Reality Ensues: Difference between revisions

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** {{spoiler|In fact, the whole return from death thing is really the ultimate engagement of reality, since the whole movie is based around the concept that nothing in the Matrix is really occurring. As such, reality kicks in and he simply starts re-writing the world around him.}}
* ''[[The A-Team (film)|The a Team]]'': {{spoiler|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]].
* ''[[The Empire Strikes Back]]'': When the [[HumongousWalking MechaTank|AT-AT]] first appears, it looks intimidating, fearsome, unstoppable... and it is - right until a rebel snowspeeder demonstrates the drawbacks of long, ungainly legs.
** Its main weapons were forward-facing and rather slow. AT-AT's long legs and cheek light turrets could protect from clever infantry with limpets, and that's all. Siege artillery / APC should not fight everything alone - keeping away maneuverable vehicles is a task for escorts. In battle on Hoth they ''were'' escorted by AT-ST scout walkers (without e.g. better armored and armed AT-AR), but those were destroyed or chased off by heavy guns, leaving AT-AT on their own. If AT-ATs stopped until P-Towers are dealt with, low escorts around them would remain behind the horizon, safe from line-of-sight weapons. They rushed on because they were winning and wanted to not only destroy the generator (primary objective), but overrun the base before it evacuates and get information, too. Yet unarmored artillery won't delay them if they cared to bring in fast attack vehicles of their own or mass driver artillery to do the job beyond visual range. So in the end, the Imperials tripped on their own overconfidence and impatience, as usual.
** There's also the fact that it's only armed with forward-facing weapons.
** To a lesser extent, the AT-ST in ''Return of the Jedi''. It may have two legs and a rotating cockpit, but it can also be tripped. Generally, when they use it as anything but recon / light support vehicle it is, this leads to some or other embarrassment, like letting a wookie hijack it by ripping the hatch open.
* In ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]'', after Scott manages to {{spoiler|knock Gideon away, he stops for a chat with Ramona and Knives. Only for Gideon to stab him through the chest. Lots of gaming tropes are played straight in this setting, but [[Talking Is a Free Action]] is apparently not one of them.}}
** An alternate ending that was never filmed would have had it be revealed that {{spoiler|Scott and Ramona were arrested for murdering seven very famous people in the entertainment industry.}}
* In ''[[Kick-Ass (film)|Kick-Ass]]'' when Dave gets his first try at superheroism {{spoiler|and gets stabbed in the gut for the effort, just to be run over by a car mere seconds later.}}
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* 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. [[Downer Ending|The End!]]
* The [[Pixar]] movie ''[[Up (animation)|Up]]'' has an instance of this. Young Carl, determined to impress Ellie, attempts to walk across a wooden beam to retrieve his balloon. He takes a single step. The beam promptly breaks.
* In ''[[The Incredibles]]'', there's an in-universe example of Elasti-girl explaining to her children that the bad guys they're facing are not like the ones on TV, that they [[Would Hurt a Child]] if given a chance.
** ''"[[Turbine Blender|NO CAPES!]]"''
** Really, the central premise behind the movie itself is somewhat similar to [[Watchmen]]: the real-life consequences of superhero activities. Mr. Incredible saves a suicidal man, who promptly sues him for the injuries he caused. He stops a runaway train, and is sued for damages. Holding superheroes responsible for the collateral damage they inadvertantly cause is the reason they disappear.
* ''Bodyguards & Assassins'': The final assassin is a highly-skilled martial artist. [[Instant Death Radius|Death in close quarters]], [[Hero-Killer|he mows down a lot of bodyguards, including several named characters]]. {{spoiler|One of the last survivors gets his hands on a pistol and pumps the assassin full of lead, ending his streak.}}
* ''[[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 before it hits the ground.
* In the''[[Wild filmWild ofWest (film)|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 hits him over the head with a shovel, stating "I made that up."
 
 
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* In ''[[War of the Dreaming]]'', there is an [[Out-of-Genre Experience|scene]] where a Beatrix-Potteresque [[Talking Animal|Mouse]] shows up to rescue one of the heroes. Then the setting changes back and Mouse {{spoiler|promptly gets stepped on.}}
* James Patterson has this as a side effect of the [[Author Tract]] in ''Cross Country'', Alex Cross's ex girlfriend gets brutally murdered by an African mercenary. He heads to Africa. {{spoiler|The second he gets out of the airport, he's kidnapped. By the police. Then it gets worse.}} You could basically cut out several hundred pages from the middle of the book, and all you'd miss would be the [[Author Tract]] and Reality Ensuing, over and over again.
* [[Reality Ensues]] plus [[Deus Angst Machina]] is prettyPretty much the entire reason for the ''[[Lawrence Watt Evans|Three Worlds Trilogy]]'' is [[Reality Ensues]] plus [[Deus Angst Machina]]. [[This Loser Is You|The protagonist fails]] [[Boring Failure Hero|at everything]] and a whole bunch of people die because he's just an ordinary person up against insurmountable odds. [[Grimdark]] only begins to describe it.
* In the ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' novel ''[[Brothers of the Snake]]'', {{spoiler|Apothecary Menon}} wanders around a village with suspected Chaos cultists with his helmet's faceplate up. For a good reason, mind, as the daemon his squad is hunting is invisible to helmet sensors and can only be seen with the naked eye. Unfortunately, when he gets into a fight with said cultists, he takes a bullet in the face and dies.
** In a [[Ciaphas Cain]] novel, Cain notes that many battle sisters do something similar, [[Helmets Are Hardly Heroic|fighting with their faces exposed]] claiming that faith will be their armor. Many of them die horrible deaths thanks to the [[Bug War|Tyranids]] as a result.
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* In ''[[Wearing the Cape]]'', Hope/Astra is given a lesson in momentum and force and why it's a good idea to know how tough something is before you fly yourself into it like a missile. The book is actually full of little reality-checks, like superheroes getting warrants before going after supervillains, villains who's lawyers get the charges dropped, and strangers committing random acts of badness.
* [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s ''[[Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms]]'' series does this to the standard [[Fairy Tale Tropes]]. Sometimes it [[Deconstructor Fleet|takes a story apart]] so thoroughly you wonder how it could ever have worked, but other times it retrieves what was nice and [[Reconstructed Trope|shows how it could still function]].
* At the end of Brandon Sanderson's ''[[Mistborn]]'', they kill the [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|who betrayed the hero of ages past, stole the power of the Well of Eternity for himself, dislodged the Earth from its proper orbit, brought up volcanoes that constantly choke the air with ash, created a permanent underclass of slaves, and turned HIS OWN FRIENDS into monsters.}} Good riddance, right? Well, no. The second book then details the political consequences of such a sudden power vacuum, and trying to go from a totalitarian dictatorship directly to a constitutional monarchy (hint: [[It Got Worse|a lot of people die]].)
* In the ''[[Honor Harrington]]'' novel ''On Basilisk Station'', the Bronze Age-tech Medusans manage to brutally kill some Manticorans by swarming them. Then, the Manties bring out the heavy weapons and air support. The aliens die. And die. And die some more.
* The ''[[Discworld]]'' books play this for equal parts comedy and drama. Among other things, characters frequently react realistically to outlandish situations (in ''[[Discworld/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', after tricking a banshee into getting killed by a malfunctioning sorting machine, the protagonist is too busy being ill to shoot off a [[Post Mortem One Liner]]), and the narrative often points out that happy endings [[This Is Reality|in "real life"]] are never as simple as they are in stories (at the end of ''[[Discworld/Monstrous Regiment|Monstrous Regiment]]'', the protagonist and her companions end up stopping the war between Borogravia and Zlobenia, but some months later in story-time the ruthless ruler of Zlobenia just tries to start another war). Complicating things is the influence that [[Theory of Narrative Causality|narrative causality]] has on the Discworld, making the line between "reality" and "fiction" as blurry as it gets.
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* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' Season 5 finale: Buffy approaches [[The Dragon]] atop a tower. He gears up for a fight, {{spoiler|and she just knocks him off the tower.}}
** In the season 3 premiere, the [[Monster of the Week]] knocks [[The Chick]] down and does a speech about how his realm is inescapable. Then the girl gets up and pushes him off the edge.
** Midway through season 2, a demon is hyped throughout the two-part episode as being so strong, that [[No Man of Woman Born|no weapon forged by man could defeat him]]. {{spoiler|He is blown apart in one shot by an anti-tank missile. Guess whatThe mankind wasforged capablea of forging haslot improvedmore in the past six hundred years. Besides, while some components of the delivery system are arguably "forged by man", the part that hurts isn't. }}
** Season 6 episode ''Seeing Red'': The villain's plot is thwarted, the heroes have their denouement with the talking about their feelings, {{spoiler|and Tara is shot dead by a stray bullet when the villain comes back with a gun.}}
* ''[[Firefly]]'' "The Train Job":
{{quote|'''Huge [[Mooks]]:''' ...and the last thing you see will be my blade!
'''Mal:''' Darn. *kicks him into an engine* }}
** In "The Message", Wash tries to lose a pursuing ship [[Aerial Canyon Chase|by flying into a canyon]]:
{{quote|'''Wash:''' They're not behind us anymore!
''(Looks up and sees that the other ship simply flew over)''
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** Grittier, meaner, more brutal games (''[[The World of Darkness]]'', ''[[Dark Heresy]]'', ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]'', and so on) intentionally invoke this trope to help create the feel of danger, failure, and high stakes. Some games, such as the old [[West End Games]] ''D6 [[Star Wars]]'' adaptation, have rules written to invoke this trope and then blatantly tell the GM to lie and keep the PC's relatively safe, allowing them to feel like reality may ensue when it probably won't. Some games even shoot to overplay this trope in the name of schadenfreude; for instance, in ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'', your character is incompetent, your boss is insane, and your teammates will throw you under the bus at the drop of a hat-- so sure enough, you're pretty much guaranteed to suck, fail, and die repeatedly [[Black Comedy|for laughs]].
** ''[[GURPS]]'' defaults to a gritty, dangerous rule system where this trope is in full force, and combat is lethal. But the GM can change that, for example by using the various Cinematic Combat rules, or ignoring the bleeding rules. And then there are the ''Silly'' Combat rules, which throw reality right out the window in favor of rules like Bulletproof Nudity, [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]] (the [[Trope Namer]]), [[Bottomless Magazines|Infinite Ammunition]], and [[Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting|Martial Arts Anonymous]].
** ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' generally averts this trope. However, when it comes to 2.5 Edition, if one were to implementuse the [[Critical Hit]] system from [[Expanded''Player's Universe|Combat & Tactics]]Options'', players can find themselves in need of [[Death Is Cheap|a resurrection spell]] fast. And, [[It Got Worse|to make matters worse]], depending on the type of damage inflicted (e.g., [[Hollywood Acid|acid]], [[Man On Fire|fire]], [[Gale Force Sound|vibration]]) a player may require a [[reincarnation]] spell, [[Make a Wish|a wish]] [[Be Careful What You Wish For|spell]] or worse yet, [[Killed Off for Real|a new character]] [[Final Death|to continue playing]]. <ref>After all, what do you expect to happen when a 3rd level illusionist receives [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|TRIPLE damage]] from stone-digging claws of a rampaging [[Smash Mook|umber hulk's]] fists? Not to mention the damage [[Impromptu Tracheotomy|an arrow through the throat can do]], the horrific effects of the various kinds of [[Our Dragons Are Different|dragon's]] [[Breath Weapon|breath]], the many [[Universal Poison|venomous/poisonous beasts]], the [[Brown Note|long term effects]] [[Telepathy|of getting]] [[Mind Rape|hit with a]] [[Psychic Powers|psionic attack]], and let's not even get started with [[The Undead]] and the many ways they can kill a PC [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|in one turn or less]]. While we're on the subject of creatures of the night, getting mauled by a [[Our Werebeasts Are Different|werebeast]] will more likely end in a [[Gorn|bloody death]]; becoming a therianthrope is a rather remote possibility.</ref> [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|When]] [[Killer Game Master|played straight]], D&D can be [[Everything Trying to Kill You|far more]] [[Death World|dangerous]] than [[Real Life]], since [[Wizard Needs Food Badly|you can starve]], [[Hostile Weather|die from exposure]], [[Super Drowning Skills|drown]] [[Captain Obvious|(take off your armor before you attempt to swim)]], and having a [[Light'Em Up|light spell]] [[Eye Scream|cast on]] [[Blinded by the Light|your eyes will]] [[Sense Loss Sadness|blind you]]., [[Lightpossibly Is Not Good|Permanently]]permanently. And occasionally [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]].
 
 
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* [http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/72300/wee-army-man-comics-snipers-finished-on-page3/p1 This] comic on the ''[[Penny Arcade (Webcomic)|Penny Arcade]]'' forums.
* A common occurrence on ''[[Shortpacked]]''. [[Rule of Funny]] will be enacted, then in the next comic the serious results will hit the characters.
* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' this is most likely what endedhow Susan's uniform crusade arc ended. Didn't help she was blatantly ignoring nearly half the school, and misreading almost the entirety. She was rather surprised when it turns out that the decisive factor here was {{spoiler|parents sharing with the principal their opinion on having to wash and repair more clothes just for the sake of his loonie ideas}}.
** After Grace's brothers are freed from Damien, they are informed that they will have to take psychological tests to make sure that they're of fit mind to live in society. Grace realizes that she underwent similar tests after living with Ted, but Ted's dad was just sneaky enough to be very subtle about it.
* In ''[[Friendly Hostility]]'', Collin gets a part time job as a funny kids show host. When he's publicly outed as being gay, it's shrugged off as a joke at first, until he realizes it will cost him his job. He becomes severely depressed and ends up breaking off his relationship with Fox, and although they try to work it out with a therapist, later canon shows that they never get back together. [[Downer Ending|End of comic]].
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* ''[[Xkcd]]'' had [http://xkcd.com/347/ Breakout]: [[Don't Try This At Home]].
* In ''[[Nip and Tuck]]'' the [[Show Within the Show]] ''Rebel Cry'' opens with [[La Résistance]] getting its head handed to it by [[The Empire]], because it consists of two systems.
* In ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'', Vaarsuvius succinctly deals with [[Aristocrats Are Evil|Kubota's]] [[TakeThe Over the CityChessmaster|plans]] to [[TheTake Chessmaster|chessmasteringOver the City]]:
{{quote|"Disintegrate. Gust of Wind."}}
** The kicker here is that Vaarsuvius didn't ''know'' that he was dispatching a threat. He was just removing a distraction from his research. Of course, this garners him a [[What the Hell, Hero?]] from Elan.
* Occurs in ''[[The Dreadful]],'' for [[Improbable Aiming Skills|a given value of "[[Improbable Aiming Skills|reality"]]". A posse shows up at Kit's hideout. Their [[Smug Snake|arrogant]] leader threatens and insults Kit while flipping his gun around [[Metal Gear Solid|Revolver Ocelot]]-style. It looks like an epic gunfight is about to ensue, but Kit simply shoots the hammer of his gun mid-flip, causing it to shoot him in the head.
 
== Web Original ==
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** In "The PTA Disbands", a tour guide in Fort Springfield is giving a lecture on a "fully restored and in ready to fire condition" Civil War cannon aimed directly at the base of a manned lookout tower. She mentions that these cannons are "''very'' sensitive and that the "''slightest'' jolt" can set them off as the Springfield Elementary bus starts swerving towards the cannon. The bus hits it and...one of the cannon's wheels falls off.
{{quote|'''Tour Guide''': Of course for safety reasons, we don't keep the cannon ''loaded''. That's just common sense.}}
** When homerHomer builds a church in an island, he believed in the Flintstones by using a pelican as a cement mixer, as he gives it a pat, the bird just falls on the ground.
* ''[[Archer]]'' often plays the various injuries encountered in [[Spy Fiction]] realistically:
** Whenever a character is exposed to explosions or gunfire, they suffer temporary deafness, sometimes accompanied by a [[Shell-Shock Silence|loud ringing noise]]. It's happened to Archer so many times he mentions that he thinks he's developing tinnitus.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Reality_Ensues"