Misused: Surprisingly Realistic Outcome

Surprisingly Realistic Outcome has already been to the Trope Repair Shop in the past (when it was called "Reality Ensues"), but, despite that, misuse still remains extremely common, with the cleanup thread finding a majority of examples to be misuse, and many of the other examples causing arguments over whether they count or not.

Issues seem to be that people can't agree on what exactly qualifies as "surprising" (not all audience members are going to make the same assumption about how something will turn out) or "realistic" (many examples involve blatantly unrealistic things like magic and superpowers, or situations where the expected outcome isn't entirely unrealistic), and people using the trope as a "badge of honor" to praise their favorite works for being smart enough to subvert common tropes.

Also, it was mentioned in the cleanup thread that "trope happens in a more realistic way than expected" is redundant to Deconstruction. Some examples also count as Subversions, since many examples involve a work making you think a trope is going to happen, but it doesn't.

So there's a lot wrong with the trope, and it cannot continue to exist in its current form without some major changes.

Some potential courses of action:

• Require all examples to explain what the "expected" outcome is, why it is not realistic, why the audience would expect it, and why the actual outcome is realistic. Might possibly require a special format similar to What An Idiot.
• Rename the trope to "Sudden Realism Gag" and give it a more specific definition where the realistic outcome is the punchline to a gag. Most examples will have to be removed if that happens, so it's been suggested that cutting Surprisingly Realistic Outcome altogether and creating an all-new trope might be a valid course of action here.

Yeah, we weren't sure if we actually needed one. I and one other person asked about a wick check before and nobody answered us.

Anyway, one solution that the OP is missing is the one where we just cut our losses and merge this with Deconstruction, which is what a lot of people at the thread seem to favor.

As one of the people who generally liked the misuse of the trope more than the actual implementation before realizing how big a problem it was, I think merging with Deconstruction would be the best way to go at this point.

Concurring with the opinion that a wick check would be a good idea, but to give at least a little of an idea, it's easily one of the longest short term cleanup threads that's active right now, clocking in at 35 pages. A lot of it still is cleaning up the mess that was caused by the older named version of the trope, but it's a still a sign of a deeply flawed trope.

Personally I'm not sure what route to take, a What An Idiot style template could help, but that trope itself is in the repair shop right now for misuse so whether this is the best approach is... questionable.

Renaming it and making it humorous examples only is probably the best way to preserve the intention of what the trope was originally created to mean.

On the other hand, merging it with deconstruction and cutting the trope may be for the best too, because this trope has historically had huge problems with shoehorning and is frequently used to gush/act as a "badge of honor", although that could be solved by the "rename and make humor only" solution.

I am okay with the page being merged with Deconstruction, but a wick check is necessary before it does.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Dec 27th 2021 at 7:35:02 PM

Created Surprisingly Realistic Outcome Wick Check. Although one of the issues with this trope is how hard it is to tell if an example is valid or misuse. This Is Gonna Suck.

I agree with merging with deconstruction

Edited by namra on Dec 27th 2021 at 2:16:42 AM

I see value in merging with Deconstruction, but I would also like to split off the Played for Laughs version where a trope is comically subverted by depicting a more realistic outcome. Most of the "valid" use seems to fall into that category.

Yeah, I remember commenting in the old TRS that all the 'good' examples I could think of were gags.

For merging with Deconstruction (most examples would still either need to be cut or rewritten though... aghhh) and creating a separate Sudden Realism Gag trope

We also cut quite a few pages, so any potential examples from there are lost.

Anyways, I agree that SRO should be merged with Deconstruction

And let Sudden Realism Gag rise from the ashes like a phoenix

Also, the trope is on Videos Needing Review. When should we look through the videos to see what keeps?

Edited by magnumtropus on Dec 27th 2021 at 6:06:03 PM

Yeah, I also think a Sudden Realism Gag would be needed. We could even note that sometimes when the gags are more serious, they still are often played for Black Comedy.

We have Deconstructive Parody, actually, for "realistic outcomes played for laughs".

Until the wick check is finished and the data is summarized we cannot possibly be making votes for what to do with this. That makes no sense.

A lot of the people casting judgement are the same people who frequent the clean up thread, where we've been discussing the issues for ages now and have been exposed to constant bad examples. It's not accurate to say that we're making it up apropos of nothing, though you're right that we should get the check done first.

Feel free to look through the cleanup thread yourself to see what kind of examples we've had to deal with.

TBF, a lot of the examples are holdovers from when the trope was Reality Ensues. The rename only happened this year itself (in Feb).

Edited by magnumtropus on Dec 27th 2021 at 10:36:36 PM

The Reality Ensues thing is why we weren't sure if a wick check would be needed, since technically the wick check from the other thread would still be accurate.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 27th 2021 at 1:58:53 PM

Remember that the only thing that changed was a rename and not the trope definition, and the thread itself has been running for 3 years, making it one of the longest in the short term cleanup section.

35 pages and three years of cleanup, and mountains of misuse are still piled up. Not to mention a common problem in the thread was the definition of the trope itself being somewhat unclear and ambiguous (which is why one of the proposed solutions is a set template a la What An Idiot.

I still think a wick check is in order, but the people saying to merge/cut and redo the trope aren't saying it impulsively or for nothing.

Preemptively also voting for favoring Deconstruction and Deconstructive Parody until the check is made.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 28th 2021 at 11:12:02 PM

Isn't Deconstructive Parody for when the entire plot is played realistically for comedy? It feels a bit weird to call a specific moment a "parody".

Take for example, these two examples from Kung Fu Panda 2, which the thread deemed valid:

• Po thinks he can use kung fu to make his ordinary straw hat into a "disc of destruction" to cut the chains holding the Furious Five from half a mile away. He ends up looking like an idiot.
• Po also tries to heroically tell Lord Shen about how he's going to rescue the Furious Five and stop him, only to show that Shen can't hear a word of it thanks to Po being so far away.

Both of these moments are funny because of Reality Ensues, but they aren't parodying anything.

It is easier to distinguish between a Realism Gag and Deconstructive Parody, than serious SRO moments and Deconstruction

Edited by magnumtropus on Dec 29th 2021 at 12:07:23 AM

Actually, the big question is whether the misuse is new misuse that's still being added or uncleaned old misuse. Only the former would be a legitimate reason for a new TRS.

I was actually wondering that after the old wick check was brought up, since the wick cleanup from the rename should have purged the misuse that came up in that wick check, since that's the entire point of a rename.