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{{examples}}
== Anime
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' deconstructs the [[Super Robot]] genre. The basic premise of the show, at first, seems absolutely formulaic; an [[Ordinary High School Student]] [[Falling Into the Cockpit|falls into the cockpit]] of a [[Humongous Mecha]] designed by his father. He is the last hope for humanity in a war against various alien lifeforms called "angels". However, it is quickly shown that using ''fourteen year old children'' as ''[[Child Soldier]]s'' in extremely traumatic battles against [[Eldritch Abomination|Lovecraftian horrors]] is, to put it bluntly, not very nice and ''certainly'' not the kind of idealistic "insert-positive-emotion-here conquers all obstacles" affair that previous [[Super Robot Genre]] shows portrayed it as. It also played with the following mecha tropes:
** Changed the mecha from an unfeeling mechanoid with unlimited energy that is easily repaired to a biological entity that bleeds, feels pain, needs an extension cord for power, and may even have a personality.
** Most [[Super Robot Genre]] shows have a teenage mecha pilot and a long-absent father who designed the mecha. So ''Evangelion'' shows how traumatizing it would be for a real teen to fight in a giant robot—and what kind of father would abandon his son to design the robot.
** Half the cast is made up of what seem at first to be stereotypical anime characters. As the series progresses, however, they are revealed to be severely messed-up people with the same sort of problems that would be expected of real-life [[tsundere]]s, [[
*** They even pull a [[Gender Flip]] on the three main protagonists. Shinji is a [[Shrinking Violet]], Asuka is [[Hot-Blooded]], and Rei is [[The Stoic]].
** Quite a few old super robot shows featured mysterious, alien villains with very lightly defined motivations; cue the relentless attacks of the Angels, alien (or not) assailants on whose motives, constituents or psychology we have a little idea of, simply malevolent [[MacGuffin]]s to enable <s>psychobabble</s> the story to play with 'giant robot' tropes. They also happen to get progressively [[Nightmare Fuel|creepier]], and more
** Tokyo 3 is all but destroyed by the end of the series, and its populace is either dead or evacuated—a sharp contrast to the likes of most examples of the [[City of Adventure]].
** In some ways, ''Eva'' resembles the early days of the [[Real Robot Genre]]. Shinji Ikari has quite a few similarities with [[Mobile Suit Gundam|Amuro Ray]], the most iconic mecha protagonist in anime history. While Amuro's relationship with his father is not nearly as bad as Shinji's, Amuro's father ''does'' go insane while building the RX-78 and due to his injuries in the first episode. Amuro is just as "whiny" as Shinji, but is forced to accept responsibilities in the military hierarchy and grows to maturity through that. Even his reaction to his accidental {{spoiler|killing of Lalah}} resembles Shinji's after {{spoiler|killing Kaworu}}.
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** Premise: fantasy monarchy is wonderful! Decon: except when it isn't. A filtering system gets rid of the worst cases, leaving the best ones as immortal enlightened despots, avoiding the succession problem. A kirin with contact with modern Japan snarks about possible democratic alternatives anyway.
* The anime version of ''[[School Days]]'' is a [[Deconstruction]] of the harem anime, as well as h-game adaptations and other [[Slice of Life]] romance series. The lead, after finally dating the sweet girl he's been lusting after for ages, finds that dating her feels more like work and less fun, so he pursues and has sex with one of the ''other'' girls who wanted him. Shortly after, he decides to sleep around, with no regard for the consequences and no desire to devote to a serious relationship. When the girl he first began cheating with {{spoiler|discovers she's almost sure to be pregnant and confronts him, he wants nothing more to do with her, and after everyone finds out not only did he knock her up, but refuses to take responsibility, the other girls refuse to have anything to do with ''him.''}} In the meantime, he's broken up with the first girl, but only after cheating on her for a ''long'' time. Said girl sinks into insanity and denial, especially since she knew he was cheating all along. {{spoiler|Desperate after finding all his girls left him, he gets back together with the first girl, and tells the pregnant girl to get an abortion after making out with the other girl in front of her. Said girl later comes to his apartment and brutally murders him, the ''first'' girl sees the body, brutally murders ''her,'' and then leaves in a boat, cradling the guy's severed head in her arms, [[Dissonant Serenity|with a creepy smile on her face.]]}}
** Also showed what kind of girls would be in an [[Unwanted Harem]]. At best [[Clingy Jealous Girl|needy]], at worst [[
** Also brings up the true implications of the [[Lovable Sex Maniac]] / [[Bromantic Foil]]. Makoto's best friend Taisuke is a spirited yet hopeless romantic, and his perverted antics and subsequent rejections are portrayed as zany comic relief for most of the show. But then after being turned down once again on the day of the school festival, he resorts to actually ''raping a girl'' via taking avantage of her [[Heroic BSOD|when she's at her lowest point]]; this not only throws the victim through the [[Despair Event Horizon]], but it shos the character archetype to be much less harmless than commonly assumed.
* ''[[Patlabor]]'' may be the ultimate deconstruction of the Mecha-genre: It has no superheroes nor supervillains and the mechas are plain and simply tools; the majority of them are used at construction sites and storages. They're anything but cool and if there's something even uncooler, that would be being a member of the Patlabor unit.
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* ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' deconstructs the [[Save Our Students]] genre, especially the belief that students and teachers are natural enemies.
* [[Maria Holic]] is this to the [[Yuri Genre]], alternating between cruelly subverting and playfully mocking tropes associated with it through the wacky hijinks of the [[Genre Blind]] schoolgirl Kanako Miyamae and her "ideal girl" Mariya Shidou... who's actually a [[Villainous Crossdresser]].
* ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'' is, for the majority of the series, a pretty thorough deconstruction of the [[Magical Girl]] genre.{{verify}} The premise starts simple. Young [[Naive Everygirl]] Madoka and her [[Wide-Eyed Idealist]] friend Sayaka, are approached by [[Mentor Mascot]] Kyubey, and the relative [[Cool Big Sis]] Mami, where they are given the opportunity to become [[Magical Girl]]s. In exchange, they are granted one wish, that can be anything they want, but they will have to fight demonic entities called witches for the rest of their lives. In addition, a [[Dark Magical Girl]], Homura, is opposed to this, and is constantly trying to prevent the two from making a contract. Sounds reasonable enough. And then the show demonstrates exactly what happens to those young girls who are forced into fighting [[Eldritch Abominations]] with no chance at a normal life. Mami {{spoiler|is ultimately an extremely lonely [[Stepford Smiler]] who is broken on the inside due to losing her parents, and being forced to fight with no real friends. When Madoka does become her friend, her subsequent joy leads to her death, and also reminds us that these encounters are far more dangerous when removed from the sweet and innocent flavor that permeates most [[Magical Girl]] shows}}. In addition, Sayaka {{spoiler|decides to use a [[Selfless Wish]] to heal her crush, Kyousuke, much like any typical superhero. But as the other characters demonstrate, their is no such thing as a [[Selfless Wish]], as they all have a selfish intention. In Sayaka's case, it was so that she could get together with Kyousuke, and when he doesn't return her affections, she breaks down.}} Finally, Kyubey {{spoiler|shows exactly what kind of "mentor" would knowingly send girls off to their death, without giving the full details. Among these details is the fact that Magical girls will someday become the monsters that they fight, and that one reason they even fight them in the first place, is to stave off that end for as long as possible}}. At the end [[Decon Recon Switch|however]], {{spoiler|Madoka becomes a [[Magical Girl]], and uses a [[Cosmic Retcon]] to make it so that [[Magical Girl]]s will not become witches. Although [[Magical Girl]]s will have to fight demons instead of witches, it is at least implied that the situation is better than before}}.
** MOD: How is any of this a deconstruction of the subgenre? ''[[Sailor Moon]]'', the trope codifier, did most of this decades before ''PMMM''.
== Comic Books ==
* [[Superhero]] comics had a huge wave of [[Deconstruction]] in the '80s and '90s, caused chiefly by two examples:
** Frank Miller's ''[[Batman|Batman: The Dark Knight Returns]]'' takes straightforward superhero action and makes it look absurd by having politics interfere. Batman's work becomes a tool for debates about "toughness on crime," while Superman's idealism makes him an easy dupe for the US government's plans for nuclear war. It also asked the question: "What sort of a man would dress up in a bat outfit and fight crime." The answer: "A man who isn't very pleasant or sane."
*** Its sequel, ''[[The Dark Knight Strikes Again]]'', tries to deconstruct the [[
* ''[[Watchmen]]'' deconstructs the entire [[Silver Age]] [[Superhero]] genre. The premise of the comic is exactly like any other [[Superhero]] comic; some people put on strange costumes in order [[They Fight Crime|to fight crime]]. However, it didn't start with [[Superman|an alien child coming to earth]], but rather, with a bunch of off-duty cops wearing masks to counter mask-wearing criminals. Along the way, every trope associated with [[Superhero]] comics of the time is [[Deconstructed]]: [[Impossibly Cool Clothes]] turn out to be <s> extremely</s> fatally impractical, [[American Political System|politicians]] get involved and deputize and weaponize superheroes, these superheroes end up changing the course of history, and the main cast of [[Superhero]] characters are all rather screwed up. Specifically
** Rorschach embodies morally absolutist vigilante [[Superhero]] characters like [[The Question]]. He is so morally absolutist that he will stop at nothing to enforce his view of justice and will commit heinous acts as a means to an end; ultimately it turns out he is a [[Nietzsche Wannabe]] with a [[Woobie]]-worthy past.
** The Comedian is the [[Unbuilt Trope]] of the [[Nineties Anti-Hero]]. Big guns, wisecracks, big muscles, [[Badass]] mannerisms and... [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|attempted rape, misogyny, murder of innocents and moral nihilism]] abound. All these are merely his emotional shields. He has a breakdown when he discovers {{spoiler|Adrian Veidt}}'s plot because it was so horrifying [[Even Evil Has Standards|even to him]] {{spoiler|and [[Crazy Enough to Work]]}}. The Comedian also deconstructs the idea of superheroes like [[Captain America (comics)]] who embody patriotic ideals and work for the government—he's a black-ops agent who does highly unethical things, and as noted, couldn't give a damn about any ideals.
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* ''[[Troy]]'' deconstructed the [[Trojan War]].
* ''[[Seven Samurai]]'' deconstructed the samurai mythos. Samurai aren't allowed to change occupations so they sell their services or (like the bandits) resort to crime.
* ''[[Snow White: A
== Literature ==
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* [[Brandon Sanderson]] has said that he intended the background of the ''[[Mistborn]]'' trilogy as a deconstruction of [[High Fantasy]], in which [[The Hero]] fails his quest, and a thousand years later, the immortal [[Dark Lord]] rules the crumbling, devastated world as a god. After the first book, it also becomes a deconstruction of {{spoiler|what happens after the unlikely heroes defeat the [[Dark Lord]], and the difficulty of introducing freedom and establishing peace}}.
** As part of that, Sanderson also has a disturbing deconstruction of the use of prophecy in fantasy, which is almost always represented as being either good, or at least neutral. One of the characters fulfills an ancient prophecy, {{spoiler|only to find out that the prophecy was a lie propagated by a nihilistic god of destruction to enable its release. }}
* ''[[The Acts of Caine]]'' books deconstruct [[Role Playing Games]] featuring [[Player Characters]] in a larger world (including [[Tabletop Games]] and [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s). Pays particular attention to the relentlessly influential (and often devastating) effects such characters tend to have on the world they're visiting. The trappings of a [[High Fantasy]] are there, but it's one hell of a [[Crapsack World]].
* Sleeping Helena is a deconstruction of Sleeping Beauty. She is granted the gifts of music and dance and grace and beauty and so on and so forth, but these instead turn into obligations rather than gifts, each gift requiring her attention a bit each day. She also becomes a monster, torturing animals and willing to hurt and manipulate other people. "Why did no one think to grant her kindness?"
** {{spoiler|In addition, the curse of death was deconstructed as well, since the gift was not actually intended to kill her.}}
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* [[When You Reach Me]] provides an interesting deconstruction of the [[Time Travel]] ideas, mostly from being told not as a person who is doing the time traveling. The time traveler himself is seen as generally crazy to everyone, and the only way he can have someone believe he's from the future is by sending notes carried in his mouth, because he can't bring anything to the past.
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[My So-Called Life]]'' is essentially a deconstruction of teen comedies, although the creators never declared it as such. Tropes like [[Playing Cyrano]] and [[A Simple Plan]] are played seriously, showing how unpleasant they would be in real life. And the parents, instead of being [[Adults Are Useless|cartoonishly clueless]], are clueless in a [[Parents as People|more realistic, and more painful, way]].
* Good luck watching another [[Cop Show|crime drama]], even [[Police Procedural|a relatively realistic one]], after watching ''[[The Wire]]'''s deconstruction of the genre.
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* Though [[Crap Saccharine World|on the surface it looks like business as usual]], ''[[Power Rangers RPM]]'' deconstructs much of [[Power Rangers|its franchise]]. We see exactly the kind of threat the villain can present (99% of the world has been nuked), the [[Plucky Comic Relief]] is not an [[Instant Expert]] upon becoming a Ranger (and is just competent enough to avoid being [[The Load]]), the [[Teen Genius]] designing all the gear got her skills from being in a secret think tank for most of her life and has [[No Social Skills]] [[Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training|as a result]], and there is immense pressure to keep the [[Mid-Season Upgrade|Mid Season Upgrades]] coming [[Exponentially Escalating Arms Race|lest the villain get ahead]]. Things that don't get deconstructed tend to be lampshaded and made fun of; gratuitous [[Stuff Blowing Up]] was questioned once, and the aforementioned Teen Genius regularly gets offended when the Ranger suits are referred to as [[Spandex, Latex, or Leather|"spandex"]].
* ''[[Naeturvaktin]]'' is a fairly standard [[Work Com]] [[Cringe Comedy]] centring around Georg, a [[Control Freak]] [[Pointy-Haired Boss]] with awful politics. The sequel ''[[Dagvaktin]]'' is about just how awful and non-wacky it would be to have to work with someone like that in real life, ''and'' how [[Cry for the Devil|genuinely messed-up they would have to be to become that kind of person in the first place.]] Several episodes of ''[[Dagvaktin]]'' are [[Genre Shift|straight-up drama with no jokes at all]], dealing realistically with the spiral of bullying, abuse, child abuse and murder which Georg ends up perpetrating.
== Tabletop Games ==
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* [[Unknown Armies]] is this for [[Urban Fantasy]], by pointing out the various issues with human nature that would come up if the supernatural really existed in the modern day world. Violence, insanity, tragedy and anti-social behaviour is common in the occult underground.
▲== Theater ==
* [[Stephen Sondheim]]'s ''[[Into the Woods]]'' spends its first act as simply a retelling of the stories of "[[Jack and the Beanstalk]]", "[[Little Red Riding Hood]]", "[[Rapunzel]]", and "[[Cinderella (novel)|Cinderella]]", all tied together with the story of a baker and his wife who are cursed with infertility unless they can procure certain items from all four. In the end it looks like everyone's gotten what they want and is happy, but suddenly the narrator announces "To be continued!" Act two begins with the idea that the giant was just minding his own business when Jack came up the beanstalk and killed him, and just builds from there into an incredibly brutal [[Anyone Can Die]] deconstruction of fairy tales.
* ''[[Hamlet]]'' has been read as a massive deconstruction of Elizabethan revenge dramas (although most of them end in tears for everyone). ''Measure for Measure'' might do the same for comedies. The whole thing is a source of much debate.
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* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: [[Euripides]]' ''Trojan Women'' and ''Hecuba'' portrayed [[The Trojan War]] as a human tragedy rather than a sweeping epic tale of martial valor in the Homeric tradition. In general, his tragedies are regarded as more "modern" than those of his predecessors because of their morally ambiguous protagonists, pervasive sense of [[Wangst|anxiety and despair]], religious skepticism and overall portrayal of mythologycal subjects and characters as real people.
* The musical ''[[Urinetown]]'' has the downtrodden people fighting to overthrow the oppressive system that heavily taxes and regulates their bathroom usage during a worldwide massive drought. They succeed, but {{spoiler|they are so caught up in the "freedom" that they don't control themselves at all and end up effectively squandering all the remaining water.}}
== Video Games ==
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* ''[[Haunting Ground]]'' could be considered as a deconstruction of the more typical [[Survival Horror]] games where the main character is given all sorts of weapons and ammunition to cut down a near endless stream of monsters. The most Fiona can do herself is kick the enemy, and she relies on her pet dog to keep the enemy at bay as long as she can. The game also has a feature where the main character panics and gets harder to control the more she's hurt, like most real people would do if they were being chased around by psychopaths.
** ''[[Haunting Ground]]'' uses very similar gameplay—and was originally intended as a sequel—to the ''[[Clock Tower (series)|Clock Tower]]'' series, the first part of which was [[Older Than They Think|published for SNES in 1995]], before survival horror had [[Unbuilt Trope|established itself as the genre it is today]]. Perhaps a better example of a survival horror deconstruction would be the original ''[[Siren (video game)|Siren]]'', which takes what at first glance seems to be a fairly typical zombie scenario, but instead of handing you lots and lots of guns and a character with a visible health bar, you get a cast of very average people who are clumsy in combat, have a very limited access to weapons (and no access to healing items whatsoever), and die very easily. Instead of fighting everything with wild abandon, you need to be stealthy and avoid close encounters, much like the average joe would have to do in such a situation. The sequels have been gradually slipping into a more conventional, combat-oriented style of gameplay.
* The [[Expanded Universe]] of ''[[EVE Online]]'' tends to do this to [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s. It thoroughly explores the consequences of [[A God Am I|law-unto-themselves immortal demigods]] waging perpetual war both between themselves and with the [[NPC|other, less gifted denizens of the universe]]. The mere existence of the player capsuleers ups the average daily death rate in New Eden by many thousands, and contributes in large part to the [[Crapsack World]] New Eden now is.
* ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' is a deconstruction of literally the whole [[Mystery Fiction|Murder Mystery]] genre. {{spoiler|Despite that, it's supposed to be [[Fair Play Whodunnit]], though one could argue about the amount of fair.}}
** {{spoiler|The OPENING SEQUENCE of the second game states quite clearly "No Dine, no Knox, [[Clueless Mystery|no Fair]]. In other words it is not mystery. But it happens, all it happens, let it happens." The author actually goes out of the way to inform us that he's not following Van Dine or Knox's rules of "fair" detective fiction and that... well, it's not a mystery that can be solved by us.}}
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* ''[[Misfile]]'' can be considered a broad deconstruction of the [[Gender Bender]] [[Transformation Comic]], showing how much it would actually suck if you were transformed into the opposite gender and didn't have those kind of tendencies to start with (the part frequently ignored by TG comic fans who wish something like that could happen to them.) Ash is depicted like a real transgendered teen would be (literally a boy trapped in a girl's body), with a realistic level of distress to not only the biological and social changes, but to also having the entire foundation of your world and personal identity ripped out from underneath you.
* One could say ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' is something of a deconstruction of what it's like to live in a [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]]. Eventually, the amount of supernatural villains you piss off (and the infamy among the inhabitants of said [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]] that you gain through your deeds) will reach such a critical mass that your entire life will be swallowed up in a never-ending, breakneck onslaught of attacks and reactions to your attempts to defend yourself from said attacks from grudge-holding demons, psychopaths, monsters, conspiracies, [[Eldritch Abomination]]s, [[Artifact of Doom|Artifacts of Doom]], evil [[Mega Corp]]s, etc, etc. Being a fairly early webcomic, this has been subjected to a measure of [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny]].
== Web Original ==
* ''[[
** The [[Villain Protagonist|villain is the protagonist]], a shy, nerdy guy who wants to [[Take Over the World]] because he sees it for the [[Crapsack World]] that it is and wants to improve things... [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|on his own terms]]. He also wants to get a date with the girl at the laundromat, whom he's too shy to talk to.
** The [[Hero Antagonist|hero is the antagonist]], a [[Smug Super]], [[Jerk Jock]] womanizer who believes that, because he is superpowerful, he's better than everyone else and is only too happy to display it. He further believes that only people who are like him can be heroic, and anyone who's nerdy or unpopular is a potential supervillain. It's strongly implied that this behavior is what drives people like the villain to become evil in the first place.
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** The [[Nigh Invulnerable]] super hero is only brave because he's never had to experience pain in his life. When he ''does'', he has a [[Heroic BSOD]] over it.
** The villain finds that his victory: the hero defeated, entry into the Evil League of Evil secured by {{spoiler|his [[Love Interest]]'s murder}}, comes at the [[Pyrrhic Villainy|price of his humanity]].
* [http://www.digital-brilliance.com/necron/necron.htm This website] deconstructs the [[Cthulhu Mythos]], specifically the Necronomicon. In essense it asks "what if it was a real book?" and builds from there, by looking for paralels between Judeo-Christian tradition and the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] (The Old Ones = The Giants from Genesis), it creates the content of the book, it then asks "what kind of person would write about such things in 730 AD?", thus Abdul Alhazred is what the Koran calls a "Sabian" and what western biblical scholars call a "Gnostic" a person with religous veiws related
* Stardestroyer.net, as mentioned above in [[Fanfic]], deconstructs the seemingly utopian ''[[Star Trek]]'' universe, pointing out holes.
* ''[[Sailor Nothing]]'' loves showing just how jarringly, horrifically, nightmarishly different the characters' lives are from [[Magical Girl]] anime. Several of them even watch an exaggerated, stereotypical version of such shows; the main character actually watches it to escape her life.
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* The [[Whateley Universe]] is a deceonstruction of the classic superhero/supervillain tropes, with mutants who have to obey real physical laws, some supervillains like Dr. Diabolik who are pretty far from the classic villain, and even some supers who are far from the classic hero.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDX1m0Y2Vkg This video] is a deconstruction of Pokémon. Yes, Pokémon. It is mostly played for laughs but there is a point about half-way through where Pikachu is bleeding as he's strangled by a Bulbasaur and it's played straight.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* There can be a very good case made for ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' being a deconstruction of ''[[Jonny Quest]] and [[Doc Savage]]''-style [[Two-Fisted Tales
* ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' director Chuck Jones often used deconstruction on his cartoons. The best known example is ''[[Duck Amuck]]'': First the scenery changes, forcing Daffy to adapt. Then Daffy himself is erased and redrawn. Then the soundtrack fails, then the film frame, and so on until Daffy is psychologically picked clean. Another example is ''[[What's Opera, Doc?|What's Opera Doc]]'', which takes the base elements of a typical Bugs Bunny cartoon and reassembles them as a Wagnerian opera. (Conversely, you could also say that it takes the base elements of Wagnerian opera and reassembles them as a Bugs Bunny cartoon.)
* ''[[Family Guy]]'' does a [[Crosses the Line Twice|particularly nasty]] deconstruction of ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' and its [[Amusing Injuries]], wherein Elmer Fudd is out "hunting wabbits", shoots Bugs Bunny four times in the stomach, snaps his neck amidst cries of pain, and then drags him off leaving behind a trail of blood. In another episode where Peter and friends became [[The A-Team]], the show's "amusing injuries" are discussed as actually life-threatening.
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* ''[[Transformers Animated]]'' is a deconstruction of the whole Autobot-Decepticon War. Things ain't so [[Black and White Morality|black and white]] as before, in fact the Autobots' leadership is flawed and somewhat corrupt, with one higly racist, incompetent, cowardly jerkass general on it, who only is amongst the High Command because he blames his mistakes on Optimus Prime, whose status as [[The Messiah]] makes him somewhat of a push-over, and its leader is ready to commit dirty tricks to defeat the Decepticons. The Decepticons however, are as much the monsters they were in G1, and though this time Megatron's pragmatic enough to blast [[The Starscream|Starscream]]'s ass any time he tries to overthrow him. Starscream only survives thanks to the Allspark piece on his head. [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality|Without it he would have died right from the start]]. Then comes the [[Darker and Edgier|season]] [[Anyone Can Die|three]]...
* ''"Hey Good Lookin'"'' by [[Ralph Bakshi]] (who else) is one big Deconstruction and [[Take That]] against anyone who believes that the 1950s were really just like ''[[Grease]]'' or ''[[Happy Days]]''. The main character is ostensibly as cool as The Fonz but actually a [[Dirty Coward]] who can't back up his bragging, the [[Plucky Comic Relief]] is actually a racist sociopath, their gang aren't really [[True Companions]] despite looking like it, the supposed [[Big Bad]] never [[Mind Screw|explictly]] does anything really bad and the ending's [[Broken Aesop]] is intentional about the [[Shallow Love Interest|"Romance"]] between the main character and Rozzie.
* In the normal episodes of ''[[My Little Pony:
** Applejack handled the same situation in a much more straightforward [[Frothy Mugs of Water|manner]].
== Other Media ==▼
▲== Other ==
* ''Reductio Ad Absurdum'' is one of the major logical fallacies; a style of argument that does this to its opposition. It takes the opponent's argument and logically follows it through to an absurd or indefensible conclusion.
* The well-known [[Aesop]] "[[Be Careful What You Wish For]]" operates in this way. Person X makes wish Y. Wish Y is granted to person X. Wish Y then manages to have sufficiently negative unintended consequences on person X's life that wish Y now looks like a ridiculous thing to wish for. Thus, Wish Y is deconstructed.
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