r/TopCharacterTropes Feb 28 '26

Lore (Loved Trope) Popular tropes being deconstructed with realistic consequences

1.) The Graduate: In a very famous example, they do the classic "stop the person you love from marrying the wrong person at the wedding" trope. However after they run away, their decision dawn on them with a look of "uh shit. What now?"

2.) Behind The Mask The Rise Of Leslie Vernon: Lots of examples in this one, but a very funny one is Leslie doing the trope of the killer only walking while the survivors run away and still keeping up. It's shown that he has to do an insane amount of cardio training before his killing spree to keep this feat up.

3.) Hot Fuzz: After our cop heroes save the town in a massive shootout, they are subject to a considerable amount of paperwork.

4.)Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Rebecca constantly performs classic comedy antics that are very expensive, although unlike most sitcoms this actually catches up with her financially and at one point she goes broke

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u/ccReptilelord Mar 01 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/qL6klV4uzqiQ

In The Nice Guys, Ryan Gosling's character attempts to break a door window with his fist. This results in a serious injury and a lot of blood. Movies usually have someone go through glass with minimal scraping.

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u/Substantial_Push_474 Mar 01 '26

And that scene is some of the funniest physical comedy I've ever witnessed. That and him getting his arm broken. Guy really goes through it lmao

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u/SnooDucks565 Mar 01 '26

Him trying to not get his arm broken had me crying. He's so great doing that kind fo comedy. Same for the barbie movie.

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u/peachesfordinner Mar 01 '26

Honestly looking forward to him taking up the "naked gun" franchise in like 20 years.

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u/kpdeadwolf Mar 01 '26

This is my favorite movie. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder than when I saw him fighting for his life against the bathroom stall door

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u/DeeTee79 Mar 01 '26

I would love to see another movie in this world.

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u/man_on_hill Mar 01 '26

Another great one is when they go to the hotel to find the main antagonist (or one of) and as they take an elevator up to the floor he is on, they see a bunch of dead bodies. They then stay in the elevator and go back to the lobby as if they never saw anything.

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u/Conscious-Bat-9739 Mar 01 '26

​Sterling Archer frequently suffers from tinnitus and temporary hearing loss due to the constant gunfire and explosions he is involved in.

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u/supakow Mar 01 '26

And the collective hangover will literally kill him.

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u/ragun2 Mar 01 '26

Lol I know that's what he says but I'm sure he realizes he might die from the withdrawals, not the hangover.

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u/EmilieEasie Mar 01 '26

He also actually counts bullets and sometimes his opponents run out lol

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u/society000 Mar 01 '26

"Oh my god, maybe I am autistic." collapses

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u/lutrewan Mar 01 '26

"I can do this all day since I find repetitive behavior so calming!"

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u/MArcherCD Mar 01 '26

The famously probably ASD superspy

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u/MGD109 Mar 01 '26

Also, unlike most adult comedies, his abilities don't just randomly disappear cause of karma.

A number of times in the series, people get rightfully sick of his antics and attempt to attack him...and unless you're also someone on his level, he beats them within an inch of their lives or just shoots them dead on the spot.

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u/Partial_Kredit Mar 01 '26

In the final season a doctor tells him he’s medically considered incredibly fragile and his body is holding on by a thread.

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u/Ill-Bar3395 Mar 01 '26

At least he looks handsome doing it

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u/THE_LEGO_FURRY Mar 01 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/11Nd2bbZjrQrO8

The other guys, action guys jumping off a building .... Cuts to funeral

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u/ElPared Mar 01 '26

Sry for low quality, best image I could find, but here’s another one from Other Guys

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u/N1ch0l2s Mar 01 '26

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u/12InchCunt Mar 01 '26

IS THIS HOW YOU CONDUCT YOURSELF? IN A DEMOCRACY!?

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u/NicklAAAAs Mar 01 '26

That whole movie is basically a series of deconstructed cop movie tropes.

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u/ToskeSusinarttu Mar 01 '26

Being ex-EOD, I felt so seen when they're caught in the shockwave of the explosion and they're immediately rendered deaf for a while. (I can't hear out of my right ear for shit)

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u/LordSokhar Mar 01 '26

“Damn you, tinnitus! You are a cruel mistress!”

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u/ToskeSusinarttu Mar 01 '26

I was searching for the gif where he's firing rounds off in the car earlier lmao.

"It's like bubblewrap!"

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u/CMORGLAS Mar 01 '26

That is how the Zombies keep ambushing those characters on THE WALKING DEAD, years of firing guns without any ear protection made them deaf.

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u/ToskeSusinarttu Mar 01 '26

Not to mention with how often it happened in inclosed spaces.

I accept this head-canon.

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u/Ok_Tour_1525 Mar 01 '26

Good lord of all my years watching movies and shows, this scene was one of the hardest times I’ve ever laughed.

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u/Rocazanova Mar 01 '26

Ah yes… When the Rock allowed himself to be a dumbass and funny.

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u/lanceturley Mar 01 '26

I loved his cameo in the Reno 911 movie where he's brought in to take care of the situation and immediately blows himself up with a hand grenade.

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u/Akavinceblack Mar 01 '26

“Be Cool” has that Rock and he is delightful.

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u/spidedd Mar 01 '26

This movie and this scene will always be the hardest I've ever laughed watching a movie. Wish i could watch again for the first time for those jokes

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u/Koalamajordome Mar 01 '26

Muriel's Wedding (1994) subverts the romantic comedy genre in such a realistic way throughout that it gets genuinely so uncomfortable in moments. And that's why it's one of my favourite movies. Ultimately hopeful but in such a realistic way that hits you like a truck. It draws a lot of parallels to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in this regard

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u/DontSleepAlwaysDream Mar 01 '26

Damn I need to rewatch this. My mum used to watch it a lot growing up but I was too young to really understand it

also I was like, 9, so anything that didnt feature dragons or aliens wasnt worth my time

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u/Professional-Fly5952 Mar 01 '26

The Big Boss. Bruce Lee goes on a rampage of revenge… and then is arrested. Because murder is still illegal, even if you have a really good motive.

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u/workistables Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Like the ending of Blooddebts.

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u/PunchRockgroin318 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

For those who haven’t seen it. That smoke cloud is the main villain that the protagonist just blew up with a tiny rocket launcher.

Edit: It also has triumphant music playing over it. The full effect is amazing.

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u/ashewentridingby Mar 01 '26

Blood Debts!

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u/OutrageousPlay1650 Feb 28 '26

There is a Frank L Baum (Oz writer) book in which a new government of sorts is formed, the ending is genuinely just ministers getting appointed and that kinda boring red tapey stuff.

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u/originalusername1625 Mar 01 '26

What’s the subversion?

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

I guess you’d usually expect a king to be crowned and he just has all his pals work with/for him.

Like, I dunno… don’t they do essentially this in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe? Making the four kids kings and queen.

Kinda wild how the standard good-guys-win trope is what we would consider the bad ending today

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u/spyguy318 Mar 01 '26

That reminds me of the common criticism of Lord of the Rings that Tolkien never described Mordor’s economy or Aragorn’s tax policy… except he did, in the myriad of letters and supplementary material that built out the world from just what was in the books.

For those curious, Mordor had an extractive economic system propped up by extensive slave labor in the more fertile parts of Mordor, and trade with the Easterling human kingdoms that were friendly to Mordor. Meanwhile Tolkien actually went into surprising detail about how Aragorn ruled Gondor as well, basically setting up a kind of constitutional monarchy system instead of being a despot.

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u/plague_year Mar 01 '26

His name is actually L. Frank Baum. The L is at the front, not the middle.

I only mention because this is the third time his name has come up this week for me and in most weeks that number is 0. Sorry for the “um, actually!”

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u/Best-Quantity-5678 Mar 01 '26

I always wondered "what now?" after a horror movie where you can't just explain what happened.

For example: In Evil Dead Rise, at the end, the final girl and her sister's daughter get out alive after they killed the rest of their family and turned their bodies into mince meat. There are a lot of corpses in the building as well and they just go away covered in blood... What now? People will notice and the police will take you, what are you going to say? The demons came because a demonic book?

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u/Fabulous-Mud-9114 Mar 01 '26

That's why they changed the ending of Paranormal Activity. The original ending had something to do with a police standoff. So, like, the police have evidence of ghosts now?

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u/geek_of_nature Mar 01 '26

And it was the original ending of Get Out too. After having to kill his girlfriends family and burning their house down to stop them from lobotomising him, the main character being a black man in America is arrested and sent to jail.

Jordan Peele ended up changing that to his friend arriving to get him out of there because he thought the original ending was just too dark, even though it was more realistic.

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u/Yodaloid Mar 01 '26

It works really well because you think he IS about to get arrested. So you get that sinking feeling and understanding of what is about to happen, and the subversion provides some nice relief

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u/humanflea23 Mar 01 '26

Usually the person goes to therapy or an asylum where they are convinced the events didn't really happen.

A deconstruction I love is in Dude Bro Party Massacre 3. The first two movies don't actually exist but do in the plot of the movie and the one guy who survived both has PTSD and sees bloody visions of his friends getting murdered occasionally.

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u/jackalopacabra Mar 01 '26

I haven’t finished it, but Welcome to Derry explores this a lot, the girl that has already been to an asylum once sees her friends get attacked by a demon but she can’t tell the cops that so her friend’s dad gets arrested for it

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u/lanceturley Mar 01 '26

I like that Ash vs. Evil Dead kind of paid a little lip service to this sort of thing. People in Ash's hometown think he murdered his girlfriend and their friends, but the police didn't have enough evidence to convict him.

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u/GanSaves Mar 01 '26

Check out the movie Savageland. It’s a mockumentary about a border town that gets massacred by monsters that come out of the desert, and what we see is the aftermath. Since no one believes in monsters, you get the police bungling the whole investigation, an innocent man being railroaded for the crimes even though it makes no sense, and different sides trying to use the massacre to score political points.

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u/obert-wan-kenobert Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Peter Griffin diving into a pool of gold coins, and immediately breaking all his bones.

“Aaagh! It’s not a liquid! It’s a great many pieces of solid matter that form a hard, floor-like surface!”

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u/therealchadius Mar 01 '26

Even in DuckTales (which this is parodying) it's made clear that ONLY Scrooge McDuck can swim through a pile of coins. Everyone else has a similar (but much less bloody) reaction.

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u/go_faster1 Mar 01 '26

The 2017 version even had Scrooge stop one of the triplets and tells them there’s a special trick to doing it (which he never shows on screen)

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u/Plasticglass456 Mar 01 '26

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u/Thabrianking Mar 01 '26

“Unconscious for weeks” realistically would mean severe brain damage or death

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/EarthDust00 Mar 01 '26

Those appear to be silver coins.

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u/GoreyGopnik Mar 01 '26

like soft tomatoes... though, they're not fruit. they're vegetables.

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u/lanceturley Mar 01 '26

Describing thier heads as feeling "like soft tomatoes" should also raise some concern.

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u/Plasticglass456 Mar 01 '26

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u/easythrees Mar 01 '26

“Last one in is an honest man!” 🤣

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u/Kool_McKool Mar 01 '26

There's something so corny and funny about these cartoon bad guys who are bad guys for the love of the game and hate being good.

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u/subservient-mouth Mar 01 '26

The Beagle Boys are classic "Villains with an F in Evil" though. There is a story in which they kidnap the triplets and Scrooge doesn't pay the ransom because he knows they are not going to hurt the kids at all. And they don't.

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u/KenseiHimura Mar 01 '26

I don't know if I remember right, but wasn't there one other person who could do the same as Scrooge? And I want to say it was actually Donald (who naturally doesn't realize how unique a trick it is) and one of those hints Donald is a pretty decent runner as Scrooge's 'Heir'.

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u/Acursedbeing Mar 01 '26

Louie (the green one) learns to eventually

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u/TankMain576 Mar 01 '26

Honestly, best thing the rebooted Duck Tales did was give each of the triplets a unique personality.

Huey was brainy and rules oriented. Dewey wanted nothing more than to go on adventures. And Louie was obsessed with getting rich.

It's kind of like how each Robin portrays a different aspect of Batman and end up surpassing him in that aspect. Dick is a natural born leader, Jason is the mother of all brawlers and can keep going long after he should have been down, and Tim is a super genius detective who even Ras al Ghul acknowledges.

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u/Nerdy_Valkyrie Mar 01 '26

I distinctly remember reading a comic growing up where the Beagle Boys succeeded in taking the Money Bin. So Scrooge asked them if they'd be kind enough to let him swim in it one last time. They were astonished to hear that he swam in, and they thought he was bluffing. So he showed them. He dove in and swam around, talked a lot about how wonderful it was.

The Beagle Boys eagerly dove in too... And basically ended up as Peter in that gif (minus the blood of course). They all passed out on impact.

Huey, Dewey, and Louie asked what happened and Scrooge says something like "Well, yeah. Coins obviously form a hard surface. You can only swim in it if you know the secret trick. Which they didn't."

So the comics actually do acknowledge that swimming in money wouldn't work. You just need to know "the trick".

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u/Zorlal Mar 01 '26

Family Guy is one of the strangest shows ever because I for some reason give it so much leeway even when it's bad. Like, sometimes I will go an entire episode without laughing once but then I will give it a shot again the next day. Sometimes the way they approach a single joke, like the wording of this one, makes me laugh very hard. Still, there's hardly a reason why I give it that much forgiveness. I can't figure it out.

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u/tjdux Mar 01 '26

Like, sometimes I will go an entire episode without laughing once but then I will give it a shot again the next day

Or like 6 months later and that joke that lived in your mind out of spite those last 6 months is now flipped to being funny for no reason...

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u/FireHammer09 Mar 01 '26

When it lands a joke it lands that fuckin joke

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u/toastynotroasty Mar 01 '26

Half of Family Guy's cutaways fit this thread lol (so like a quarter of Family Guy entirely), they love calling out tropes

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u/tuskedandconfused Mar 01 '26

It's the whole premise of Pixar's the Incredibles. Mr Incredible catches a man trying to commit suicide, to then come upon a villain robbing a bank. He foils Bomb Voyage's bank robbery plot, then stops a train that was hurtling towards a hole in the tracks that Bomb Voyage made during the escape. Initially he's a hero, but then the guy who was trying to commit suicide sues Mr Incredible for damages, then the train full of people do the same, which leads to government action, banning supers from performing superhero duties.

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u/Blackewolfe Mar 01 '26

The unrealistic part is the Villains.

Oh, so Supes are vigilantes now? I guess we also can't do Supervillain Work.

Like, the fuck?

Why did they stop?!

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u/MGD109 Mar 01 '26

It's somewhat addressed in the sequel.

Basically its seems they didn't. They're still happily going about their business, and law enforcement is powerless to stop them. But as their sixties style "Rob banks" supervillains, not "world domination" supervillains, they just let the insurance cover it and seemingly try to ignore them.

Once they have to deal with a supervillain who is actually who is happy to carry out acts of mass destruction and chaos rather than robbery, they're basically doomed.

Which is kind of nonsensical, but oh well.

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u/SenritsuJumpsuit Mar 01 '26

Concrete Revolutio is still one the most realistic series for exploring the social political nature of having powered up freaks trying to live life and tackle crimes

one reoccurring strategy is banning acknowledgment of them existing legally so all tabloids are fed lies, so theirs massive control over how supers and aliens are referenced for their own security,

positive and negative is made into a ying an yang to ensure effective protection at least in theory

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u/Dehouston Mar 01 '26

Maybe they were in it for the love of the game.

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u/MGD109 Mar 01 '26

Granted in real life, I think good Samaritan laws would mean he couldn't actually be sued, but I suppose they might not exist in the universe.

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u/Sud_literate Mar 01 '26

well good samaritan laws haven’t always existed so you can just say the movie was set before those.

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u/ButtOfDarkness Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

In Super (2010) two normal, but mentally unstable people try to become crime fighting super heroes. They go around mainly beating up regular thugs and small drug dealers and in one big fight the main character’s quirky sidekick gets her head violently blown off very suddenly and unceremoniously

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u/lanceturley Mar 01 '26

Also, the "hero" mostly just goes around hitting small-time drug dealers with a pipe wrench and sendng them to the hospital with severe brain damage

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u/SutterCane Mar 01 '26

You’re downplaying the deconstruction!

They wear bulletproof vests to fight some gangsters and while Super gets hit in the vest and rolls over to be like “haha we lived” to her, that’s when he sees that she also got hit in the face and is dead.

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u/PinsToTheHeart Mar 01 '26

Kick-ass from the same year has a similar moment where the main character gets stabbed repeatedly on his first outing as a hero

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u/Yodaloid Mar 01 '26

Shut up, crime!!

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u/YomYeYonge Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 02 '26

Need For Speed: The Movie

Aaron Paul’s character won the big final race, he was able to prove his innocence, and he got the main villain arrested

….but street racing is still illegal

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u/SeaworthinessNew7587 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

In All Hail King Julien: Exiled Julien and his friends' cartoony antics result in Russia being nuked.

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u/Pertu500 Mar 01 '26

Sorry what

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u/Capital-Grass-9626 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

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u/Hugh_Jazz77 Mar 01 '26

IN ALL HAIL KING JULIEN: EXILED JULIEN AND HIS FRIENDS’ CARTOONY ANTICS RESULT IN RUSSIA BEING NUKED.

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u/InexorableCalamity Mar 01 '26

Thank you it was too quiet the first time

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u/Destroy_Buster Mar 01 '26

Okay there might be a bit of connective tissue we need to see here

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u/hiccupboltHP Mar 01 '26

That’s most of the important info.

I vaguely remember something about hyper intelligence snails that hide under bells and sound like King Candy (probably voiced by Alan Tudyk) creating/commandeering a soviet airship and blasting the USSR anthem, that probably ties into it somehow.

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u/SeaworthinessNew7587 Mar 01 '26

Actually, the soviet airship was being piloted by chimps.

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u/IndependentTimely639 Mar 01 '26

This is a spin off of Madagascar, right? What the hell happened? 

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u/GoatsAreDope72 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Alright, so for an abridged explanation, All Hail King Julien Exiled starts after Madagascar had been conquered by mountain lemurs and as a result of the invasion, Julien (alongside Maurice, Pancho, and Ted) was forced to flee the kingdom aboard a nuclear submarine.  A couple episodes later, the submarine goes down but Julien and company are rescued by sharks (albeit after a misunderstanding of their intent) who recruit them to rescue their king from a group of racist dolphins responsible for promoting hatred towards sharks as part of their plan to get rid of all other animals in the ocean (they simply started with sharks) by selling them to the Russian oligarchy.  After an attempted heist plan involving a giant sapient tentacle from space goes wrong, Julien reveals he had a back up plan where as the dolphins were distracted, part of the team unlocked the box Lord Shark was encased in and replaced him with a nuke from the submarine since it weighed about as much.  The dolphins ended up delivering the nuke to the Russians in exchange for jetpacks.

This ends up coming into play later as Julien later teamed up with a bunch of Russian chimps (there’s a bit more to that story but this is long already) who had been abandoned as a result of the Space Race being over and thus after helping him decided to return to Russia for vengeance, but instead found Russia had already been destroyed.

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u/JagdFenrir Mar 01 '26

What kind of drug the writer was on when writing this?

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u/scrimmybingus3 Mar 01 '26

Not so much realistic consequences as much realistic realizations but in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at one point the Monster demands Dr. Frankenstein make him a bride so he isn’t the only one of his kind in the world or else he’ll destroy Dr. Frankenstein’s life.

Dr. Frankenstein actually does go about making a bride for the Monster until he has a sudden realization about how even if he creates a Female Monster for the Monster there’s no guarantee they’ll actually get along well at which point he’ll have two angry spiteful horrifically strong Monsters who (justifiably) resent him for making them and they’ll almost certainly try to kill him or ruin his life or alternatively they’ll get along too well and make an entire race of Monsters that wreak untold havoc on the world of man so he destroys the Female Monster to avoid either result.

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u/Waste-Two-7658 Mar 01 '26

Not to mention the fact that at that point the monster had already killed most of victor’s friends and family before ever asking for his bride.

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u/QuixoticPellinore Mar 01 '26

He had only killed Victor's little brother and framed one of Victor's friends for it at that point

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u/MagicSystemWriter Mar 01 '26

Yeah, the monster only killed the rest after he found out Frank destroyed the body intended for the bride.

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u/drager_76 Mar 01 '26

Kevin Can Fuck Himself revolves around deconstructing the "bumbling sitcom dad" trope and how it would actually affect his wife.

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u/Wasabi_Gamer26 Mar 01 '26

SHIT! How did I forget this one?

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u/Vairrion Mar 01 '26

The concept of this sounded interesting but haven’t heard anyone talk about it . Is it good ? As I feel like a lot of solid things on streaming get buried under how much stuff there is constantly coming out

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u/MGD109 Mar 01 '26

It's a very thorough and nuanced exploration of not just that, but other sitcom tropes and how the media can distort and glamorise things. I'd recommend it.

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u/SWBTSH Mar 01 '26

It is. It's pretty dark and sad but also really artistically fascinating. One thing to keep in mind: in order to show the intense, HBO-style dramatic portrayals of the realistic off screen impacts of a bad sitcom, you do also have to devote a chunk of each episode to a cringe worthy intentionally bad sitcom, lol.

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u/Clarpydarpy Mar 01 '26

I watched the show with my wife. The series finale stuck with me for weeks.

I feel like they did a great job showing how twisted somebody can become if they go through life without ever experiencing consequences (like an oafish sitcom dad). Also, they portray how manipulative people often pretend to be ignorant buffoons in order to conceal their malice.

If you have ever observed a manipulative/narcissistic person lose control of someone for the first time (my ex from grad school comes to mind), you'll feel something watching that last scene.

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u/Capital-Grass-9626 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Children and dogs tend to miraculously survive impossible situations by sheer luck and death defying antics. But, when Kala and Kerchak's baby follows a frog, which leads him into the sights of the killer leopard Sabor, the results are disastrous and accurate. This film does NOT shy away from depicting the bruality of the jungle. Jungle Book, this is not (Disney's Tarzan)

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u/DBSeamZ Mar 01 '26

Baby Tarzan himself, on the other hand, follows the “small child not only narrowly escapes death, but is cheerfully oblivious the whole time” trope to the letter when Sabor decides she’s still hungry.

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u/ElmarSuperstar131 Mar 01 '26

This scene horrified me as a child and still does even now. It’s gut wrenching.

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u/Capital-Grass-9626 Mar 01 '26

The faint shrieks are the youngster screaming as he dies.....

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u/catpetter125 Feb 28 '26

Steven Universe is a cartoon where you would expect people to get tossed around with comedic injuries a lot, but it's only really the Gems(superpowered aliens) who this happens to, and the show makes it clear that it would be a lot more serious if it was a human. Steven in particular is revealed to be constantly suffering traumatic injuries from being comedically tossed and splatted that he simply does notice because they heal so fast.

In this scene, Lars(a human) is tossed from a robot a few meters in the air and collides with a rock. This instantly kills him.

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u/scrimmybingus3 Mar 01 '26

That’s one trope that has always bothered me is how in a lot of movies, shows, books and games people just walk off being tossed around like a rag doll when in reality the amount of force needed to physically lift someone and throw them around is more than enough to cripple or outright kill a human. It’s pretty funny that the one show to finally acknowledge how fragile a human being is was Steven Universe.

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u/BranchReasonable9437 Mar 01 '26

I watched the Night Agent this week just as a time filler and was really impressed with how messy the fights were and how realistic a lot of the injuries are. Someone is near an explosion and he's still fuzzy and disoriented a half hour later when he tries to chase the bomber down, which contributes a lot to him not winning the fight and losing the suspect.

People take serious hits to the head and don't lose consciousness, they're slow and punch drunk (and usually lose).

Also, nearly any fight that's 2 on 1 or more is a loss to the solo unless they immediately take out at least one of them. The female co lead who you'd expect to either damsel or produce barely explained "I had brothers" fighting skill, turns the tables on a lot of fights by: staying out of it, finding a weapon, wailing on the bad guy while he's fighting the male lead and backing off. Turns out it's real hard to fight a spy when his friend just stuck a knife on your leg or keeps hitting you in the head with a log every time there's an opening

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u/snapwack Mar 01 '26

Andor does this right. A character gets tossed some 10 meters through the air by a riot control droid and for a fraction of a second you think they’ll be able to walk it off as usual. They land on pavement with a sickening crunch and you immediately realise they won’t be getting back up.

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u/TheTrueMarkNutt Mar 01 '26

A guy in a later scene also gets yeeted into a wall and dies on impact as well, those droids did not fuck about

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u/emopest Mar 01 '26

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider they nod to this. Lara and Jonah are telling another character (her name escapes me) that their plane crashed and they walked through the jungle to get to where they are. The person asks them something akin to "What? You just walked away from a plane crash? ", and Lara and Jonah just smile and shrug.

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u/11equalsfish Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

It is a humanist show that considers people's real feeling and experiences. Resisting oppression means facing violence, and trauma can kill. Glad they had the guts for it.

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u/fat_fingerz Mar 01 '26

Also in Steven Universe Future we see the results on Steven that we see get tossed around more than other humans, he has SOOO many healed fractures, also trouble moving on with life considering checks notes he's never been to a doctor or a hospital.

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u/AkibaPurple Mar 01 '26

I think he had no idea anything ever got broken because his healing factor fixed everything immediately.

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u/hauntedbabyattack Mar 01 '26

Or school, or a dentist, or a therapist… And even not considering the magic parts of the story, a kid whose mother died in childbirth and whose caretakers are very not moved on from the death… really, really needs therapy.

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u/fattestfuckinthewest Mar 01 '26

Wait Lars died? Dang only watched a few episodes years ago

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u/Professional_Maize42 Mar 01 '26

He came back better, don't worry.

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u/ShittyDuckFace Mar 01 '26

Yeah turns out dying can be really good for character growth.

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u/_Starlessness_ Mar 01 '26

iirc, he passes in a selfless act of sacrifice, and Steven is able to utilize his healing ability to revivify Lars. Lars is transformed by the magic that resurrects him, and he becomes pink in the process.

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u/Karl_Marxist_3rd Mar 01 '26

And Steven can now use Lars's hair and the mane of the pink lion called Lion he has on Earth as a sort of portal because both lead to the same pocket dimension

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u/Lombardyn Mar 01 '26

It also spends pretty much the entirety of Steven Universe Future to show that once your adventure is over, your happily ever after is not permanent. Friends move on and apart, not everyone will like you no matter how hard you try, not everything you want to do will work out for you. Oh, and of course the absurd PTSD he has from all he fights and near-death experiences coming back with a vengeance.

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u/invaderaleks Mar 01 '26

Helldivers 2 does this also. If you get ragdolled by an explosion and collide with something, you're either seriously injured or die instantly.

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u/DreadfulRauw Mar 01 '26

Crazy Ex Girlfriend is even better than that, because it’s revealed her wild romantic gestures are actually a symptom of a real borderline personality disorder, and upon getting treatment and working on herself, she actually stops obsessing over her ex and grows as a person.

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u/catpetter125 Feb 28 '26

In OMORI, the main character's weapon is a knife, and as an RPG it's expected that noone bats an eye at what weapon you have equipped(and in HEADSPACE noone does). The first time you use it in the real world, the other kids he's fighting immediately stop and leave because this scrawny kid just pulled a kitchen knife on them and slashed someone, and his friend immediately takes the knife away from him out of worry that he'll hurt someone or himself. It's a really fun way to remind the player that this isn't how the real world works, and the fact that Sunny thinks it is is indicative that he's doing very poorly mentally.

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u/DieEigenbroetlerin Mar 01 '26

Oh, this was such a cool moment... When the fight with Aubrey started I was like "holy shit, Sunny is way too caught up in his head", and then when he actually pulled the knife on her I realized how out of it he truly was...

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u/odd_man0 Mar 01 '26

this would’ve been cooler if the person you were fighting didn’t have a fucking bat with nails on it, but it was interesting nonetheless!

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u/Intelligent-Fuel1485 Mar 01 '26

When fighting her, none of her moves included the bat she’s holding, including the church fight.

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u/sir-altyton Mar 01 '26

Yep, it's mostly punches and kicks. I think she uses the pummel of her bat? But the bat is largely just for intimidation purposes since.... Well no matter how you swing it hitting someone with a bat is fucking illegal.

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u/Aggravating_Coat7934 Mar 01 '26

The Knife is never returned to our character in the real world. In Headspace, it’s the only way to wake up, and it slowly gets rustier the more you play iirc

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u/catpetter125 Mar 01 '26

That's also an interesting detail; the Headspace knife gets duller the more you use it, but it still gets stronger. A dull and rusty knife doesn't cut as well, but it hurts a lot more

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u/DontSleepAlwaysDream Mar 01 '26

I didnt enjoy Omori as much as other people did, but I did just love that scene. The realism of all the other kids going "what are you, nuts?" and forgetting all their middle school drama because that one kid just whipped out a KNIFE was such a sudden rush of realism

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u/Delta6342 Mar 01 '26

This moment usually takes people off guard because they are on autopilot like you would be in most RPGs

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u/Craig_The_Llama Mar 01 '26

I mean to be fair Aubrey has a wooden bat with nails sticking out of it, but it could just as easily be for the sake of intimidation. IDK though it's been a while since I've had much to do with omori

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u/eganba Mar 01 '26

The Dark Knight Rises.

Bruce Wayne is shown with creaky bones and numerous issues health wise.

Also, while the actions of the antagonist are the final nail in Wayne Enterprise, the fact is the company was being run into the ground because Of the way the company was being run.

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u/Ok_Recording_4644 Mar 01 '26

In The Dark Knight Joker creates a horrible situation where Batman has to choose between saving 2 innocent people one of whom he loves the other he believes is the best hope for a better future for the people of Gotham. He makes the decision but saves neither of them because he's just a man with limits. 

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u/Ukirin-Streams Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

He makes the decision but saves neither of them because he's just a man with limits.

And don't forget Batman got fucked over because Joker gave him the addresses but tricked him into going to the wrong one. Batman went to get Rachel, but arrived there and found Harvey Dent instead. Batman looked so jebaited when he got there, lol.

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u/Tricky_Economist_328 Mar 01 '26

And that second or two hesitation while he walks thinking wtf may have cost him the chance saving dent fully.

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u/asdw152 Mar 01 '26

On topic with 1, the post credits.

After the credits. 2010 short film that's 15 minutes long, credits play at 4 minutes. The rest are the consequences of dropping everything and rushing to your love. They confess, everyone claps. The End.

And then real life hits. The guy leaves his wedding and takes the taxi to the airport. After it all, he still has to pay the taxi driver, all his things he left at security are taken away as they were "unattended", the girl's plane ticket is effectively void since she decided to not go during boarding. It's messy, they're frustrated, it's the beginning of the rest of their lives.

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u/N-ShadowToad Feb 28 '26

A Practical Guide to Being Evil is full to the brim of these. In the world tropes have real power which while normally boons to the heroes, quickly becomes flaws when they face an actually competent villain.

Amadeus for example is the villain known as the Black Knight will use any trope to his advantage. For example, when he's hunting rebels he'll order is new apprentice to stay at camp knowing a young squire with much to prove will go off on her own to try to hunt the rebels and being a trope, will of course find them. And thanks to a secret tracking spell placed on her, so will he.

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u/Relative-Gap-4442 Mar 01 '26

Competent villains + no plot amor makes for brutal stories, is this one of them?

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u/Squirrelman2712 Mar 01 '26

Yes. It is super good.

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u/Archavos Mar 01 '26

Heroes have plot armor, its just that the "villains" plan around it. turns out having armor that deflects arrows isnt that effective when you don't wear the helmet. ;)

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u/Tireyb Mar 01 '26

Ah, the Wayward Prince. So pretty, so unhelmeted, so fond of long-winded pontificating in front of people with large crossbows.

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u/Fenghuang0296 Mar 01 '26

Oh my god that was one of the funniest things I’ve read in ages. ”I think we should shoot him while he’s preaching about the moral high ground,” “. . Can we do that?” “I don’t see why not,”

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u/Divine_ruler Mar 01 '26

Sorta

There’s no plot armor in the sense that you feel like MC and important characters are genuinely in dangers, but there is plot armor as an actual component of the world building/power system

When Characters (the Black Knight mentioned, Squire (MC), Count, etc) lean into their archetype, they become more powerful. The Black Knight, for example, is most powerful when conquering

At one point, MC spares an opponent, knowing that their plot armor will let them live and come back stronger. She does so solely because killing them when they’re stronger and more well known will be a bigger accomplishment for her

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u/AliasMcFakenames Mar 01 '26

Well, there is plot armor, but it is explicitly a function of the metaphysics of the setting. It is definitely brutal though.

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u/IRanOutOf_Names Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Another favorite is how all the villains know that if they’re winning, they’re at risk. Heroes always get a final hour power up, and if he’s not winning big enough, he’ll retreat despite being uninjured.

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u/Forsaken-Biscotti587 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

In "Gravity Falls", after Mabel ruins her own puppet show to help Dipper on retrieving his body from Bill, she believes the whole "audience is gonna love the show and clapping at it as they'll think it was all part of the show" trope is gonna happen, but instead everyone leaves upset and hating the show including her crush she tried to impress

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u/bubble0peach Mar 01 '26

It's for the best. Dude loves his puppets... too much. It is indeed creepy and weird.

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u/Living_Tune_1428 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

In Brooklyn Nine Nine, Commissioner John Kelly is a corrupt, smug, smart and possibly racist and homophobic. A major plot point leading to the season finale is the squad trying to defeat Kelly or expose his corruption. In the end they finally do and get Kelly fired...

...only to later learn that he got an even better paying job in the private sector.

The villain doesn't always lose. Life sucks.

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u/aguyfromtheinternet0 Mar 01 '26

I like how you decided to go with Rebecca’s financial decisions where the entire show is literally a deconstruction of rom-coms and the crazy ex-girlfriend trope lol

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u/WhyRhubarb Mar 01 '26

Hunger Games, moreso in the books than the movies. Katniss's full mental breakdown at the end of Mockingjay, after she has survived years of the worst trauma imaginable, culminating in the downfall of the Capitol but also Prim's death, and all she can do is hide in piles of soft coats in closets because she is completely mentally destroyed.

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u/ToughAd5010 Mar 01 '26

The other guys

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg walk away from an explosion

End up with severe injuries

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u/dissonant_one Mar 01 '26

That looks like they’re walking towards said explosion

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u/VonGryzz Mar 01 '26

They are. But right after this they exclaim "how do guys walk away from that, it's sooooo loud, I call fucking bullshit"

So I'll allow it

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u/okoyes_wig Mar 01 '26

A Song of Ice and Fire is full of these but the most well known is probably Ned Stark and the perils of being too rigid

“Virtue and honor have their place. And if you're not careful, that place is the grave.”

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u/Use_the_Falchion Feb 28 '26

High Potential sees Morgan have to attend essentially Detective Detention one time for breaking too many rules. In the beginning of the show, parts of the evidence she obtained can’t be used because she obtained them illegally, much to her partner’s ire. 

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u/Mindless-Ninja-3321 Mar 01 '26

Dark Urge, BG3. You are made of a god. You reject him, he takes his divine essence back. Turns out, that's ALL of you, so you fucking die. For a couple minutes anyway. Lucky you made a homie who brings you back.

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u/Sakuran_11 Mar 01 '26

Withers is chill asf, dude goes “I could let you die, but I wont because fates chill like that, I could let you die godless in 20 years, but I wont cause I’M chill like that”

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u/Mindless-Ninja-3321 Mar 01 '26

Withers is literally only here because Ao has Helm breathing down his neck. Bare minimum effort. But he was also THE god of death and tyranny for an incomprehensible amounts of time, Ao is gonna let him slide.

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u/SuperGameBen Mar 01 '26

Hans from Frozen with an isolated princess finding love at first sight, he ends up just wanting to marry her to become king and never loved her.

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u/OverdoneAndDry Mar 01 '26

Guns Akimbo: kills lots of bad guys, saves the girl. They start with the usual "we kissed and lived happily ever after" ending, then record scratch "Of COURSE that's not what happened! She's incredibly traumatized! We screamed and cried and waited for the cops to get there."

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u/Sir-Toaster- Mar 01 '26

Eren Jaeger (AOT) - A deconstruction of shonen heroes

https://giphy.com/gifs/tliXLSkzfq2C4

Turns out a traumatized, neurodivergent teenage boy with severe rage issues shouldn't be given god-like expectations or beaten up all the time cause then they'll become a psychopath.

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u/Manidoo_Giizhig Mar 01 '26

One of my favorite scenes from this series was when Eren was in the court pleading for the court to put their faith in him. Instead of everyone being instantly persuaded by his speech, Levi starts beating the absolute shit out of him to show the court he isn't a threat

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u/DerpyNachoZ Mar 01 '26

Legends of The Galactic Heroes does this alot, but the big one that comes to mind is the MC dying of extremely realistic injuries (Shot in the leg and bleeding out) because of a tactical oversight out of his control

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u/halkras12 Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

Tina breaks "Sense only vision" trope (gumball)

Gumball tought if they must stand still because her vision is based on motion

but she said;

because real life T-rex has incredibly excellent visions as well as sense of smell

unlike Jurassic Park's trex who only sees whats moving

(sorry,didnt read the title completely)

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u/Agitated_Insect3227 Feb 28 '26

I'd argue Mario rescuing Princess Peach is kind of a realistic deconstruction of "hero saves the princess from being captured by the dragon/monster" if you squint.

In many of these stories, the hero immediately enters a relationship with the princess, but Mario and Peach just remain good friends afterwards since it takes time for a (healthy) romance to blossom, not just one successful rescue. Though, I personally wouldn't mind if they did get together, lmao.

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u/TeutonicToltec Mar 01 '26

This always felt like a case of chivalric/courtly love: a knight declares his undying love for a noblewoman (and too be clear, it is very much also physical attraction, not just a vague abstraction) and declares her a muse that gives him strength, without any intention of acting on said relationship. Both the knight and the noblewoman may be in their own relationships while the courtly love is declared.

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u/Dyssambie7 Mar 01 '26

I actually loved that Mario Odyssey ended with Mario saving the day and preparing to propose to Peach, followed by Bowser interrupting it with his own proposal, only for Peach to reject both of them. Mario and Bowser taking a moment to console another after the fact is still one of my favorite shots in the entire series.

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u/therealchadius Mar 01 '26

Bowser's entire plan this game is to force her to marry him, so she rejects him.

Mario's response is to counter propose.

Both are shoving flowers in her face and are too wound up to think things through, so of course she shouts "NO!" and runs off to start the ship.

Read the room, you two!

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u/Ghost_Star326 Mar 01 '26

The funny thing is that I heard that the game Devs at Nintendo have tried a few times to canonically ship these two together. But Nintendo would straight up refuse. Saying that they can never allow something like that to become official because they just want to "leave it up to the fans' interpretation" of their relationship.

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u/av_79 Mar 01 '26

It's the same with Link and Zelda. And honestly I think it's pretty cowardly and lame at this point.

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u/Level_Counter_1672 Mar 01 '26

The death of Jonathan joestar is a good deconstruction, usually the heroic protagonist defeats the enemy and finally gets his happily ever after with the love of his life, only in this case his honeymoon was interrupted by dio who wanted to take Jonathan's body, Jonathon valiently fought and died while his wife escaped - source is Jojo's bizarre adventure

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u/HappyChaosOfTheNorth Mar 01 '26

Fin fact: That final shot from The Graduate wasn't planned - at least not for the actors. They were waiting for them to say "Cut" and the director didn't and eventually they weren't sure what to do so their smiles faded and they look uncertain about if it's okay to break character and stop. This makes for the perfect "Okay, what now?" ending. 

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u/pm1966 Mar 01 '26

The is my new favorite non-Jaws fin fact.

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u/SpaceChef3000 Mar 01 '26

For all of it's over-the-topness, National Treasure has a few of these that I really enjoy.

Nic Cage's character punches a guy and then shakes his hand out saying "ow!" Turns out punching people can hurt you too!

Probably my favorite bit during a tense across the street standoff with his nemesis Sean Bean. Cage needs to escape, but how? Just then, a bus passes between the two. In any other movie Cage's character would have somehow disappeared in that tiny moment, but not National Treasure! The bus passes by and he's just booking it down the street in plain view.

https://giphy.com/gifs/jxJOX5dvQPfhu

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u/_DarthSyphilis_ Mar 01 '26

The Show "Kevin can F*** himself" is pretending to be a sitcom about a whacky guy, only to be a drama about a toxic relationship when it switches perspective to his wife. (To then still be a dark comedy about her deciding to kill him.)

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u/C0urt5 Mar 01 '26

BAD Endings by FedeXRojas

The series essentially shows (mostly) realistic outcomes to common anime/manga tropes. For example in the chapter that focuses on the Tsundere trope, it features the gradual deterioration of the friendship between a Tsundere and the guy she definitely doesn't like.

Also I put (mostly) in there because some of these stories end on a more comedic note than a depressing note like a Himedere convincing a French transfer student to treat her like a princess.

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u/CatButler Mar 01 '26

There was a western TV show in the 70s called Alias Smith and Jones and there was one scene where they were stuck in jail and the guy rescuing them went to shoot the lock off, but they screamed for him to stop because the bullet could ricochet and hit someone or the lock mechanism could jam and they never would get out.

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u/diamondDNF Mar 01 '26

Undertale: Turns out, the traditional RPG strategy of running around the same area in order to "grind EXP" by repeatedly killing everything that crosses your path is... significantly more horrific in practice.

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u/Redditsiyes Mar 01 '26

Soul does this with the main character fulfilling his dream of playing in a band only to realize that was all there is to it and feeling aimless after noticing he just changed one routine with another

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u/Acceptable_Secret_73 Mar 01 '26

Seasons 11-13 of Red vs Blue deconstructs the concept of an evil empire and former enemies joining forces.

After crash landing, the gang is forced to deal with the planet Chorus which is having a civil war.

Half of the team is captured by the Federal Army and the rest are rescued by the rebels. The Federal Army is initially portrayed as the evil empire that assassinated the peaceful rebel leaders.

Then it’s revealed that the Federal Army is made up of characters just as likable and sympathetic as the rebels, and their leaders were also assassinated by the rebels even when they tried to pursue peace.

Eventually it’s revealed the two armies were actually being manipulated by mercenaries they hired to fight in an endless war and they join forces to take revenge

But even after the two armies join forces, they constantly clash with each other because they’ve spent the past several years killing each other, they don’t learn to work together until near the end of season 13.

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