swiss-" he doesn't even get to finish the sentence before his team starts yelling at him, with his own best friend telling him to "Shutup about the damn Swiss!" The fact is just because Derice held the Swiss up doesn't mean the others did and they had every right to get tired of Derice constantly comparing them to the Swiss and keep bringing the Swiss team up. Character reaction

• Count Yorga:
  • In an age where vampires are pretty commonplace in fiction, it doesn't take the protagonists long to consider the possibility that Yorga is one after seeing Erica's bite wounds and odd behavior. Of course they likewise are quick to doubt it too, since everything they've ever seen has told them that vampires are fictional. Character reaction to fantastical events

  • After Yorga kidnaps Erica, her boyfriend Paul goes to Yorga's manor in the hopes of saving her. Thing is, it's at night when Yorga is up and at his most active and he's a barely prepared human going up against supernatural monster. Unsurprisingly, Paul barely makes it inside before Yorga promptly chokes him to death and breaks his back for good measure. Even Hayes later lampshades how suicidal that move was. Too fantastical

  • Hayes's girlfriend convinces him to try and call the police when she cites a baby was found dead in a swamp with its neck chewed up. He attempts it, but but due to a rash of similar calls, they don't believe him. Character reaction

  • Hayes confronts Yorga after he brings him down into his throne room where his brides are sleeping in which his friend Erica is now among them. Of course just because he studied up on vampires, doesn't mean he's mentally prepared for it and he becomes shaken when Yorga mockingly laughs at him. Which end up leading to his death as he doesn't notices Yorga's brides awakening and creeping up on him. Character reaction

  • When Micheal is confronted by his now vampiric friend Erica after thwarting an ambush attempt and her pausing, giving him ample time to stake her. He tries to force himself to so...and can't. Even though she's an undead being he knows is now a danger, this was one of his friends who he knew when she was still human. So naturally he would hesitate. Ultimately he leaves without killing her and the most he can do at the end once he's rescued Donna is use his cross to ward her and a fellow vampire bride into a room and lock them in so the two vampires can't come after the Donna and him any further. Character reaction to fantastical events

  • Yorga is no doubt strong and can easily kill the hunters in a direct confrontation if he managed to get his hands on them. But that doesn't mean he can ignore the laws of inertia. He ends up accidentally impaling himself on Micheal's stake when he tries to rush him to choke him out. Cuttable ZCE

• Crank: High Voltage has a rare version Played for Laughs. At the end of the previous film, as Chevilos is falling several thousands of feet to his apparent death he phones his girlfriend and leaves a heartfelt goodbye to her. When he reunites with her in the second movie, he discovers that she never heard any of it - turns out falling that fast with that level of wind kicking up drowned out everything he said. An amusing case in a film that otherwise tries to be as over-the-top as it can. Deconstructive Parody shoehorning

• Crush: When Paige is talking to AJ near the end, many people around can't hear them (while the audience can of course) because they talk quietly, with one guy complaining continually over it. Not surprising

• Daredevil:
  • In the climax, after having been stabbed by Elektra and a rather brutal fight with Bullseye he can barely stand but decides to confront Big Bad Kingpin anyway and... gets beaten to a bloody pulp rather quickly. However Daredevil ultimately manages to win anyway, but only thanks to a Chekhov's Gun and a crippling lucky hit. Not surprising

  • Matt trashes a bar full of criminals, then barely drags himself into his apartment, spits out several broken teeth and pops a massive amount of painkillers for his injuries, and reveals a roadmap of scars as he showers. His super senses let him fight crime but also make it impossible to sleep outside of a sensory deprivation tank. His enhanced sense of touch also means he feels the pain from his injuries more acutely, explaining the high dose of medicine he takes. Too fantastical

  • Elektra's battle with Bullseye does not go her way at all as she barely lands any hits. Because he murdered her father, she spends the entire fight trying to stab him and scowling while he smiles and purposely invokes her wrath. Combined with her previous fighting with Daredevil wearing her out a bit, her years of martial arts training don't help when she's too angry to think straight and blindly swings and lashes her sai at him. The only reason she won her fights with Matt is because he wasn't trying to hurt her. Bullseye, despite thinking her pretty and wanting to kiss her, has no qualms doing so. He wins not by being a better fighter, but by not letting vengeful wrath get in his way. Character reaction

• Daybreakers has this in the form of the basic plot. 95% of humanity becomes vampiric, causing blood to have a much greater importance. However, with billions of vampires on the planet and with nowhere near that many regular humans, there's nowhere near enough blood to go around, and the central conflict revolves around both this and finding a way to cure humanity's rampant vampirism. Too fantastical

• Days of Wine and Roses depicts a married couple, Joe and Kristen, battling with alcoholism. Joe decides to sober up and joins Alcoholics Anonymous. He tries to get Kristen to sober up as well, but she clearly doesn't want to be helped and instead, he ends up relapsing. Joe does manage to get back on the wagon, but has to separate from his wife, and on top of that, live with the guilt that he was the one who got her to start drinking in the first place. Character reaction

• The Dead Center is a horror movie, but much of it is firmly grounded in reality.
  • John Doe is sent to the psych ward because he randomly showed up at the hospital, and the doctors couldn't figure out what's wrong with him. The fact that he's a reanimated corpse that escaped their morgue never crosses their minds. For all they know, he wandered in off the street, snuck into a bed, and fell into his catatonic state. Too fantastical and character reaction

  • Dr. Forrester admits John Doe into the ward because he knows that such a patient would likely get dumped in a corner somewhere and be forgotten instead of treated. He does this without doing any consent paperwork or even running it by Dr. Gray - his boss - who had just told him that all his cases had to be approved by her. This is illegal, and ends up coming back to haunt him. Plot happens

  • Working in an emergency psych ward is stressful; not only are some patients dangerous to themselves and others, but the place is sometimes understaffed, leaving gaps in care and security. Not an outcome

  • Dr. Forrester is great at his job, but his flouting of the rules and emotional issues aren't seen as quirky or endearing, but put a strain on his relationships with his coworkers. Character reaction

  • Dr. Gray is furious when she finds out what's been going on. It's not just about the personal betrayal, but the professional fallout. She's completely right to think that Dr. Forrester basically kidnapped, drugged, and assaulted a helpless patient. Had the whole Demonic Possession situation not happened, John Doe's family could've easily sued the hospital. Character reaction

• Death Sentence zig-zags the trope. The film is a revenge tale which, instead of following the Everyman protagonist on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the gang responsible for his son's death, has him kill the gang member who committed the murder and kick off a conflict that puts him, his wife and his other son in danger. However, in the climactic action scene he seems to have developed Improbable Aiming Skills while vastly outnumbered. Reality then ensues again when he's seen back in his house, mortally wounded. While he does manage to take out almost the entire gang singlehandedly (after his wife has been killed and his surviving son rendered comatose), he sustains mortal wounds in the process and the movie ends with him returning home to bleed out. Not realistic. Being able to massacre that many gang members by yourself is really stretching it

• This trope is present in the first Death Wish movie. Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson), an average middle class guy, turns into a murderous Vigilante Man after his wife is killed and his daughter raped into catatonia by a gang of street punks. Unlike most movies about vigilantism, Kersey never gets to meet, let alone kill, those responsible. After all, how would he even know what they looked like? And unlike the sequels, Kersey isn't a Crazy-Prepared fearless survivalist armed to the teeth. He's just a guy who has never killed anyone before, armed with a low-caliber revolver a friend gave him. The first time he kills a criminal, he runs home and throws up from the shock. Deconstruction of Vigilante Man

• Death Wish (2018): Kersey's first outing as a vigilante results 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 detective investigating the shooting quickly notice. Valid

• The Departed runs on this trope-deaths are abrupt and meaningless, there are no last-minute speeches, and it all happens so damn fast for the characters that they have no time to react. Plot happens
  • The Infernal Affairs Trilogy (the source inspiration) is even more so in that the one death in the aforementioned remake that actually has meaning to it never happens in the original. Irrelevant

  • Additionally, no one imagines for even a second that Costello could double down and have two Moles instead of just one, thus averting No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup. Character reaction

• After the huge Bar Brawl in Desperado, El Mariachia and the last thug left pull guns on each other simultaneously only to realize they're out of ammo. It takes several tries for either of them to find a gun that still has any ammo left after all the shooting that went on. Aversion of Bottomless Magazines

• Die Hard: Yes, the later films became increasingly unrealistic, but the first very deliberately subverted a lot of unrealistic action tropes:
  • John McClane witnesses a bunch of armed terrorists take his wife and her co-workers hostage. Does he immediately rise to the occasion and defeat the terrorists? No, he hides and calls for help, like any sane person would do. He avoids confronting them at all until it becomes clear that help isn't coming and he has no alternative. Character reaction

  • The film subverts the Made of Iron and Nerves of Steel action hero. A night of battling terrorists with no armor and bare feet leaves a you a physical wreck, and for all his wisecracks, McClane is clearly scared out of his mind. Character reaction

  • When McClane witnesses Hans murder Takagi, he feels bad about doing nothing, but is very aware that he has no chance against a room full of armed criminals. Character reaction

-McClane: Why didn't you try and stop him, John... Because then you'd be dead too, asshole!

• John's firing a gun into the air to scare the hostages off the roof before the bomb went off resulted in him being mistaken for a terrorist by the FBI. Had the building not blown up, the FBI agents could have easily killed McClane. Plot happens

• In the climax of Die Hard 2, John McClane comes face to face with the main villain, Col. Stuart, who has been previously shown to be much more skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Additionally, John is worn out and heavily injured from fighting all night. There isn't any Heroic Second Wind here: Stuart utterly hands John his ass with little difficulty, resulting in the villains nearly getting away with their plan. Character stronger than another character

• Also from Die Hard 2, the villains holding Dulles International simply take control of the airport's radio tower. The effectiveness in this is shown to deadly and horrifying effect when they shut down the airport's runway lights and impersonate air traffic control to give false landing information to a passenger jet. The jet crashes, killing all the passengers onboard. Plot happens

• In Die Hard with a Vengeance John has to explain how to use a gun to Zeus, since he's a civilian and has never used one. Since the explanation is rushed, and under very stressful conditions, John forgets that things that seem obvious to him (like the need to manually chamber the first round) wouldn't occur to someone who's never held a firearm before. Needless to say Zeus's attempt to shoot Simon does not go as planned. Plot happens

• McClane weaponizes this to kill Thomas Gabriel in Live Free or Die Hard as Gabriel is standing directly behind McClane with the gun pressed against John's body. McClane knows that at that close a distance, a bullet would travel through the body of the first person who was shot. John forces Gabriel to fire the gun, causing both of them to take the bullet, but while John takes it in a non-vital area and hangs on until medical aid arrives shortly after, Gabriel dies instantly. Plot happens

• In The Dirty Dozen, Major Reisman is tasked with turning a group of crazy, disobedient military prisoners into an elite fighting unit. This works during a training exercise but when they try it in real life things quickly start falling apart. The biggest setback is caused by The Sociopath going Ax-Crazy - what did they expect? Deconstruction of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits

• With the Dirty Harry films, the fifth one - The Dead Pool - actually shows the corpses of men that Harry shoots to get out of a sticky situation being removed after the incident. Cuttable ZCE
  • This happens in Die Hard 2 - corpses are seen being removed after gunfights. Cuttable ZCE

  • In Gran Torino, Walt deals with gang members in his area by threatening them with a shotgun. When they retaliate with a drive-by shooting, he retaliates by ambushing and beating some some of the gang members, and they respond by abducting and brutalizing one of the people he's trying to protect. It's a horrifyingly realistic portrayal of the Cycle of Revenge that would actually ensue if a vigilante tried to go to war with a group of violent thugs. Character reaction

  • The Dirty Harry films were practically built with this trope. Harry is a Cowboy Cop who happens to be a total arsehole with almost no friends; he's legendary but pretty much a Broken Ace. One of the first film's most famous scenes involved him tracking down a man who managed to avoid getting sent to prison and belting the shit out of him. Not only was Harry promptly the subject of justifiable rage by his captain, but the criminal expressed a desire to sue. Deconstruction of Cowboy Cop and character reaction

  • Harry's propensity towards overkill also bites him in the ass in the first film. Harry tries to capture the Scorpio killer, a Long-Distance Spree Killer who uses a marksman rifle to shoot at people from rooftops by setting up a sting where he and his partner attempt to ambush him from an adjacent roof. Harry's choice of weapon for this is a Winchester Model 70 chambered in .458 Winchester Magnum, a cartridge typically used for killing big game. However, such a bullet produces not only a massive amount of recoil, but fires on a parabolic trajectory, making it a poor choice for distance shooting. Needless to say, Harry misses every shot, and the Scorpio killer gets away, killing another police officer in the process. Deconstruction of There Is No Kill Like Over Kill

• Doctor Sleep: The True Knot are all quasi-immortal serial killers. Emphasis on "quasi-immortal"; they can still be hurt and even killed. And since they exclusively target children that they can easily overpower, they never consider Abra or any potential allies she might have a threat until she lures most of them into a trap, allowing Dan and Billy to pick them off in a hilariously one-sided gunfight. To wit; The True Knot are all using pistols and blindly firing in Dan and Billy's general direction, and Dan and Billy are hiding uphill, behind trees, and using scoped hunting rifles. Furthermore, while their consumption of Steam helps slow down the aging process, it can ultimately do only so much; entropy is a universal force for a reason, and Grampa Flick's death is from a lack of proper Steam consumption and the simple fact that he's too old for his body to keep up anymore. Too fantastical
  • In The Shining, it's mentioned that the murders that occured at the Overlook Hotel made it increasingly harder for the management to get anyone to keep working there and they were slowly going out of business. So it isn't that much of a surprise when it turns out that after Jack went nuts, the place was finally seen as too much of a hassle to keep running and so was finally closed down by the time of this move. In reality, a Hell Hotel like the Overlook or other similarly haunted location wouldn't be able to keep running for any notable length of time after a series of high-profile murders. Deconstruction of Hell Hotel
    • Adding to the above, in the novel, the Overlook's destruction allowed Wendy and Hallorann to cover up Jack's rampage, saying he died heroically. It helped he was more sympathetic and never killed anyone. As the Overlook was never destroyed until the end of this film, combined with Jack murdering Hallorann in the previous film, his crimes became public knowledge. Plot happens

• Dog Day Afternoon practically runs on this, mostly because it was based on real life events. What happens when you try to rob a bank without double checking your information and not really thinking things through? You end up with no money, lots of hostages, a partner having a nervous breakdown, a media frenzy, panicking family members, and increasingly tense negotiations with the authorities. Sonny manages to last twelve hours. When it's down to the last few moments, the FBI enact their plan by killing Sal - the far more dangerous of the two criminals - and arresting Sonny at gunpoint. It turns out that having an explosive personality and being a media darling doesn't make you immune from the law. The film even ends with him being read his Miranda Rights! Plot happens

• Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead:
  • A positive example. Sue Ellen lies about her age and gets a job at a fashion firm. Eventually, she ends up impressing her boss Rose with innovative ideas. However, her bitchy co-worker Carolyn exposes Sue Ellen's real age to Rose...but instead of being impressed, Rose calls Carolyn out for thinking that backstabbing an employee - especially one who is trying to save their company - will earn her favor. Character reaction

  • After the babysitter dies, Sue Ellen says that she will just get a job at a fancy clothing store to pay for bills. Not realizing that no haute couture shop is going to hire a 17 year old with no experience, she ends up as a Burger Fool. Plot happens

• Dracula Untold:
  • A minor example, but the first time Mehmet breaks off a stake, he has to discard it since it didn't have a sharp end. Cuttable ZCE

  • In a move crossing over with Too Dumb to Live, when Mehmet's men are too afraid of what they've seen Dracula do to want to fight him, he declares you can't fear what you can't see and blindfolds his entire army. Unsurprisingly, Dracula has an even easier time, and one could argue that Vlad's human army could have wiped them out at that point^note  However, this was part of a Batman Gambit by Mehmet so that he and a much smaller force could sneak inside the castle and kidnap Dracula's wife and son. Too fantastical

• Dr. Terror's House of Horrors: If you drive a Wooden Stake through your wife's heart, the police will arrest you. Not surprising

• El Camino takes place in the immediate aftermath of the explosive finale to Breaking Bad: Jesse Pinkman might be free from his captivity at the hands of a neo-Nazi gang, but he is now wanted by the police - not just because of his affiliation to Walter "Heisenberg" White, but because the compound he had just escaped from was the scene of a brutal mass-shooting that left said skinheads and Walter dead. And that's before getting into the psychological damage Jesse endured during the time he was Made a Slave. Plot happens

• Enchanted:
  • Giselle, a Disney Princess brought into the real world, is a Friend to All Living Things who can summon animals with singing. In her fantasy world, she was often surrounded by friendly woodland animals like squirrels, rabbits, and deer fauns, but when in New York, she tries out her summoning song again. The result? She still summons animals, but the species you'd be more likely to find in grungy New York, such as pigeons, rats, and cockroaches. Too fantastical

  • After inviting Giselle to sleep on the couch in his apartment, Robert has his daughter Morgan stay and sleep in his room for the night because all Robert knows about Giselle is that she is a stranger who thinks she is a princess. Character reaction

  • Prince Edward abruptly stops in a middle of a path to start singing. He promptly gets knocked over by several cyclists. Deconstructive Parody shoehorning

• In Ender's Game, when Ender and his team beat the final test, they were initially pleased and jumping for joy. But once they realized it wasn't a test simulation and they really did bring a species to extermination, they were horrified. Character reaction

• Epic Movie:
  • The climax features the four siblings arriving to battle the White Bitch... only to find out that their army pulled a Screw This, I'm Outta Here after Susan threw up all over the soldiers the night before. The four of them gloriously charge the White Bitch's army... and get slaughtered without landing a single hit. They only survive and win thanks to a Plot Device. Curb-Stomp Battle shoehorning

  • To a lesser extent, when Captain Jack Swallows takes Edward to his ship, Edward is fascinated by the life of a pirate (set to a song). Jack then points to the side, revealing that the ship isn't real and a part of a theme park. Plot happens

• Escape from L.A.: Snake goads some mooks to see how fast they can shoot, by getting them to put their guns and not fire till his can hits the ground. When he flips it he shoots them all while they're distracted by their eyes on the can. Character reaction

• The 2016 Bollywood movie Fan is about Gaurav, a Loony Fan who looks very similar to Bollywood superstar Aryan Khanna (a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Shah Rukh Khan). Both characters are played by the same actor, but instead of being Inexplicably Identical Individuals, most Bollywood movies are known for, Aryan and Gaurav look very different. Gaurav is almost half the age of Aryan, has a more Delhi-accent (his hometown), he is a lot skinnier than the still lean, but slightly more muscular Aryan, is slightly shorter (achieved via Scully Box) has a differently shaped nose etc (these were all achieved via a combination of CGI and make up and prosthetics as well as brilliant acting from the actor). Nevertheless, Gaurav still manages to defame Aryan using his similar appearance and skills of mimicking the superstar. Subversion of Inexplicably Identical Individuals
  • There are two chase sequences where Aryan chases Gaurav. The chase results in a lot of fights, Le Parkour and usages of Improvised Weapons on each other. However, unlike most action-thriller movies, this takes a toll on both the characters as the former is an actor approaching his fifties, while the other is still a twenty five year old man but with little-to-no training for such long sprints and fights. Characters are unathletic

  • In the climax, when Aryan eventually manages to corner Gaurav, he proceeds to punch him, but the almost fifty year old actor starts bleeding while Gaurav simply takes those punches. Although, he does stumble and fall down, he manages pull a Sneak Attack, gaining the upper hand yet again. Throughout the fight, neither Aryan, nor Gaurav have enough energy left and the two can barely stand and form coherent sentences without pausing to catch their breath. Victory by Endurance shoehorning

• In Fargo, Wade, whose daughter has been kidnapped, tries to be a Papa Wolf. He ignores his son-in-law Jerry (who says that the kidnappers gave specific instructions about him being the one who made contact and delivered the money) and charges off to the drop-off himself with a concealed pistol. His Clint Eastwood act when confronting Showalter is completely ineffective, resulting in the latter shooting and killing him out of sheer exasperation, and exacerbates the danger to his daughter's life even further. Plot happens
  • Earlier on, after kidnapping Jean, Showalter and Grimsrud get pulled over by a state trooper because the car Jerry gave them doesn't have temporary tags. Showalter's first instinct is to try and bribe the trooper. Who's not having it and tells Showalter to get out of the car. It's not impossible for police officers to be corrupt in real life, but the vast majority of them aren't going to look the other way no matter how much money you offer them. You wave a few hundred dollars in a cop's face, and you're just giving them a reason to arrest you. Character reaction

• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: What kickstarts this film's plot: Sean gets into a fight with some rich kid who challenges him to a race at a construction site for a new neighborhood. The race gets so intense, that several houses get mouseholed by Sean driving through them and him and the rich kid end up crashing. They get arrested for illegal street racing, trespassing, and destruction of property, but only Sean gets in any trouble thanks to the rich kid's parents bailing him out. Then, to avoid getting him jailed, Sean's mother sends him-by himself-to live with his father. In Japan. Plot happens

• The Fate of the Furious has Roman spot a bright orange Lamborghini in Mr. Nobody's collection and asks to use it on the next mission. He's denied, but they let him use it for the next mission. Said mission takes place in a polar region where the Lamborghini is completely unsuited for the terrain. Also, the car's bright orange paint job makes it an easily visible target. Not surprising

• Feeding Frenzy: Played for comedy after a completely gratuitous Fanservice sequence of three girls in their underwear having a pillow fight. When we cut back, the whole bedroom is covered in pillow feathers, and the three girls are stoically trying to clean up. Plot happens

• In Final Justice, some dialogue near the start of the film explains that Sheriff Geronimo was involved in a shootout in Dallas, during which he killed a lot of people ("I bagged my limit that day, that's for sure!") including a senator's brother who was "doing dirty." Sounds like the climax of a typical cop movie, except that instead of riding off into the sunset as the big hero, Geronimo ended up Reassigned to Antarctica, and with an Achey Scar inside him that forces him to drink Maalox or milk after every meal to prevent it from hurting too much. Plot happens
  • To say nothing about how his continued Cowboy Cop antics in a foreign country frequently lands him in police custody. Turns out, most governments don't like it when a foreigner decides to start shooting bad guys without warning. Deconstruction of Cowboy Cop

• In Friday Night Lights, Boobie gets hurt playing football, and his doctor tells him to rest so as not to exacerbate the injury. But then, Boobie decides that the Permian Panthers need him too badly in a crucial game, and decides to play through his injury. Not long after he gets on the field, the injury takes him right back out, and this time it's so bad that it ends his football career before he's even out of high school. If a trained medical professional tells you not to do something, listen to them! Not surprising
  • A similar premise is explored in Varsity Blues, as Coach Kilmer, beloved by the town, pushed his players to keep going despite their injuries, giving them painkillers to let them ignore it. This eventually caused the first-string quarterback to have so much scar tissue in his knee that it became a Career-Ending Injury, losing him a college scholarship and setting the movie's events in motion. Billy-Bob's concussion plot arc has also become much Harsher in Hindsight due to [[ wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy the discovery of CTE since the movie came out]]. Plot happens

• In Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, the killer isn't Jason Voorhees, but a copycat who, while obviously insane, is just a regular person and lacks Jason's inhuman durability or resistance to pain. In the final confrontation, Tommy Jarvis is able to severely injure and subsequently kill the man. Not surprising

• In G.B.F., after Tanner isn't allowed to attend prom with another guy, Fawcett sets up an alternate 'inclusive' prom, whilst the school-sanctioned prom prides itself as supporting 'family values'. The runners of the school-sanctioned prom then set up homophobic posters, and it seems like it's going to be the two sides sniping at each other... only for the principal to haul McKenize, Caprice, Brent, and the rest of the school prom planners into his office to severely reprimand them for the posters, and then cancel the school prom instead of suspending all of them. And on top of that, the alternate prom is still allowed to be held as it's an outside project beyond the principal's jurisdiction. Character reaction

• Get Hard:
  • Trying to suck someone else's dick when you're not homosexual isn't as easy as it looks, and it may become rather traumatizing as a result. Character reaction

  • Darnell never has a criminal record, thus he never used a gun in his life. While trying to use it on Gayle, he fails to shoot it due to the safety being on. Plot happens

  • Due to James not having a license to own a gun, he gets arrested for holding one in the open. Luckily, he's able to work out a plea deal where he gets a reduced sentence in exchange for helping the FBI track down all of the assets Martin stole. Plot happens

• Ghostbusters (1984) ended with a triumphant victory for the heroes, but the sequel shows the aftermath. The defeat of Gozer calmed the psychic dimension, allowing the ghosts to rest at peace once again and putting the ghostbusting services out of business. On top of that, the amount of property damage, code violations (thank you, Walter Peck for doing your job), and other offenses committed throughout the first movie have come back to haunt them in the form of multiple lawsuits suing them into bankruptcy. At the start of the second movie, they're working odd jobs from TV show hosts to children's parties. Aftermath for fantastical events
  • In the first movie, the Ghostbusters rush up the stairs of Dana's apartment to defeat Gozer. 18 floors later, and the quartet are completely winded. There's a reason buildings weren't built past six stories before the invention of elevators. Valid

  • In the second movie, the team is put on trial and, because they can't afford a high priced lawyer and have trouble finding a public defense attorney willing to take their case, they get Louis to defend them because he's studied law. However, in an aversion of the Omnidisciplinary Lawyer trope, Louis has only studied tax and probate law (because he's an accountant) and knows nothing about criminal trials. Sure enough, he completely botches the defense and the team only avoids jail due to the sudden appearance of ghosts. Plot happens

  • A positive example in the 2009 video game (and de facto third movie): Because of the Statue of Liberty incident in the second film more than proving that, yes, the supernatural is a real threat, the city has now hired the 'Busters as contractors with Hero Insurance to cover the damages they cause. Too fantastical

• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra:
  • After The Reveal, the Commander and Destro are promptly captured. Despite Ana breaking free of her mind control, she's still under arrest until they can figure out how to get the nanites out. Too fantastical

  • Both times the Joes save a city, they're arrested immediately afterward for freaking out the cops with supertech antics. The French make it clear that they'd rather have lost Paris than been rescued by the Joes. Zartan didn't seem confident enough in his POTUS disguise to pull anything similar, so he pays off Ripcord's Hero Insurance and sends him back to The Pit. Character reaction

• As funny as Tiffany Haddish's character is in the movie Girls Trip, nobody in real life with her attitude would be able to hold a job for long, and she fares no better in fiction. When Dina physically assaults her coworker for eating her yogurt, she is promptly fired for it. Apparently, it wasn't the first time she had physically assaulted a coworker either. Dina's manager even tells her to grow up. Manchild Deconstruction

• Gladiator:
  • The hulking German Chieftain at the beginning is not killed in an epic one-to-one against Maximus. In fact, they don't even fight or share a scene together. The Chieftain is killed by being stabbed multiple times by nameless Roman soldiers. Valid

  • Toward the end of the film, Commodus stabs Maximus in order to get an unfair advantage during their match. But since Maximus is a veteran general, and Commodus only occasionally indulged in swordplay, Maximus still beats him although he dies from the stab wound anyway. Character more skilled than another character

• Glass (2019):
  • The fights between the Overseer and the Beast, rather than being slick and highly choreographed like in a modern superhero film, consist of the two of them using heavy punches, slams, and attempts to choke one another out. They are, after all, two completely untrained people who both get by on the fact they have super strength. Plot happens

  • The Overseer is killed in an entirely anticlimactic way via simple drowning, as he is still Unskilled, but Strong, is still recovering from nearly drowning in the tank, and is faced with people prepared for his abilities. Not surprising

  • Modern communications and recording technology makes covering things up far harder. The Ancient Conspiracy finds its millennia-old masquerade broken through a single video leaked on the Internet. Plot happens

• In The Godfather, there are no big gunfights, no epic Last Stands. A man caught unprepared by armed and ready ambushers indeed has no chance. For example, in Sonny Corleone's death, there is no Heroic Second Wind where he gets up and takes some of his attackers with him, no Final Speech, just getting shot and shot again until he's dead. Similarly, Authority Equals Asskicking is not in action; the four other Dons don't get any final speeches, any epic fight scenes, just simple assassinations. This even holds true in the video game adaptation; all except one, who barely has time to gasp, "I knew it would be you," before you blow him away. Genre Deconstruction shoehorn
  • Physically confronting a domestic abuser does not end the abuse, even if you're a Mafia don with the ability to make your sister's abuser truly suffer. Unless you order a hit on the guy at the end of the movie. Character reaction

• Godzilla vs. Gigan: While he's definitely Overdrawn at the Blood Bank, Godzilla gets progressively more fatigued the more blood he loses, as if he were going through the early stages of shock. Valid

• In The Golden Child, the Big Bad Sardo Numspa attempts to have Jarrell arrested, claiming that the latter stole a dagger from him. Numpsa needs the dagger to kill The Chosen One, and he believes that either Jarrell will give him the dagger to avoid arrest, or that the police will simply hand it over to him after arresting Jarrell. Jarrell gleefully agrees to be arrested, then takes a moment to explain the rules of evidence handling to Numpsa: Jarrell will be arrested, and the dagger held in police custody as evidence for his trial, which might not happen for months, maybe even over a year. Since Numpsa has to kill the child within a specific time frame that's closing fast, this means that Numpsa would have to storm police headquarters to get a hold of the dagger instead of fighting a few lightly armed members of a secret society. Numpsa is forced to publicly back off of his accusations and let Jarrell go free rather than risk storming a police station. Not an outcome

• Goldfinger: It initially seems like Goldfinger is planning on breaking into Fort Knox and robbing all of the gold stored inside to make himself more wealthy, just like in the original novel. James Bond points out to Goldfinger that, realistically, it would take a bare minimum of 12 days to move the gold out of Fort Knox and Goldfinger would have only two hours before law enforcement is on top of him. Goldfinger agrees, revealing that his real plan is to set off a dirty bomb and irradiate the gold, rendering it unusable and increasing the value of his own stocks. Not an outcome

• In Good Burger, Ed and Dexter both discover their rival Kurt is using illegal food additives in his burgers. Ed, rather than try to take a sample with him to report Kurt to the police, dumps it into the meat supply, causing a very public disaster that leads to Kurt's arrest. When Dexter asks him why, Ed rapidly explains to Dexter that just bringing the evidence to the police won't automatically result in his arrest, since Kurt could easily hire a lawyer to protect himself. Never mind that said lawyer could probably weave a convincing case against the two for breaking and entering Kurt's property. Dexter was shocked that Ed thought of that. Not an outcome

• Goodfellas:
  • Tommy and Jimmy discuss Bullet Dancing, and decide to try it on their waiter to amuse themselves. Of course, the poor guy doesn't actually have the reflexes to dodge it, so he is shot in the foot and needs to go to the hospital. Subversion of Bullet Dancing

  • Even if Billy Batts acted like a jerk towards him, Tommy should have known that killing a made man of The Mafia is a death sentence. Didn't Think This Through shoehorning

• The Gray Man (2022):
  • Lloyd orders a hit squad to assassinate Six after he is detained by the police in the middle of a public square, in spite of the fact that several armed police officers including a SWAT team are present. The result is a chaotic gunfight where the assassins are so preoccupied with fending off the police that they're unable to get a clear shot in at Six, and most of them wind up being killed. Plot happens

  • During the hospital fight, Six throws Miranda a gun, which she only realizes is unloaded when she attempts to fire at Lone Wolf. When she calls out Six, he points out that throwing a loaded gun is insanely reckless and questions why she'd assume a highly trained black ops operative such as himself would engage in such a flagrant violation of gun safety. Not an outcome

• The Great Muppet Caper actually features consequences for Worst News Judgement Ever. In the movie, Kermit and Fozzie are reporters for a metropolitan newspaper, and their first article is a front-page banner story about identical twins (them) joining the paper, completely missing Lady Holiday, the fashion queen of London, getting robbed right behind them, while all the rival newspapers end up covering the robbery. Their editor is so furious, Kermit is barely able to talk him out of firing them. Character reaction

• In the infamous ending of The Great Silence; the hero valiantly confronts the gang of bounty hunters lead by the villainous Loco, despite being injured, outnumbered, and knowing he's walking straight into a trap. There's no last minute rescue, no high-action shoot-out with the gang, not even a valiant last stand, they just shoot him down before he even has a chance to draw his gun. Not surprising

• Green Lantern (2011) hilariously averts the typical Paper-Thin Disguise when Hal visits Carol wearing his costume and a Domino Mask. Aversion of Paper-Thin Disguise

- Carol: I've known you my whole life! I've seen you NAKED! You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?!

• Half Baked: During the course of the movie, Thurgood is struggling with giving up marijuana, so he decides to go to a rehab meeting. When he announces he is there because he is addicted to marijuana, the crowd….promptly rips into him, yelling at and booing him for wasting their time. As funny as the scene is, it is INCREDIBLY realistic. To someone who was so addicted to cocaine he gave oral sex to another man for it, your missing recreational pot smoking is something he won't take seriously, and Thurgood is promptly booed out the meeting. Character reaction

• In He's Just Not That into You, Janine goes into a fit of rage over Ben's infidelity, flinging his clothes around and ultimately smashing a mirror-and her fit ends instantly as she realizes that she now has a huge mess to clean up. Plot happens

• Highlander: The survivalist Kirk Matunas is Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by the Kurgan, who wants to kill him both for shooting him and because he witnessed a Quickening. However, the Kurgan is underestimating both the resilience of humans and modern medical technology; a gut wound of that kind isn't trivial, but completely survivable with prompt access to a modern surgical ward. Plot happens

• A History of Violence does not shy away from realistically portraying the consequences of violence. Deaths are abrupt, bloody, and disturbing. When the teenage Jack snaps and fights back against the school bully, the next scene we see is him at home, suspended, with possible criminal charges hanging over his head. Deconstructor Fleet shoehorn

• The Hobbit Trilogy:
  • This happens to poor Thorin in the first film's climax. He is surrounded by fire, accompanied by an epic soundtrack, carries the shield that gave him his nickname and charges Azog, who is responsible for the deaths of Thorin's grandfather and possibly his father as well. Azog also happens to be seated on a huge Warg. Cue Thorin being thrown to the ground several times and then actually picked up and nearly crushed between the Warg's jaws. He sustained serious injuries and would have died if it weren't for Bilbo. Didn't Think This Through shoehorn

  • The Company, rather than taking on large opponents and overwhelming numbers, are forced to retreat more than once. Plot happens

  • Another from the first film, silencing an orc witness is not as easy as it seems, since Kli's aim was off and the victim's screams soon alerted the rest of the orc pack to where the dwarves were. Too fantastical

  • All the build up Smaug got in the previous films proved how unimportant he became the moment he got killed in the third film. Life goes on and the humans have a war with the Orcs to settle. Plot happens

  • Thorin returning to his senses and rallying the Company into leading Dain's army in a charge against the orc army is treated as an epic Big Damn Heroes moment, but it's soon made clear that twelve more dwarves joining the fight is not going to make up for the orcs' numbers advantage. Thorin is well aware of this: his ultimate plan is to find Azog and kill him, depriving the orcs of their leadership. Aversion of Conservation of Ninjutsu

• In Home Alone, Marv (the dumber half of the "Wet Bandits") thinks that flooding the houses that they rob is an immensely clever Calling Card. This means that when they're arrested, the cops easily identify which houses they hit. (And no doubt add destruction-of-property charges to the burglary charges.) Deconstructed Trope of Calling Card

• Hot Fuzz is all about this for the first half, with Nicholas Angel explaining over and over to his new partner Danny how reality just doesn't work like action movies, such as when Angel has to take physical therapy after taking down a deranged Father Christmas (the hand's still a bit stiff). Then the second half plays it for laughs, invoking every single trope he'd shot down earlier. He is right about at least one thing, though: you can't have an action sequence that huge and spectacular without an absolute mountain of paperwork to deal with afterwards, both in terms of processing all the arrests and the sheer amount of property damage. In short, it's double subverted. Decon-Recon Switch Shoehorn

• How the Grinch Stole Christmas!:
  • After the Grinch overloads his sleigh with presents, it becomes so heavy that its rocket engines can't even remotely lift it off the ground, prompting him to make Max drag it all the way up the mountain. Plot happens

  • Towards the end, when Cindy begins singing "Welcome Christmas", everyone joins in and sings with her in harmony... except the Grinch, who only ad-libs what he's hearing at best. If somebody has never heard a song (at least not often enough), chances are they can't sing along to it very well. Not surprising

• Ang Lee's Hulk shows events with realistic consequences.
  • After spending thirty years in prison for killing his wife, David Banner grew a Beard of Evil that is unshaved. He also deeply regretted the accidental death of Edith, which made him have a mental breakdown alongside losing his son to Mrs. Krenzler. Character reaction

  • General Ross threatens Bruce to go to jail because he doesn't want him to end up like David. Character reaction

• The Hunger Games:
  • Firearms are completely banned from the titular games, because in that setting they would give any tribute a ridiculous advantage with very little effort. Also, a large part of the games is them being marketed to Capitol citizens who want a good show, and just watching teenagers shoot each other year after year would be boring. Not an outcome

  • In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, given that District 13's original expertise involved military hardware, it's no surprise that firearms are in abundance. Even Gale trades his crossbow for a gun when he joins a covert mission to rescue Peeta and the other Victors. Plot happens

  • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2:
    • When Katniss tries swaying the remaining pro-Capitol "loyalists" in District 2, one of them just fires a pistol point-blank at her chest. A good thing though that her outfit was designed to be bulletproof, even if it left her with some injuries. Character reaction

    • When Katniss and Gale try to sneak into Snow's manor by posing as refugees, they disguise themselves with hooded cloaks to make sure nobody sees their faces. Unfortunately, Peacekeepers are in the crowd, checking every refugee who passes through. Also, the rebels get the same idea as Katniss. Plot happens

    • The ending. The rebellion is ultimately successful, but it came at the cost of thousands of innocent lives, including Katniss's sister Primrose. After all is said and done, Katniss is left to live alone in the charred remnants of District 12 since she and her mother can hardly be around each other without being reminded of the family member they lost. Peeta follows her to District 12 to care for her and they end up married with children, but this doesn't erase the PTSD that resulted of living through a war that she inadvertently set off. Character has truama

• I Care a Lot: The main character, a talented grifter, spends the entire movie matching wits with a dangerous, resourceful mafia boss. He follows the predictable playbook of torture, long monologues, legal intimidation and Make It Look Like an Accident, and pushes her to the brink of death and despair - but in the end, she triumphs against all odds, in part because these elaborate methods are designed to allow him plausible deniability, and are full of loopholes to be exploited by people who e.g. do a lot of Cardio. But following that, she is shot dead in the middle of the street at high noon by the bearded, unkempt, semi-unhinged nobody whose mother she victimized at the start of the film and whose life she has completely ruined. All her grit and sophistication could not save her from someone with no connections, no modus operandi and nothing to lose. Character reaction

• I Spit on Your Grave: For a horror film, there's actually quite a bit that's Truth in Television.
  • In the remake:
    • Saying you're sorry for raping, torturing and trying to kill your victim doesn't really cut it. In Jennifer's words: "It's just not GOOD ENOUGH!" Character reaction

    • Even if you're a cold-blooded murderer and rapist, if you're a parent and find that your kid has been kidnapped, you're going to panic. Character reaction

  • In the second film:
    • After Katie's second escape, having been horribly raped and tortured, even the simple act of standing is painful for her at first. Injuries take time to heal, and by the end of the film, Katie still has visible scars on her face. Not surprising

  • In the third film:
    • Yes, it has been several years and she apparently got away with her revenge. But that doesn't mean you automatically get better. Jennifer is shown to have nightmares and flashbacks. She eventually decides to seek help. Character reaction

    • No longer being a successful writer means you have to find other means of employment. She works in an office, lives in a low-rent apartment, and doesn't own a car. Building a new life is not easy and involves a lot of work. Plot happens

    • Even if someone has a history of domestic abuse, if there's no evidence that someone killed their ex-girlfriend, you have to release him. Not surprising

    • You might be able to temporarily frighten a rapist into stopping, or even apologizing. In time though he'll get right back to raping his stepdaughter. Character reaction

    • No matter how careful you are to leave no traces behind, killing two people (and attempting to kill a third) that have clear connections to the rape support group you're a member of is guaranteed to bring the police right to you. Plot happens

    • Even if you try to be nice and talk someone down, if someone pulls a knife, you get out of Dodge fast, which is what Jennifer's office co-worker did. Not surprising

    • Sure, you've been able to torture and kill two men and had killed another five in the past. That doesn't necessarily mean that following a guy who is larger and physically stronger with no real plan is a good idea. It ends with her being beaten to a pulp, sexually assaulted and nearly raped and killed. Character weaker than another character

    • The lead investigator tries to bluff Jennifer into confessing after questioning her about the incident in the alley. Jennifer wisely clams up, asks for a lawyer and gets out on bail. Just because police say "we've got you" doesn't really mean that they do. Plus, her answers to her questions about what led to being attacked in the alley are perfectly plausible and reasonable. Character reaction

    • Walking long distances in heels isn't very comfortable. Jennifer removes hers and walks barefoot at one point. Not surprising

    • It doesn't matter how sympathetic you are or what has happened to you. If you're armed with a weapon and about to stab someone to death, you're gonna get shot if you don't follow a police officer's orders to stop. Not surprising

    • Just because the court orders you to attend therapy doesn't mean it'll make you better, as Jennifer demonstrates after her last session. Character has trauma that doesn't go away

• Indiana Jones:
  • Indy's Establishing Character Moment in Raiders of the Lost Ark. A swordsman makes the crowd around himself and Indy part, displaying some impressive sword skills. Indy, not impressed, simply pulls out his gun and shoots the swordsman dead. (Bonus Real Life points for why Indy does this: Harrison Ford was supposed to fight the swordsman in an epic battle; however, Ford was sick and talked Spielberg into having him just shoot the swordsman instead. Ford's look of disdain reflects in-character as well as ending the frustration of setting up the original take.) Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight trope

  • In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Donovan shoots Henry Jones Sr. to force Indy to bring back the Grail.

-Donovan: (points a gun at Indy) The Grail is mine. And you're going to get it for me.
Indy: Shooting me won't get you anywhere.
Donovan: (Beat) You know something, Doctor Jones? You're absolutely right. (shoots Henry in the stomach)

• Inglourious Basterds:
  • Zoller continually makes unwanted advances on Shosanna, which she does her best to deflect with relative restraint (considering that she's a Frenchwoman in Nazi occupied France and secretly Jewish, she has a lot of reason to not get him outright angry at her), but it eventually culminates in him becoming hostile towards her. Running out of time and patience for his attempts at living out a Meet Cute movie romance with her while she enacts a plan to try to destroy the Nazi High Command, she promptly shoots him when he is on the edge of either learning the truth of her plans or outright causing them to fail. After a while, it turns out that Zoller is not quite dead, and Shosanna has second thoughts about what she did, so she goes to check on him-and gets shot dead in return. Character reaction

  • A Mexican Standoff is a very dangerous situation that can easily turn into a bloodbath. When the characters get their cover blown in a bar full of armed enemies, it doesn't matter that they've been important figures in the movie or how much witty banter gets thrown around during the standoff, no one except von Hammersmark makes it out alive. (And she still got shot in the leg and survived mostly thanks to luck and laying still on the floor), Yep, even Michael Fassbender's character, who we spent the last 15 minutes getting to know, and Til Schweiger's character, who is a legendary Nazi killer who had been built up earlier in the film, die abruptly and anti-climactically. Plot happens

  • Spy movies (or movies with spies in them), often gloss over how exactly difficult it is for a spy to speak a foreign language in a country and culture that isn't their own and give absolutely no sign that they are out of place. It doesn't matter how fluent you are in another language, there are so many nuances and differences even in phrases that are similar that can tip off someone, not to mention issues with accents and cultural norms that must be known and accounted for so that a spy doesn't stand out. Despite speaking excellent German, Hicox has an accent that is noticed as soon as he opens his mouth around native German speakers. While he manages to tell a story to cover for it, he promptly tips off the suspicious Nazi sharing a table with him by making a gesture while ordering drinks that is out of place for Germans, proving that he is not who he says he claims to be. Genre Deconstruction shoehorning

• Into the Wild: Based on a true story, Christopher McCandless becomes disgruntled with the modern world and decides to live in the Alaskan wilderness, but arrogantly refuses to take any wilderness survival lessons, a compass, or map, believing that living off the land will be easy. He learns the hard way that Nature Is Not Nice and if you don't know what you are doing, you're going to have a miserable time. Once his provisions run out, he attempts to hunt animals, but can barely find any since animals are good at hiding and don't come out just because you want them to. When he does manage to kill a moose, he doesn't know how to preserve the meat and it spoils quickly. After a while, he panics and tries to go home despite earlier denouncing modern society, but the stream he had earlier crossed became a raging water due to the spring thaw and cannot be crossed. Since he didn't bring a map, he doesn't realize there are alternate routes he could have used to get home. Desperate and starving, he gathers plants to eat, but eats a poisonous plant that he probably could have identified if he took wilderness survival and dies. Nature Is Not Nice trope

• The Interview: Dave and Aaron junk their original plan to kill Kim Jong Un, instead deciding to expose his atrocities in their interview with Kim to make North Koreans question their leader. Kim Jong Un briefly appears blindsided by the accusations... but instead of caving in, Kim skillfully deflects Dave's questions before pointing out all the things wrong in America, like its high prison population. Dave suddenly appears horribly out of his depth, and obviously doesn't fully understand these issues or how to respond since his specialty is celebrity interviews and he is not a political expert. However, Dave had another ace up his sleeve. Character reaction

• Invasion U.S.A. (1985): The terrorists find themselves surrounded by heavily armed National Guard troops who have tanks and helicopter gunships. Rather than surrender, they open fire. While killing some National Guardsmen, they are all killed in short order. Not surprising

• Ip Man:
  • Master Liu, who's been kicking arse and taking names in one-on-one duels, tries to up the difficulty to take three karateka at once. It doesn't end well. Not surprising

  • Ip attempts Training the Peaceful Villagers so that his friend's factory workers can defend themselves against the bandits. It doesn't work. Deconstruction of Training the Peaceful Villagers

  • At the end, after beating General Miura, Ip Man stands around and thinks of the cost of war. Then, as promised, he is shot for not throwing the match. He survives, but it's still a very striking moment. Plot happens

  • In Ip Man 2, Master Hung is an Old Master... which means he doesn't have the stamina to keep up with the younger Twister. Not surprisng

• It (2017) :
  • Georgie being Dead All Along — turns out getting an arm ripped off isn't something most people could survive, let alone a prepubescent child. Not surprising. This is a remake after all

  • Before one of the visits into the house on Neibolt Street, Richie grabs a glass bottle and smashes it against the railing to try and 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 on to. Valid

  • Kids swearing. It happens, and the movie doesn't pretend otherwise. Especially when this is taking place in The '80s. Cuttable ZCE

• Jackie Chan protagonists engage in as much of the Theatrics of Pain as the people he defeats. Turns out getting punched and punching people hurts, even for a trained martial artist. Not surprising

• Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back begins with Dante and Randall finally calling the cops on the titular duo for loitering and drug-dealing. Plot happens

• Jennifer's Body: If you murder your best friend with a knife to the heart and claim that she was possessed by a demon, you're not the hero. You're getting arrested and placed in a psych ward. Poor Needy. Though the cool demon powers she got from Jennifer in their fight turn out to be quite the consolation, as they let her break out and kill the film's Greater-Scope Villains. Too fantastical

• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum: The director, an experienced stuntman, designed the armory fight scene around averting The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In. John and his foes all grab knives off of the walls and chuck them at each other. Only some have the blade stabbing them, while others just have the hilt strike them, leaving the blade to fall to the floor. A few of the knives that do hit are also not that severe, as the momentum from a thrown knife isn't always going to be enough. Aversion of The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In

• Jumanji, of all things, has several examples, most relating to firearms.
  • Van Pelt at one point visits a gun store to restock on ammunition. It turns out that even a well-stocked gun store in the late '90s will not have rounds on the shelf for a Winchester lever-action shotgun that went out of production in 1903. Van Pelt grumbles about this, but takes it in stride and opts for a replacement weapon. Plot happens

  • When attempting to walk out with his newfound weapon, Van Pelt runs into the then-freshly-enacted Brady Bill. Even movie villains have to wait when buying a gun from a legitimate dealer. However, it turns out gold is a damn near universal way around the most vicious of bureaucrats. Plot happens

  • The first time Van Pelt uses his new shotgun, he misses a few shots that, for an experienced hunter, should be very simple to make. Turns out firing an unfamiliar weapon with an improperly set sight is just as tricky for a magically generated Great White Hunter as for the rest of us. Valid

• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has several examples in the film.
  • The offenses that got the four teens detention in the first place are considered punish-worthy in real-life schools: Plot happens
    • Bethany gets detention for video-chatting on her phone during a quiz in class. Phones are banned in classrooms because a) they tend to be very distracting in school environments, and b) because they are an easy way to cheat. The video-chat was clearly disturbing the focus of the other students, and her teacher points out that just because Bethany was finished with the quiz, it didn't mean that she could act like the others weren't there. Character reaction

    • Martha gets detention for accidentally insulting Coach Webb and refusing to participate in gym class. In the former case, rudeness towards teachers, even when accidental, isn't tolerated in schools. In the latter case, regardless of whether or not it's your least-favorite subject, refusing to participate and skipping out on a required class has consequences. Plot happens

    • Spencer and Fridge get detention for cheating when Fridge's teacher (who was Spencer's teacher the previous year) notices how the two essays utilized the same metaphor, and realizes Spencer has been doing Fridge's homework for him, then reports it to the principal. Schools take cheating very seriously; Fridge gets booted off the football team, and it's likely that the only reason Spencer didn't get into even more trouble was that he had a good record at that point and the principal isn't that strict of a guy. Spencer even lampshades this, telling Fridge they're lucky not to be expelled. Character reaction

  • Being stuck as a character of the opposite gender Bethany does not know how to...go and needs Fridge and Spencer to explain it to her. Too fantastical

  • Spencer and Martha attempt The Big Damn Kiss, but since the two are very socially awkward introverts, their inexperience really shows through the most unpleasant kiss to ever involve Dwayne Johnson and Karen Gillan. Character reaction

  • Spencer and Martha try the margaritas Alex makes, giddy over being technically old enough to consume alcohol in-game, and they immediately do a Spit Take. Margaritas are highly bitter even with the sugar and salt, and are an acquired taste. Plot happens

  • Fridge gets plastered after drinking several margaritas made by Alex, forgetting that he now weighs half of what he did in the real world. Too fantastical

  • Bethany gives up her second life in order to revive Alex. Her teammates treat this as a big shock because she was so self-absorbed, but when you think about it, it's really not a shock — being kind of a jerk doesn't mean you're in favor of effectively murdering someone by inaction. Most people would react similarly in that situation. Character reaction

  • Martha tries to do the Sexy Walk Bethany taught her — which involves long, loping strides — while walking downhill. Rather than looking sexy by any means, she mostly ends up stumbling and tripping over her own feet on the uneven terrain. Subversion of Sexy Walk

  • Martha's attempts to flirt with the NPC guards also fail, as they are programmed with only a single response and are incapable of reacting to her actions in any other way. Not surprising

  • Bethany and Alex develop feelings for each other, especially after Alex saves the team and Bethany saves him. By the time they meet in the real world, due to Alex returning to 1996, he's two decades older than her. Also, he married and has children. Bethany sadly accepts this, though she's heartened that Alex named his daughter after her because she saved his life. Character reaction

• Jumanji: The Next Level
  • The team (sans Martha and Alex) leaps into a mountain rapids that flows with the mysterious water to change back into their original avatars. They succeed, and attempt to do a Power Walk out of the waters... only to stop midway and shiver badly from how cold it actually is. Too fantastical

  • Spencer and Martha had a great time being a couple for their senior year of high school, but grew apart when they went to college, and while Spencer struggled being on his own he only saw Martha's social media light up every day, which led to him suggesting they take a break and only perpetuated his own feelings of inadequacy. The Be Yourself moral they learned in the previous film is not a universal cure for all your insecurities. Character reaction

  • As any person with an old relative that needs help with modern technology will testify, old people like Eddie nor Milo have very little idea how video games should even remotely work or be played and are far less accepting of the concept of being trapped in one than a bunch of teens. Technologically Blind Elders trope

  • Milo and Eddie's feud is revealed to be this, along with Both Sides Have a Point. Eddie is bitter that Milo sold the restaurant they ran together, without considering what he wanted because he liked working at all hours of the day. He's got a point that he wanted to keep going. Milo counters that he was getting old and worried that he wouldn't have any time to spend with his wife while standing and cooking 24 hours a day. Eddie on hearing this, is forced to concede that Milo had legitimate reasons for selling the business. Character reaction

• The Jungle Book (2016): King Louie orders the Bandar-Log to throw Baloo off the cliff. Thing is, he's a bear and they're monkeys. As long as he puts forth any effort at all, they're not going to be able to move him. In a rare realistic case of Talking Is a Free Action actually working, he barely even seems bothered by their efforts, picking monkeys off of him casually while talking with King Louie. Too fantastical
  • In the ensuing chase between Mowgli and King Louie, the Gigantopithecus indiscriminately knocks over walls and columns in an ancient temple in an attempt to catch him. Eventually, all this structural damage causes the temple to collapse on top of the giant ape. Too fantastical

• Jurassic World:
  • The Indominus Rex is kept alone in a paddock too small for her, with her only positive connection being the crane that brings her food. She killed and ate her sibling. It's no surprise that she went mad from the isolation. Character reaction

  • Owen's velociraptors are imprinted on him since their birth. As a result, they are far less sociopathic than the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. And even though they accept Owen as their pack alpha, he knows they are still vicious, dangerous animals that are easily capable of killing him. Character reaction

  • A theme park full of live dinosaurs might seem like an idea so cool it would never lose its appeal, but as the park has been open and operating for years, the public at large steadily becomes used to the idea of a dinosaur zoo. As they get used to it, they start getting bored of the same old attractions, leaving InGen at risk of slipping into negative profits with the park. Hence why they are starting to explore astoundingly misguided ideas like making their own genetically-engineered superpredator dinosaurs as park attractions, or exploring military applications for velociraptors as a secondary means of income. Character reaction to fantastical events

  • One of the control room technicians bravely chooses to stay behind as everything is going to shit while his colleague is joining the evacuation. He goes forward to give her The Big Damn Kiss... and she awkwardly stumbles back and points out she has a boyfriend. She never mentioned him at work because she's a professional and there to do a job. Subversion The Big Damn Kiss

• The Karate Kid Part II:
  • It turns out that the Crane kick is just as ridiculous as it looks, and if you are capable of performing other techniques... you really should. Chozen demonstrates how it leaves you unbalanced and open, and looking like an idiot. Possibly a Deconstructive Parody shoehorning

  • Zigzagged with Chozen and Daniel. While Daniel has only been training with Miyagi for a few months, Chozen has been training his whole life with his equally-skilled grandfather. While Daniel is a prodigy, Chozen has had more time to hone his craft as well as gaining skill in more specialized fields like spear usage and knife fighting. On the other hand, Daniel is still a martial artist who knows how to punch and kick. When they fight in the climax, Chozen is clearly the superior fighter, but is heavily injured and slowed down by the hits Daniel manages to get in. Characters stronger than other characters

  • The final fight between Daniel and Chozen is not a beautifully choreographed martial arts spectacle. It is a simple, brutal, knock-down drag-out brawl between two young men hell-bent on killing each other. Plot happens

  • Saving people from a hurricane is hard work, and going out in wind and rain is going to leave you with hypothermia. Even if you're pumped up on enough adrenaline to kill a hippo, sooner or later your body will give up. Daniel finds this out the hard way. Not surprising

• In one scene in Kate the protagonist steals a car to escape the police in a high-speed chase. Given that she's suffering from poison and driving an unfamiliar heavily-customized vehicle in a crowded urban environment, she quickly crashes and is captured. Not surprising

• Keanu ends with the main characters going to jail for the crimes they committed trying to get Keanu back. Plot happens

• From the Kick-Ass movies:
  • First movie:
    • When Dave has his first sortie as Kick-Ass, he gets stabbed in the gut for the effort, just to be run over by a car mere seconds later. Not surprising

    • The other would-be superhero at the start of the film who seems to think he can fly. Gravity doesn't agree with him. Not surprising

    • Hit-Girl spends much of the movie being awesomely lethal. Then in the climatic battle, she finally runs out of ammo and throwing weapons and we remember that she's an eleven-year-old girl in a somewhat realistic state of panic and the only thing keeping the bad guys from destroying her now is their uncertainty about whether she's still armed. After being saved by Dave coming with heavy firepower, she tries to engage in hand to hand with Frank D'Amico, only he's a full-grown man who also knows martial arts and promptly drops her, and has to be rescued by Kick-Ass and the bazooka. Not surprising

    • In the same final battle, Kick-Ass and Chris fight each other. Since they're not trained martial artists, their fight is absolutely pathetic and ends in a mutual knock-out. Not realistic. You don't have to be trained martial artists to know how to put up a fight. Street fighting is a thing.

    • Hit-Girl notes that getting shot in a real confrontation hurts more than when Big Daddy shot her in training. (She was wearing a bullet-proof vest on both occasions). He wanted to prepare her for the reality of being shot, but he used low impact rounds. Not an outcome

  • Second movie:
    • Chris' first attempt at being a supervillain as the Motherfucker involves him holding two .45s Gangsta Style. When he shoots one, the recoil gets him hit with the gun on the nose. Deconstruction of Gangsta Style

    • Ralph D'Amico, Chris' jailed uncle, confronts his nephew on how you shouldn't act like Chris does as the Motherfucker, or the police will hunt them down. Later in the movie, the police, including the corrupt cops on the Mafia's payroll, cracks down on superheroes and supervillains alike due his actions. Also, we see how dangerous a mafia boss actually is, even when jailed. Character reaction

    • The Motherfucker tracks down Night Bitch by simply noticing she was bragging of bagging Kick-Ass on Facebook. Plot happens

    • When the police are sent to round-up the superheroes, they're easily tracked through their internet connections, with the only exceptions being those who actually thought of re-routing them. Plot happens

    • In the final battle, Hit-Girl, now fifteen, fights Mother Russia. Both are trained and have combat experience... But Mother Russia is taller, stronger and has more experience, and utterly annihilates her until the adrenaline shot reverses the situation. Character stronger than another character

    • In the same battle we see a MMA expert with no actual combat experience against Hit-Girl, who is trained to kill and has experience in doing it. The MMA expert is killed with his own finger. Character more skilled than another character

    • Kick-Ass and the Motherfucker fight again, only Kick-Ass is now trained and has a lot of experience. The Motherfucker is on the run for pretty much the whole confrontation. Character stronger than another character

• In The Kid (2000), Rusty wins the fight with the bullies on his eighth birthday and saves the three-legged dog from being blown up. Cue cheering and Awesome Music. But Russ then remembers that the fight itself was only the first half of the ordeal. Not only is Rusty hauled into the principal's office for fighting, and not only is his seriously ill mother forced to come and pick him up; when he gets home, his father, quite cruelly, lets him know that his mother is dying and accuses the boy of trying to kill her faster with the stunt he pulled. Not to mention the fact that this happened in both the original timeline where Rusty lost the fight, and the new timeline where he managed to win, and that this was the very outcome both Rusty and his older self were trying to avert in the first place. In both cases, Russ would still wind up becoming the cynical, emotionally crippled bachelor he is today. Plot happens and possibly too fantastical

• Killing Them Softly also does not glamorize assassinations or organized crime. The main character isn't shy about voicing displeasure at his partner and former friend's bad habits, and rather than give him a chance, quickly sets him up to be arrested rather than risking him jeopardizing them all. The hits shown are quick, brutal, and pragmatic. No Sonny Corleone bloodbaths, just fast, violent executions. Genre Deconstruction

• Towards the beginning of Kindergarten Cop, when John Kimble arrests Cullen Crisp in the beauty salon, he is not wearing a uniform. It's a total win for reality that the security guards call his badge in to verify its authenticity. Character reaction

• Kingsman: The Secret Service:
  • Eggsy has a huge IQ, did well in primary school, was good enough at gymnastics to be considered for the olympics and was capable of excelling in the Royal Marines training program - yet at the start of the film he's an unemployed petty criminal due to a lack of jobs where he lives, an abusive stepfather, and a need to take care of his mother. It's a depressing fact of life that even if you have everything going for you, you can still fail to get far due to a poor environment and unfavorable circumstances. Valid

  • Harry Hart is a One-Man Army and is put out of commission for some time thanks to something as mundane as a bullet to the head from the Non-Action Big Bad. There isn't even any fanfare about it. Just in case you were beginning to think Galahad was an Invincible Hero. Plot happens

  • And despite being a bunch of assholes and himself being a badass secret agent, Harry is still horrified at having been manipulated into killing a building full of innocent people against his will. Character reaction

• The Kissing Booth 3: The Kissing Booth films are romantic comedies - which tend to fall more on the idealistic side of things - and the movies generally have a slightly "heightened reality" feel to them. As a result, it comes off as more surprising, though logical, when Elle and Noah break up in the third act...for good. Realistically, it's highly unlikely a high school romance where the couple live on opposite ends of the country and fight constantly about everything would stay intact for the long-run, even if they both care for each other. Deconstructed Trope shoehorning

• Knives Out:
  • In the opening scene, the housekeeper Fran comes across Harlan's body and gets about halfway through a Dramatic Drop before instinct catches up and she fumbles to catch the tray and its contents. Cuttable ZCE

  • Harlan invokes this when it is believed that Marta accidentally overdosed him with morphine. Even if it was an accident, she would be indicted for manslaughter anyways. However, this gets turned on its head when Detective Blanc says Harlan should have listened to Marta anyways because the paramedics would have realized Harlan received the correct medication and Marta's medical bag was tampered with. Plot happens

  • Harlan's elaborate plan to prevent Marta from being a suspect is straight out of a murder mystery but Marta is a civilian with no training, so it's inevitable that snags will happen, such as Marta getting caught on camera and her slipping on the trellis and breaking off a piece of wood. While Marta is able to cover her tracks, Detective Blanc was still able to piece together that she was with Harlan due to a drop of blood on her shoe that she missed. While Marta is smart, Blanc is still a well regarded and experienced detective who is trained to look for every little detail possible when a crime is committed. Character less skilled than another character

  • Fran the housekeeper gets hold of Harlan's toxicology report before Blanc does, but doesn't understand what it says due to having no police or medical training. Not surprising

  • When receiving important evidence, Fran the housekeeper decides to confront and blackmail the suspect rather than bring the evidence to the police, in a secluded place with no witnesses. It does not end well for them. Didn't Think This Through shoehorning

  • The Summation may be a quintessential part of a whodunnit, but in practice, confronting a known killer with the fact that they're definitively going to jail is a sure recipe get them to lash out violently. If Ransom had picked a real knife, Marta would have been killed. Didn't Think This Through shoehorning

• The last half of Last Action Hero runs headlong into this trope, and is milked for all the drama it entails. Jack Slater (and the film's villain, Benedict) are plucked out of an outrageously over-the-top action movie universe and dropped into our plain old real world. What follows is a long series of these moments.
  • Presuming that car crashes don't cause any damage to humans in the movie universe, Jack elects to ram a Checker Cab head-on with a less-powerful vehicle, despite Danny's insistence that it won't work. Jack only survives because he is aware that the car he's driving has a driver's side airbag (which only came into mass use in the late 80s). A few moments earlier, in a bout of frustration, he punches a car window out, presuming he can No-Sell it, only to be proven wrong when he injures his hand. He finds out later that cars don't dramatically explode when you shoot the trunk. Not surprising given how it was set up

  • When Jack meets Danny's mother, he finds he prefers real-life women who have more depth, intelligence and warmth than the average action flick chick. Character reaction

  • Benedict, who has some sense of Even Evil Has Standards due to previously being in a PG-13 rated action film, is shocked when he is accosted by a prostitute who looks young and has a haggard appearance. A few minutes later, he's bewildered when he sees a man murdered for his shoes, and is taken aback that absolutely no one cares. He realizes that he can murder a stranger and the police don't immediately respond. This leads to his revelation that, in the real world, the bad guys can win. Character reaction

  • Slater gets shot, and it's fatal enough that he could risk dying from it without proper medical attention. Then he goes back into his own reality, where gunshots that aren't instantly lethal are Only a Flesh Wound. Too fantastical

• The Lethal Weapon series:
  • Lethal Weapon 2 has the Big Bad flaunting his Diplomatic Impunity in the faces of the heroes. In the climax, said diplomat is trying to actively gun down cops, saying that his diplomatic immunity will protect him. Murtagh just revokes it, and suffers no consequences for it. No sane government would harbor a criminal with such a long rap sheet, especially one that includes attempted murder of police officers; doing so could be considered an act of war. Plus, diplomatic immunity only prevents people from being prosecuted. They can still be shot dead in self-defense. Character reaction

  • Martin Riggs, for all his amusing antics and badassery, has between his experiences in Vietnam and the death of his wife become an incredibly troubled human being. We see him contemplate suicide more than once, and a deleted scene from the first film shows him picking up a prostitute for the sole purpose of just having someone to talk to. As one would expect, it takes four films, spanning the course of about a decade and a half, before he begins to turn his life around and approach something close to a stable, healthy existence. Character reaction

  • Hero Insurance is not part of the package when you join the police service. In Lethal Weapon 4, Riggs racks up all the expenses Murtaugh has had over the series - rebuilding large parts of his house twice, buying a new boat, and sending two kids to college - and realizes that there is no way Murtaugh could afford to do all that on a sergeant's salary, thus suspecting him of being a Dirty Cop. This is compounded when Riggs confronts Murtaugh, and Murtaugh fails to offer an alternative explanation. Eventually it's revealed that there's a legitimate, but embarrassing, explanation for Murtaugh's finances: his wife writes trashy romance novels that sell really well, and he paid for everything using the royalties. Plot happens
    

• Played for Laughs in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. After Ricky loses his confidence in a racing crash, his father shows up to help retrain him by, among other things, making him drive blindfolded. However, Ricky isn't a Jedi Knight, so it goes as well as can be expected. Deconstructive Parody shoehorning

• Taps: After learning that the military school they attend will be shut down soon, Brian and the rest of the cadets decide that the best thing to do is to take over the school. The cadets are all very sheltered children and teenagers who clearly have no idea how the real world works. They find out very quickly that this has serious legal consequences and get into major trouble with the authorities. About half of the cadets end up leaving after a while, and what follows is a senseless tragedy that leads to multiple deaths, and with the cadets receiving absolutely nothing out of the whole ordeal. Plot happens

• Terminator:
  • The Terminator: While Kyle saves Sarah from the Terminator at the nightclub, she doesn't believe him when he explains that the man that tried to kill her is actually a killing machine from the future and he himself was also sent back from the future to protect her, as she assumes that Kyle's another stalker after her. The police offering mundane explanations about what she's experienced also makes Kyle less believable to her. It's only after the Terminator arrives at the police station and kills almost all the police officers there that she starts believing Kyle. Character reaction

  • Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines continues the series Deconstruction of the Kid Hero and Chosen One. The first film ended melancholy, but hopeful, with Sarah Connor telling a recording for John in the future about his destiny to lead the human resistance after The End of the World as We Know It. In the second film, after John is born though, Sarah has clearly decided that there'll be no nuclear war if she can help it, and tried to destroy Skynet before it's created. After she'd arrested and put in a mental asylum (who don't let her out simply because she says she no longer believes in Terminators), John Connor is shown extremely maladjusted living in the normal world, having only one friend, committing crimes, and disobeying his foster parents, all due to growing up knowing about his supposed destiny, and being trained in isolation by a paranoid Sarah. Even in the third film, when Skynet has supposedly been destroyed, John has become a drifter living off the grid simply out of residual paranoia and inability to live a normal life. Character reaction

  • Terminator Genisys: Having been raised from age nine by the T-800, Sarah Connor is much more competent with weapons and battle tactics, but she's also a brooding shut-in and hates the idea of being predestined to "mate" with Kyle Reese and sire John Connor. Having the foresight that Reese dies also causes Sarah to initially be distrustful of him when they do first meet. Character reaction

  • Terminator: Dark Fate: John Connor was successfully killed by a time traveling Terminator prior to the events of this movie. However, just as some version of Skynet keeps eventually coming into being even after all the attempts to prevent its existence, someone will step in to fulfil the same role John Connor did. For all the attempts to retgone him for most of the franchise, John Connor was ultimately just one man who was good at leading. Like all organizations, the Resistance doesn't fall apart and lose just because he's not there, they just find someone else to do the same job. Too fantastical

• Discussed in These Final Hours: When James's second girlfriend reveals the bunker she built for him, her brother, and herself in order to shield them all from the meteor strike's firestorm that is approaching their country in 12 hours. James harshly states that it is not sufficient to save them from the heat, calling it a gigantic coffin and stating that it needs to be much deeper and 10x thicker if they are to survive. Even if it were deeper and reinforced, what happens if they run out of rations? Going back to the surface for supplies would be a fool's errand as the meteor's firestorm will have basically turned the entire Earth into a Death World. Considering the futile circumstances of trying to avoid this fate, she understandably breaks down crying in front of James because of the bleak chance of survival. Not an outcome and character reaction

• That's My Boy:
  • Though Donny is cheered on by the school and becomes a minor celebrity for having a relationship with his teacher, Miss McGarricle herself became a social pariah and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for taking advantage of an underage boy. Character reaction

  • When Donny demands that Jamie confess to Todd about her incestuous relationship with her own brother, she whispers it in Todd's ear to save herself from saying it publicly. Todd is so shocked and disgusted by the revelation that he suddenly blurts it out loud, so all the weddinggoers hear it anyway. Character reaction.

• Time Chasers plays its protagonist surprisingly realistically for a movie with a fantastic time-travel element. He's a mere inventor and professor who rides a bike instead of driving, so he gets his butt kicked whenever he fights due to lack of experience and training and his one attempt to get away in a stolen car simply has him crash moments later because he doesn't know how. Plot happens

• To Live and Die in L.A. has the protagonist Richard Chance abruptly shot dead in a fight with the Big Bad's henchman, Jack. Like deaths in The Departed, it's very abrupt, and there is no last-minute speech. With still ten minutes left to go before the film ends, Chance's partner, John Vukovich chases after the Big Bad and eventually kills him. The film's creators did film another ending where Chance himself lived, but chose the one where he died because it fit the story and the characters better. Valid

• Toy Soldiers:Cali is killed by a random soldier instead of Billy or one of his friends in the climax. During military raids to end hostage situations, the trained professionals are far more likely to kill the hostage-takers than the hostages are, no matter how proactive they've been during their captivity and how much It's Personal anger the hostages may have. Character reactions

• Tragedy Girls: Sadie is very good at fighting. Even so, she's petite and gets overpowered twice by far stronger men, only being saved by McKayla or someone else intervening. Character weaker than another character

• The Transformers Film Series takes a more realistic approach to the franchise, and especially the Autobot-Decepticon war.
  • Unlike the original series, named characters from both sides sometimes die. No A-Team Firing here, and the guns cause some real damage. Their sizes tend to destroy a lot of scenery, and not every human is shown to get up after being hit by a transformer. This does not exacty help their image, and humans - a race that can seemingly barely stand each other - are quick to brand every large robot as a terrorist. Aversion of A-Team Firing and character reaction to fantastical events

  • Despite his fondness of them, even Optimus Prime wont just take it when humans keep opposing and turning against his race. While he would never fire randomly into crowds, he is willing to kill humans that assault him, or to save someone else. Character reactions

  • Transformers may be big and made of metal, but so are tanks, and both can be brought down by humans with enough firepower, which is why they need their vehicle disguises. The human militaries may also come to trust Autobots as comrades, but insist on fighting alongside them to have some say in their planet's fate, as opposed to just sitting back and letting the robots duke it out like they do in most versions. Character reaction to fantastical events

  • While people have criticized the Autobot's habit on killing most of their opponents, the Autobots are usually outnumbered, lack ways to imprison Decepticons during battle, and don't have any place they could actually lock them up. Their options on the battlefield are pretty darn limited, since unless they permanently crippled them, the Decepticons would just strike them on the back and/or escape to wreak more havok. Not to forget, Megatron's icy prison worked fine until somebody actually tried to free him. By the time of Transformers: The Last Knight, humans have built prisons for Cybertronians, but they undoubtedly cost a lot, and the fact that anti-transformer humans aren't above murdering and cutting Cybertronians apart for their own benefit makes the purpose of said prisons questionable. Character reaction to fantastical events

• In Tremors, it doesn't matter how big, strong, ugly, and monstrous you are. You will die if you are shot enough times, as the Gummers educate the second Graboid the hard way. Not surprising
  • The Graboids are also just as susceptible to the laws of physics as anything else. The first Graboid killed is done in when it hits a concrete retaining wall at high speed. The last one is killed because it charges at Val while he's standing at the edge to a cliff, and it can't stop in time to keep itself from flying over the edge. Not surprising
    • That last one was due to Val taking advantage of the Graboids' Logical Weakness. Because they hunt using sound, a loud enough noise (like an explosion) can hurt and disorient them enough to force them into retreat. Or in this case, not notice a cliff in time. Weaknesses exist

  • The only reason the Graboids were so scary in the first film was because they were creatures that no one knew how to kill, and the characters only succeeded in doing so either by accident or improvised thinking. Come the next film however, and Earl is able to kill many more Grabroids than the first film's four in less than a quarter of the time because he has experience, the know-how to kill them, and a lot of explosives courtesy of the Government. In fact, this becomes a recurring element in the franchise; while the humans will initially be stumped by the Graboids' new forms, once they learn about their strengths and weaknesses, they'll have an easier time killing them. 'Too fantastical

  • In Aftershocks, Burt uses a .50 cal to kill a Shrieker in order to get a car a few yards away. There Is No Kill Like Overkill, right? Yeah, actually, there is. Burt and co. find this out the hard way as they get to the truck, only to discover that the bullet passed right through the Shrieker, then through several other objects. Including the engine block of their would-be getaway truck, completely ruining it. Too fantastical
    • This is actually a recurring problem in the franchise. Due to the Graboids and their ilk being a completely unknown species, the protagonists are either woefully unprepared, or making the situation unintentionally worse, forcing them to be quick learners and be highly adaptable. Going back to Aftershocks as an example, in addition to the above incident with the rifle, Burt also expends all his ammo in an offscreen Zerg Rush. As he points out, he came specifically to hunt Graboids, meaning most of his arsenal consisted of explosives and guns that sacrificed ammo for penetration. 'Plot happens

  • In Back to Perfection, when the Graboids make a return, Nancy does the most logical thing... and calls in the authorities. As she noted in an earlier scene, the Closed Circle trope doesn't apply this time. Unfortunately for her, the door then swings the other way and bites her in the ass in two ways: Character reaction

  • The officials tell them that nobody is allowed to kill Graboids. While they are monstrous, Graboids are ultimately just animals, and their scarcity means that they're technically endangered. Not realistic. Graboids aren't real

  • Tied to the above, if the Graboids can't be successfully relocated, they'll just relocate the townsfolk. Plot happens

  • After blowing up his home in Back to Perfection, Burt finds it almost impossible to get his next compound insured. Since few companies are willing to cover a man who blew up his own house, even if it was for a good reason. Plot happens

  • Perfection's inhabitants spent years fighting land developers and businessmen looking to develop the valley. However, while the inhabitants may enjoy the solitude, Perfection is still a desert town in the middle of nowhere without much in the way of business or opportunities to support oneself or draw new people in. Especially with the regions history of monster attacks. By the start of A Cold Day in Hell, everyone except Burt has moved on to greener pastures, leaving Perfection a Ghost Town. Character reactions

• In Tricky People, Yello Dyno's advice for dealing with potential pedophiles is to "take three steps back" and "run like the wind," but when Lyric tries it on Reginald Charming, he easily overpowers her and frightens her into submission. She's only saved from a terrible fate by Yello Dyno himself. Not surprising that a grown man would be faster than a little girl

• Troy:
  • Paris boldly challenges Menelaus to a Duel to the Death over Helen's hand, convinced that he'll triumph through The Power of Love. The problem is, Paris is a skinny kid who's never been in a real fight, while Menelaus is a hulking, highly experienced combat veteran who proceeds to humiliate him while Agamemnon laughs at the show. Menelaus starts by toying with him, but when Paris manages to actually threaten him, he finally takes things seriously-and in ten seconds he has Paris on his ass with a broken nose and no sword. Character weaker than another character
    • Even before the duel begins, Agamemnon points out that they didn't bring an army of 50,000 across the Aegean to watch a duel and then go home. He agrees to let Menelaus fight Paris, but makes clear that he plans to assault the city no matter what happens. Plot happens.

  • When actual battle begins, the Greeks rush at the Trojan army, confident in their superior numbers. The Trojan army is deployed in a phalanx under fortified city walls, backed up by archers, with the Greeks too busy running to keep proper formation. As Achilles and Odysseus point out in disbelief even before contact is made, the outnumbered Trojans mop the floor with the Greeks. Curb-Stomp Battle shoehorning

• Unbroken has real-life Louis Zamperini go through years of abuse and torture before being released, and he didn't break. Which follows what happened in real life to a point. But the next movie, Unbroken: Path to Redemption, shows that even if you don't break in the moment, you're still going to get traumatized. He has PTSD, alcoholism to cope with the nightmares, and almost gets divorced to his beloved wife. The only thing that helps him is God, a Billy Graham crusade, and realizing that when he was adrift he promised his life to God if he would survive. Character reaction

• Uncharted (2022):
  • The treasure is supposedly located in Barcelona, a modern city. As such, the group finds clues and passageways in nightclubs and pizza chains. Plot happens.

  • One of the keyholes is located behind a pane of glass. Sully's attempts to break it with a chair don't work, and three gunshots barely make a dent in it. It takes him slamming Braddock into it while they're fighting for the glass to break. Plot happens

  • One of the ships is dropped on the water and seems to be sailing, only for it to capsize a few seconds later since a ship that's been rotting in a cave for five centuries isn't going to be seaworthy. Not surprising

  • After the ship sinks, Nate says that they can just hire a diving rig to retrieve all the treasure. Sully points out that it's now legally the property of the Filipino government, who will claim it, and there's nothing they can do about it. Not an outcome

• Underworld (2003):
  • After a few movies of battling vampires, lycans and hybrids and getting a power boost to stay on top, Selene has to face a 5-meter tall uber-lycan in the fourth film. Despite her skills, weapons and experience the fight's exactly what you would think a round between two beings of proportionate strength when one is 3 times the size and has natural weapons. Selene is knocked out in about a second. She does better in the second fight, but is still outmatched. Ultimately, she's forced to make him transform back into a human and attack him then. Too fantastical.

  • Her new human ally has to dodge a car by jumping to the side onto pavement. Unlike most examples he is severely hurt and limps for the rest of the scene. Too fantastical

• In Undrafted:
  • The D-Backs discuss what it would be like to get drafted to play professional baseball and how it would mean years spent in cheap motels and rickety buses while playing minor-league ball. All of them would relish the chance to experience that. Not an outcome

  • Maz is repeatedly touted as the best ballplayer any of the characters have ever seen and shows he can go up against AA-level players with no problem. However, he lacks physical size and is thus passed over during the MLB draft. Not realistic. There is no size or height requirement in the MLB

• Unforgiven is all about this trope, meticulously deconstructing the Western genre while hanging lampshades all over it.
  • There's an entire scene with Little Bill and Beauchamps, where Bill explains how gunplay actually works compared to how it's portrayed in the stories. Not an outcome

  • William Munny. He used to be an alcohol-drenched villain whose exploits (while utterly despicable) would've made for a gripping action story - but is now just a washed up old man having to deal with the harsh realities of Western life, all while sober. At the beginning of the climax he drinks a whole bottle of whiskey in order to slip back into his old persona, and consequently has a classic (if brutally short) action shoot-out with the bad guys. Plot happens

• In Vengeance (2022), during the climax, when Ben shoots Quinten, his first shot is fired from the hip and misses. It's not until he aims properly that he lands a neck shot and a headshot. Not surprising

• "Aim Low": Unlike his main game counterpart, who is up and at the world domination thing again after a few months to recover, this Eggman eventually falls into depression because of never being able to win, as anyone would if they failed at their lifelong goal on a weekly basis. Likewise, depression isn't overcome quite as easily as media would make it seem. Eggman's failure to complete his therapy has him fall off the wagon and become even more depressed. It's only The Power of Hate that gets him to start fighting Sonic again. Character reaction
• "I Can Sea Sonic's Fear From Here": The old "Face Your Fears" episode where Sonic must deal with his fear of water to defeat Eggman. He sucks it up, tries a crash course to overcome it, ventures into the water and beats Eggman... and ends up even more terrified of water than ever before. While not impossible, overcoming a fear in just a few hours is extremely hard, and given that Sonic nearly drowned during the course of stopping Eggman, he has a damn good reason to be more afraid of the water. Character reaction
• "Three Minutes Or Less": Sonic succeeds in foiling Eggman's plan to get a free meal and completes his shift as a delivery man for Meh Burger, so he's rewarded with a load of chili dogs. He eats them... and is shown in the end to suffer from indigestion, especially subversive considering his Big Eater depictions in other Sonic universes. Meh Burger abandoning their Three Minutes Or Less policy after Sonic quits also arguably counts as this, since Sonic's speed alone made the policy remotely practical. The first part doesn't sound too surprising, since characters getting unwell is the expected outcome for eating a huge amount of food. The second part is "arguably" not an example since it depends on Sonic having unrealistic speed.
• When Sonic goes on a stakeout with Vector in "Vector Detector", he complains that they've been there for hours. As Vector explains, real stakeouts can last hours without anything happening and aren't like on TV, where people say two lines and then the person they're waiting for shows up. Played for Laughs, as the guy shows up right after he says that. This Is Reality
• Several episodes deal with the fact that the heroes have been saving the world so routinely that the population has gotten pretty lethargic about it, even becoming a bit over-expectant about it, Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like or rarely even bothering to prevent danger themselves, much like many real life people take safety authorities for granted ("Just A Guy" being a defining case). The show also demonstrates that the heroes have to save outright Jerkass individuals at times as well, even in cases they show ingratitude or try to take advantage of them. Character Reaction and not realistic
• "If You Build It, They Will Race": Sonic and his friends build their own race cars with Tails' Build-it Box, and decide to race each other to see whose car is the best. Just as the race is about to begin, Mayor Fink stops them and tells them that in order to race on a public road, it must be an official event open to any and all racers, which requires a special permit. Sonic hopes getting a permit won't take too long, but getting said permit takes eight months. Maybe valid.

• Mad Max:
  • The After the End classic The Road Warrior has Mad Max use his iconic double barreled sawn-off sparingly. The reason being that because industrial society is no longer around, not only is fuel rare, but shotgun shells are too. By the time of the next film, Max has all but given up its use and the use of firearms in combat is pretty much extinct, because nobody can make the bullets or maintain the guns anymore. Plot happens

  • The progressive deterioration of society - and of Max personally - is seen in vivid detail throughout the franchise. At the start of the first movie, Max is a member of one of the last organized police forces on Earth (or at least Australia) and is doing his best to take care of his wife and child. At the start of the second movie, Max is wearing the remains of his police uniform, driving a battered pursuit cruiser for which he must salvage fuel, and is just barely hanging on. He wears a leg brace and has a pronounced limp due to an injury received in the first film. By the third movie, he's still limping from that injury, and has been forced to trade in the car for a wagon pulled by a team of camels - and promptly loses even that in his first encounter with an organized enemy. Plot happens

• 'Fury Road'' demonstrates why you don't just pull an object you've been stabbed with out of your side, as Furiosa finds out the hard way in the climax. She quickly begins losing blood at a rapid rate and looks like death warmed over, and within a few minutes develops a pneumothorax (which, just like in real life, makes a hell of an unpleasant sound as she tries to breathe) and nearly exsanguinates before Max, who who earlier was established as a universal donor, is able to give her a transfusion. Not surprising
  • Max and Furiosa's initial fight. Furiosa is highly trained and experienced at inflicting violence, about as much as Max, and has several huge advantages: she opens the fight with a sneak attack, gets her hands on several weapons during the fight, is fighting a guy who is chained to a hostile prisoner and can't use all his limbs at once (this is balanced out somewhat by the fact that she lacks one of her arms), has five other women to help her (though they don't do much, they can still pull on his chains to unbalance him), and Max is already dehydrated, exhausted, and injured going in. On top of this, Max doesn't actually want to hurt her, just do the minimum to neutralize her as a threat and then leave, while she goes for lethal force immediately. So how does the fight turn out? Max wins. Easily. Furiosa only ever has a chance when she has a weapon on her (a club, an empty gun, a chain, a hose, a loaded gun), and when that fails, he pretty much immediately overpowers her. The gap in strength between women and even average-sized men is really, really big. [[ downloadpdf/j/ssr. . Females have 37-68% of muscle strength of males in general.]] Too unclear

  • Regarding Splendid Angharad's leg injury. When they first meet, Max accidentally grazes it when he fires warning shots at her. At first she seems just fine save for a little bleeding, but over time the bleeding gets worse and the pain bothers her more and more. It comes to a head when all hands are needed to shake off pursuers and she jumps out of the rig to help her rescuers, but her leg injury ensures that she can't get a proper foothold to climb back in, which leads to her falling to her death. Plot happens

  • Also regarding Furiosa's War Rig. Her destination is at least a day's journey, but driving a huge, gas-guzzling rig non-stop across a sweltering hot desert eventually over-heats the engine, forcing the group to stop to let the engine cool off before they can continue. Considering their pursuers, this is a problem. Generally speaking, everything involving the nature of a chase through harsh environments; especially illustrated by the War Rig. Drove through a sand-lightning-tornado-storm? Rig needs to have the sand taken out of the intakes. Rig's engine block is on fire? Need to lower the plow to apply dust to extinguish it. Stuck in a quagmire? Place the engine covers under the wheels for traction. Overdo the direct oil injection boosts? The engines fail and need fixing. The rig doesn't run on miracles; it's an engine and it needs to be maintained. Not surprising

• Maleficent has several examples:
  • Are you pushing sixty and overweight, yet still insist on leading your army in battle? Prepare to get one-shot by the enemy's younger, more powerful leader, especially since she's magical. And even if you survive, the wounds combined with exertion will be enough to finish you off. Character stronger than another character

  • It does not matter how much of a badass you are-having two of your major limbs (her wings) burned off will leave you in excruciating pain. Maleficent is also barely able to stand in the aftermath, spends a lot of time just recovering from her wounds, and has to fashion a walking stick because her center of balance has been thrown off. Not surprising

  • Want to hand over a newborn baby to a group of three people who are always bickering and have never raised a baby? Don't be surprised when they end up neglecting or unintentionally mistreating the baby simply out of a lack of knowledge, or when their squabbles distract them from noticing that she's in danger. Character reactions

  • As soon as Maleficent hears that the fairies and Aurora have hidden somewhere in the Moors, she averts the Sorting Algorithm of Evil by sending her second-in-command to find them instead of relying on incompetent grunts. This second-in-command is able to find them in less than a day. Hiding right under your enemy's nose isn't as simple as picking a quiet little cottage on the edge of their territory-you either have to put a lot of work into it, or your enemy has to be a complete idiot, for you not to be discovered. Character reactions

• 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. Valid
  • Illya and Gaby are both rendered briefly unconscious after suffering a motorcycle/car crash and are noticeably stunned and groggy afterwards Not surprising

  • Solo and Kuryakin debate what to do with Uncle Rudy who is dangerous to leave alive but the United States might be interested in their talents. They both bitterly note that if they turn the latter in, they will likely have their crimes erased and be rewarded. Their debate ended when the electric chair they strapped Uncle Rudy to starts to work again. Not an outcome

• In Man of the Year, an equivalent of Jon Stewart stages an Independent run for President, and appears to win in a landslide. It's later revealed that his "victory" was due to a glitch in the voting machines, and, like every third party candidate since 1968, he won a tiny fraction of the popular vote and didn't carry a single state. Subversion of Landslide Election

• The Matrix:
  • The Matrix ends with Neo running to escape the Agents and make it to a hotel room so he can log out. He opens the door, and Smith is there waiting with his gun out at point-blank. He unceremoniously shoots Neo through the chest many times. Neo comes back, though, to fit with the whole Kung-Fu Jesus theme. Not surprising

  • Also in the first movie, when Neo first wakes up from the Matrix, the Machines' failsafe violently flushes him out of the system and into a wastewater lake. Neo's spent his entire physical life in a pod with a tube in his throat, he's so atrophied that even if he knows how to swim, he can barely tread water in real life and nearly drowns. The urgency with the Nebuchadnnezzar crew suggest this is something they all had to deal with the first time they woke up. Not surprising

  • The Matrix Revolutions features a fight between Neo and Smith-possessed Bane in the real world. Since virtually all their combat training has been uploaded into their minds and is dependent on the physics of the Matrix, they don't have access to any of it. Their fight is brutal, dirty, and devoid of art. No fancy gravity-defying acrobatics here; just two desperate men beating the crap out of each other with whatever weapons are at hand. Ultimately, Neo wins the battle, but Bane manages to blind him in the real world with a laser, leaving him unable to see again unless he enters the Matrix. Too fantastical

• In Max Keeble's Big Move, Max becomes a Bully Hunter who goes after his school bullies with pranks, thinking that he can get away with all of it because he'll be moving to a new city. Turns out Max isn't moving, and now he has to deal with the consequences. Among them, the bullies didn't suddenly reform; they're furious once they find out Max was behind the pranks, and execute Revenge by Proxy, which makes Max's friends hate his guts. The Almighty Janitor even calls Max a Dirty Coward who decided to "hit and run" rather than find a constructive way to deal with the bullies. Deconstruction of Bully Hunter

• Mean Girls:
  • Janis reveals her Evil Plan about all the things Cady did to Regina in front of all the girls who were victimized by Regina George. Rather than anyone condemning Janis for this, the other girls cheer for Janis, due to them being victimized for Regina (and it being In-Universe Take That, Scrappy! moment). Character reactions

  • After Regina realizes what was done to her, she ends up feeling hurt when she realizes that nobody really likes her. It goes to show that just because someone is a complete jerk to people, doesn't mean that he or she will be completely happy with being disliked. Character reactions

• In Meet Dave: when a female human asked the humanoid spaceship robot his name, the aliens inside decide to respond with the most common Earth name for men. Which is Ming Chang. So whether it's outer space or not, your name may not work even if you account for total popularity and gender. Too fantastical

• The Meg:
  • Despite being gigantic, megalodons attack suddenly and out of nowhere. Sharks are still ambush predators and the ocean is huge. When they go on the offense and go underwater, they can strike from nowhere. Stealthy Colossus trope

  • They consistently ignore smaller targets if larger prey are readily available and primarily attack what's making the most noise or emitting the most light. This includes ignoring the small dog in the water and going after the noisy and large splashing crowd of people, as would be expected of a large predator. The exception is when they are enraged or driven to a frenzy. Plot happens

  • Lori gets stabbed by a screwdriver while in the sub. Although she survives and it explicitly misses a vital organ, she is still hospitalized for the rest of the movie due to blood loss. Not surprising

  • Attempting to poison the Meg doesn't instantly kill it. It takes several minutes during which it remains incredibly dangerous and now enraged. Subversion of Perfect Poison

  • Suyin runs out of air during the fight with the Meg and loses consciousness, then remains underwater for many minutes. She actually dies and has to be resuscitated as a result. Not surprising

• The generally lighthearted comedy The Men Who Stare at Goats takes a dark turn when it references the real MK-ULTRA experiments: A soldier is driven into psychosis with LSD and disorienting lights. He goes on a rampage and is Driven to Suicide. Later on, it revisits the theme when the protagonists discover a working application of all that "research": sleep deprivation torture via loud nonstop music and strobe lights. Plot happens

• Mermaids:
  • Kate is a professional swimmer. But due to being drunk, Kate is unable to swim and almost drowns. Not surprising

  • Although Kate survives near-drowning, the accident has affected her hearing and left her partially deaf. Plot happens

  • After having sex, the controversy surrounding Joe and Charlotte due to their ages (26-years-old and 15-years-old) causes Joe to have to relocate to another state, and possibly he's wanted as a sex offender (since this would be statutory rape), while Charlotte gains a sexual reputation at her school. Plot happens

  • After being unable to confide in her mother about her fears, Charlotte steals her mother's car and takes off to a "normal" family's home. Even though Charlotte lies about her name and family history, the father contacts the police and they identify the licensed car parked outside the family's residential home. They then contact Rachel and inform her of Charlotte's whereabouts, with Lou going to get her. Plot happens

  • After religiously fasting for so many days, Charlotte ends up passing out due to malnutrition. Plot happens

• Mission: Impossible Film Series:
  • The famous Cable Drop scene in the first movie was the result of the heroes with their high tech gear breaking into a high tech vault nearly getting screwed because there was a rat in the vents, which made the guy holding the rappelling rope sneeze. At the end of the scene, they're nearly done in by simply dropping something. Plot happens

  • In Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Ethan tries to escape from a hospital. Rather than a Stealth Hi/Bye, his pursuers almost immediately spot him outside on a window ledge, then point out he's likely to hurt himself even worse trying to jump. He jumps anyway, but sure enough, he misses the passing truck he was aiming for and just barely escapes being hit by another car. Subversion of Stealth Hi/Bye

  • Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation:
    • After their shenanigans in the previous films (Namely the whole "Clipping a building in San Francisco with an ICBM as it crashed into the bay" thing), the IMF is still being investigated, and is shut down. ...aaand is reinstated at the end of the film, acknowledging that there are missions only they can handle. On top of that, the witch-hunting bureaucrat who had them shut down is forced to claim the whole thing was All Part of the Show, due to the possibility of the Syndicate having infiltrated the highest levels of government. Plot happens

    • 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. Valid

    • Benji keeps passing the lie detector tests Hunley frequently gives him to check his loyalties. However, those tests are at best unreliable, and Hunley presumably knows a well-trained person can fool them. Like Benji. Plot happens

    • The mission in Morocco is full of this. Ilsa even lampshades the impossibility of the mission before it begins. During the mission itself, Ilsa hacks the water gates control and reboots it in order to stop the strong current from obstructing Ethan. The engineers quickly notice the problem and reverse the whole process before locking it down, preventing Ilsa from hacking it further. The resuming strong water current proves to be just a touch more than even Ethan himself can handle - he successfully completes his task, but runs out of air just before he can escape. If not for Ilsa diving in to save him, Ethan would've died down there for sure. The mission really is impossible. Plot happens

    • Ethan drowns and is resuscitated in Morocco and spends a good chunk of the ensuing car and motorcycle chase driving at full speed while thoroughly discombobulated and suffering from a patchy memory. Averted in that due to his resulting state of oxygen-deprived calm recklessness he is operating at 110% and makes mincemeat of all his opponents via some of the most intense stunts in the series to date. Not realistic. Not possible to operation at 110%
    Benji: [watches Hunt take the driver's seat] Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you sure you wanna drive? A minute ago you were dead!
    
    Hunt: [eyes unfocused and clearly out of it] What are you talking about?
    
    Benji: [gets in the car] This is not gonna end well.
    • 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. Valid

  • Mission: Impossible – Fallout:
    • Julia has spent close to a decade undercover, away from Ethan; it's understandable that she would find new love and remarry. Character reactions

    • A HALO jump is dangerous enough as it is. It's an even more terrible idea to jump straight into a storm cloud crackling with lightning. Walker cockily does exactly that (after disconnecting Hunt's oxygen!) and almost instantly gets stunned by a lightning strike, nearly dooming him and Ethan who has to save his ass. Too fantastical

    • Even with Lane captured, there are still many members of the Syndicate still at large; the remaining members formed another terrorist group called the Apostles, which is as dangerous as when Lane was in charge.^note To be fair, it's shown later in the movie that the Apostles still consider Lane their leader and follow his direction; that's the whole significance of naming your group 'Apostles'. Just removing the leader of a terrorist organization doesn't make the organization itself disappear. Plot happens

    • Even with Atlee out of the picture, MI6 still wouldn't bring Ilsa Faust in because she failed to capture or kill Solomon Lane, who was turned over to the IMF at the end of the last film. Her going deep undercover and participating in many of Lane's acts of terrorism means she is also a wanted woman as well, leaving her no choice but to go on the run for two straight years until she either manages to kill Lane or bring him back to the British government by herself. Plot happens

    • Hunley vs. August Walker. Not only is Hunley a somewhat pudgy bureaucrat and Walker a hulking CIA agent with a reputation for brutality, Hunley was well aware of what kind of dude Walker was before deciding to take him on in single hand-to-hand combat. Walker basically guts him, leaving him just alive enough to kick Hunt's ass into high gear before dying. Combat Pragmatist shoehorning

    • In a more lighthearted tone, restrooms (especially those near a party) are not a private space where Ethan and his target can be isolated indefinitely. Several times during the apprehension of "John Lark", Ethan is bothered by unrelated civilians who come and go and risk ruining the mission by discovering the mess they've made. He is notably pestered by a group of drunks who can see their feet under the stalls doors, and assume than Ethan is having an orgy with Walker and Lark. Deconstructive Parody shoehorning

    • Fuel isn't pure water, where you get doused in it and you will 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. Valid

    • You cannot just shoot out the locks on locked boxes if you don't know the contents inside them. There might be flammable, explosive materials, or in this case, a nuclear bomb inside them which will result in an explosion if the bullet or the shrapnel hit them. Too implausable?

    • Walker cracks "John Lark" over the head with a lap top which knocks him out but breaks the screen and makes it completely useless. "Lark" also regains consciousness shortly afterwards as knocking someone out with blunt force only works for a brief period. Not surprising

• The film version of The Mist shows what would really happen if the monsters that the usual armed with self defense weapons and store supplies Ragtag Bunch of Misfits could survive against and kill went up against a real military. The army kills the monsters with a combination of heavy equipment, armored support and save any survivors they can. After movie after movie of this not happening, it's pretty striking to see. It also shows exactly why this doesn't happen elsewhere: the trials and battles of our heroes become meaningless. Aversion of Militaries Are Useless

• Occurs in Mortal Kombat (2021) as the film's way of setting itself apart from its predecessors and play by "real world" logic.
  • A mortally wounded Hanzo hears his young daughter crying and attempts to crawl towards her. He dies before reaching her as despite his determination and fatherly instincts, he is simply too badly injured to make it very far. Not surprising

  • When Kung Lao meets Kano, Kung Lao delivers a Badass Boast worthy of a classical martial arts movie, complete with rousing music and dramatically speaking of his ancestor the Great Kung Lao. Kano is unimpressed because he clearly has no idea who the Great Kung Lao is, as Mortal Kombat tournaments have been hidden from the outside world for thousands of years. Character reaction

  • Kano may be a fairly skilled brawler but he is still an uncouth thug against people who have been training for the majority of their lives. Character less skilled than others

  • Similarly, Cole only wins one fight but struggles in other fights, needing outside help to win, as despite being a MMA fighter, he isn't trained to kill or defend against people who are actively trying to kill him. Character less skilled then other characters

  • Sub-Zero's ability to freeze things nigh-instantly makes him The Dreaded; the intensity and scope of his power is so far out of the other Kombatants' league that the only thing they can do for the majority of the film is run from him and hope he gets called away. Even Hanzo, the one person in the world who approached being Sub-Zero's equal, needs Cole's help in a 2-on-1 fight to finally kill his longtime rival in the climax. Too fantastical

• The climax of The Music Man has everyone gathered around the marching band that Harold Hill's swindled into existence, everyone excited to see what he's done, maybe with the audience almost expecting something miraculously good and... yeah, the kids sound terrible because they've been taught that they can just "think" about practicing and didn't even rehearse. Fortunately for Hill, their parents are taken in at the idea of their children playing instruments. Character reaction

• My Cousin Vinny: As a courtroom comedy that works to be accurate on the legal side (to the point that it is often shown in law school), this is a given:
  • Vinny's cousin Bill and his friend Stan are arrested by cops who think they killed a store clerk. The two think they're being held because they forgot to pay for a can of tuna in the store. When they're being interviewed by the cops, they don't bother to ask for a lawyer, remain silent, or even ask what they are being charged with, and promptly wind up on trial for murder. Plot happens

  • Vinny lies about his history as an attorney (or rather his lack thereof) to Judge Haller. Of course, Vinny assumes that the judge wouldn't bother to contact the state of New York and verify Vinny's legal history. After seeing Vinny's obvious inexperience and unfamiliarity with court proceedings, the judge does just that and Vinny almost winds up in major legal trouble due to his lies. Plot happens

  • Vinny's antics in the courtroom are not tolerated by the judge and result in him being sent to the jail for contempt of court. Three times. Aversion of Courtroom Antics

  • Towards the end of the movie, Vinny invokes this trope on all of the major witnesses, discrediting them by simply using their own words against them via pointing out how reality works. For example, Vinny has Mrs. Reilly discredited after she says she saw Bill committing the crime, only for Vinny to show the court that she's so near-sighted that she can't see even with her glasses on; all Vinny has to do is have someone at a fraction of the distance ask how many fingers he's holding up. Mr. Tipton gets discredited after claiming he was cooking grits and saw the event happening, to which Vinny discredits by pointing out that grits take longer than five minutes to make because the piping system takes time to heat up water, meaning it takes longer then twenty minutes to get his food ready, and that unless magic was involved, Tipton couldn't have seen the events of the crime and have made grits at the same time (it would be plausible if Tipton used instant grits, but Vinny made sure to ask beforehand if Tipton used instant grits, to which he replied "No self-respecting Southerner uses instant grits", preventing him from backpedaling). Mr. Crane gets discredited when Vinny simply points out that there was no way he could have seen the crime take place, because not only did he have an incredibly dirty screen, he had several trees blocking the view. Too unclear

• In Mystery Men, Joker Immunity for super villains and Cardboard Prisons don't exist. When Captain Amazing complains about the embarrassing quality of the villains he's having to fight and asks his agent about how his old rogues gallery is doing, he learns that practically all of them are exiled, dead, or serving life sentences. As a Deconstruction of superhero movies, there's quite a bit of reality going on in this movie. Such as the "superheroes" in town, 99% of whom are losers in silly costumes that are trying to emulate the real superheroes, or the fact that the heroes spend most of the movie getting repeatedly beaten up, since they're in way over their heads due to being a part of that 99% percent. Genre Deconstruction shoehorning

• 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. No Wrongful Accusation Insurance here. Lampshaded by the Monarch: "A couple of months in the slammer to prove your innocence? Was it worth it, kid?" Valid

• In Neighbors, Pete tries his hardest to convince Teddy that, despite his fraternity achievements being Serious Business to him, they don't matter a whole lot outside of college, and that he needs to focus less on Delta Psi shenanigans and more on what he'll do after graduation. By the end, Teddy realizes that Pete was right, and he starts attending night school to make up for lost time. Plot happens

• In Never Rarely Sometimes Always, after Autumn gets an abortion, there is no grand, melodramatic scene where she experiences wrenching guilt, or any complications from the procedure, like [[ . some films that feature abortion tend to do]]. She and Skylar simply board the bus back home, and though she will surely get some grief from her parents about where she was, Autumn was ultimately able to make a decision about her own body on her own terms. Plot happens

• The same thing happens in Ur-Example Night of the Living Dead (1968), actually; the outbreak is all but over in 24 hours. Doesn't help the characters, though, who are all dead due to either their own mistakes, personality flaws, or just bad luck. Plot happens

• In Ninja Assassin, the ninjas easily kill their way through their many opponents... until they lose the advantages of darkness and surprise and have to fight soldiers with automatic weapons. Not surprising

• In Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu, Van Helsing kills Dracula. He is then arrested for murdering a foreign dignitary. End of film. Valid
  • In another Herzog film, 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. Valid

• In Not Another Teen Movie, Janie wins an exclusive scholarship to an art school in Paris, and the film's climax involves Jake racing to track her down at the airport to keep her from leaving. After Molly Ringwald gives them both "The Reason You Suck" Speech, Jake comes to his senses and tells her she should get on that plane, since Janie shouldn't pass on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and most high school sweethearts break up after graduation anyway. The movie ends with them breaking up on good terms. Plot happens

• Not Cinderella's Type: Turns out, treating a kid like Cinderella is considered emotional abuse in this day and age. Very illegal. No need for the Prince to go through the "ball and slipper" arc when he can just call the police. Deconstructed Trope shoehorning

• Not Okay: After learning that Danni lied about surviving a terrorist attack, Rowan is not only pissed off at her for lying but disappointed that she used her phrase #IAmNotOkay for online clout. You'd expect for Danni to apologize to Rowan and them making up, right? Nope. In the final moments of the movie, Rowan writes a poem about her experience with Danni and how furious she is that Danni exploited her lie while she was an actual survivor of a traumatic event. She finally states that while she may eventually forgive Danni for her actions, things will never be the same between them. It just goes to show that even if someone forgives you, it doesn't mean he/she/they are gonna be your friend again. Even if there was a chance sometime in the future, Danni realizes that, at this stage, she'd just be muscling in on Rowan's spotlight and abandons the attempt, showing that even if you genuinely regret your actions, sometimes there's simply no opportunity to say sorry. Character reactions

• The Nutty Professor (1996):
  • Professor Sherman Klump asks Carla Purty out on a date. Because he's overweight, he decides to take time to exercise. However, since there's only a couple days before the date, he doesn't actually lose any weight, though exercising still gives him a newfound feeling of pride, but that comes crashing down after he's tormented by insult comic Reggie Warrington during the date. Character reactions

  • After the climax of the movie, Sherman forlornly admits "I might lose weight, but I'll always be big". Despite what the beauty and diet industries promote, this is the truth for many people: being naturally heavy-set isn't something that can be overcome by healthy means. At the same time, his arc through the movie shows that sustained effort does wonders for his fitness even while he remains broad. Not an outcome