Reality Ensues

Ginger: You mean you never actually flew the plane? Fowler: Good heavens, no! I'm a chicken! The Royal Air Force doesn't let chickens behind the complex controls of an aircraft! —Chicken Run

Someone, be they a hero or a villain, thought they were protected by the power of narrative convention. But they were wrong.

Well, he proved to be unable to float like a butterfly. And they stung him like a bee.

It goes without saying, fiction is unrealistic. But most of those who indulge in media don't ask for their stories to be completely like reality. As long as things are kept internally consistent, an audience is willing to go along with just about anything an author can make up, regardless of how irresponsible, immoral, or unhinged their sympathetic and/or likeable characters might be acting by the standards of Real Life. For that reason, a creator can sometimes ignore or Hand Wave consequences of the real world in their stories. This trope, though, is about what happens when a creator chooses not to ignore said consequences, and even factors them in as part of the plot or events.

This can sometimes be seen on the hard end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, though it isn't necessarily so. See also Twist Ending, Mood Whiplash, Ascended Fridge Horror and Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. Defied Trope may lead to this, as may Deconstructed Trope. Commonly found in the company of Wrong Genre Savvy. Not to be confused with Hilarity Ensues, although they can overlap, depending on usage. Compare Magic A Is Magic A; it's very important that these instances are consistent with the setting. Contrast This Is Reality, where a character believes that reality will ensue, but it doesn't. However, it can justify this. Reality Ensues may also be defined as forgoing Genre Consistency in favor of External Consistency.

This is Truth in Television, as reality ensues all the time in Real Life. If you want more detailed information on this, see Television Is Trying to Kill Us, a detailed list of why many different fictional tropes would not only not work out well in real life, but will ultimately end in disaster for anyone who actually attempts to do it.

Warning: As this trope frequently occurs at the climax of a work, spoilers are likely to be unmarked. Caution advised.

Examples of Reality Ensues include:

By Medium

• Anime & Manga
• Comics
• Fan Works
• Films
• Literature
• Live Action TV
• Video Games and Visual Novels
• Web Originals
• Western Animation

Other Examples (by medium)

Advertising

• Sprite did a series of commercials based around subverting Cereal-Induced Superpowers by invoking this trope. One features a kid spotting NBA player Grant Hill drinking Sprite, and thinking Sprite will make him a basketball player - which he quickly disproves by drinking Sprite and then attempting a slam dunk, failing, and falling flat on his ass.

Announcer: "If you want to make it to the NBA... practice. If you want a refreshing drink, obey your thirst."

• • An even harsher one had a pre-teen boy thinking that drinking Sprite would transform him into a professional wrestler. He then challenged WCW's Sting to a match - and was promptly battered from pillar to post as his parents stood by seeming to enjoy it thinking it was an act, in one version the boy even said "two out of three" at the end giving us the assumption that he even enjoyed it as well. It's probably the darkest soft drink ad ever filmed.
  • In one Sprite commercial, a mom takes out some Sun Fizz to give to her children. The sun logo comes to life to sing the drink's praises. The mom and kids respond by doing what a real life mom and kids would do: freak out and run away screaming.
• A depressing British Public Information Film against child abuse had a father beating a cartoon kid for a while... before cutting to a real, unconscious kid on the floor and the words "Real children don't bounce back".

Music

• Swedish songwriter Lars Winnerbäck tells us what really happened to some of Astrid Lindgren's characters in his "Balladen om Konsekvenser" (The Ballad of Consequences).
  • Specifically: Pippi Longstocking is in jail for assaulting a police officer, Rasmus is a homeless alcoholic, Ronja is screaming her head off in a mental hospital, and Kato from Mio My Mio runs a mindless commercial TV channel.
• The song "Scalp" by Atmosphere features the narrator describing his night. He goes to the bar and meets his friend Sonny, who offers to pay him for retrieving a package from a tattoo parlor. One expects the protagonist to follow through with his task, possibly finding something surprising in the package along the way, but instead he is killed in a car crash pretty much immediately after leaving the bar. Which is what happens when you drink $50 worth of alcohol and then drive at night.
• What "Weird Al" Yankovic does with this trope in Trapped in the Drive Thru needs to be seen to be fully appreciated.
• Will Smith had a hit song in the 80s with "I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson". ("One punch, that's all it took (oooh), He hit me in my ribs and my insides shook.")

New Media

• This picture.
  • This is averted by way of more reality: the reason Batman's enemies don't work together to beat him is because they're a bunch of sociopathic murderers and backstabbers who don't play well with others.

Sports

• Kazuyuki Fujita fought Mirko Cro Cop twice. Fujita is a fighter known for his pitiful defense and general clumsiness. Cro Cop is a fighter known for his devastating striking. Reality ensues. Twice. Painfully.
  • Not sure if "reality" and Cro Cop can even be used on the same page; before this, Fujita had beaten a few high-profile guys by simply outlasting them (i.e. letting them tire themselves out from beating him up too much).
  • Arguably their fights could count as subversions as Fujita was never knocked out in neither of them despite absorbing inhumane amounts of punishment and lost due to a cut in first and a decision in a second one. For a straighter example, look at Fujita vs Alistair Overeem. Over-the-hill Fujita tries to use his old tactics against 265 pounds of death-dealing emasculation and is dropped unconscious by a knee a little over a minute into the fight.
• Fred Ettish vs. Johnny Rhodes, UFC 2. Ettish performs a textbook snap kick on the opponent to no effect. He is then brutalized to the extreme.

Tabletop Games

• Any tabletop RPG player knows this can happen to the heroes or the villains. It doesn't matter how dramatic the story has made it, one lucky roll from either side can make a climactic showdown very, very brief. The extent to which this happens can tell a lot about the nature of a game and GM. GNS theory covers this as well; Simulationists want this trope in force, while Narrativists want "plot first."
  • Games that heavily avert this trope (such as Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars D20) tend to create a very heroic, action-movie like feel.
  • 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, 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 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), Infinite Ammunition, and Martial Arts Anonymous.
  • Dungeons and Dragons generally averts this trope. However, when it comes to 2.5 Edition, if one were to implement the Critical Hit system from Combat & Tactics, players can find themselves in need of a resurrection spell fast. And, to make matters worse, depending on the type of damage inflicted (e.g., acid, fire, vibration) a player may require a reincarnation spell, a wish spell or worse yet, a new character to continue playing. When played straight, D&D can be far more dangerous than Real Life, since you can starve, die from exposure, drown (take off your armor before you attempt to swim), and having a light spell cast on your eyes will blind you. Permanently. And occasionally Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.

Theatre

• Act one of The Fantasticks ends happily, with the couple together and the "feud" ending. Act two opens up with "This Plum Is Too Ripe", which is all about the characters realizing that everything isn't so great after all.
• Into the Woods is all over this trope. Not only does it show the realistic consequences of fairy tales (particularly in regards to Fourth Date Marriage and Parental Abandonment), it also shows just how dangerous some fairy tale characters can be in a more realistic setting. When a giant comes down from the beanstalk, the audience goes "hey, cool!" at first, until she starts actually stepping on people. It's not played for laughs.
  • Specifically, it's Act II that does this. Act I is frequently used for school productions, as it's a fairly straightforward mash-up of recognisable fairy-tales that ends with a musical number celebrating how all the heroes have had their dreams come true and now they're going to live Happily Ever After... and then Act II opens, and everyone is faced with the fallout of their decisions.

Webcomics

• This page of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Make sure to read the Alt Text.
  • Later on, Dan McNinja has to hunt down the last surviving member of the Belstein family, whose bloodline is the only thing that can defeat a powerful demon. It turns out that the Belsteins had to engage in massive inbreeding to keep the bloodline "pure" so someone could fight the demon... and the last living Belstein is a crippled invalid thanks to that.
• This comic on the 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 ended Susan's uniform crusade arc. Didn't help she was blatantly ignoring nearly half the school, and misreading almost the entirety.
  • 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. End of comic.
• Before they go off to battle Count Chocula and his forces of darkness, Tony the Tiger admits that not everybody that accompanies him will be returning home. However, he assures them that those that die will die for the noblest reasons, unlike say, Count Chocula himself. Sure enough, the Trix Rabbit doesn't make it, though on the lighter side of things, he managed to redeem himself.
• In Sinfest, there's an entire Reality Zone. Inside it, characters are drawn with a much more realistic style, and all the normal rules like Rule of Funny or Rule of Cool no longer apply, with characters instead being forced to face reality. The Devil and other supernatural characters all avoid the place like the plague, for example, and Squig (an anthropomorphic pig) turns into an ordinary pig when he enters.
• This Buttersafe comic.
• Xkcd had 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 Kubota's Take Over the City chessmastering:

"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 a given value of "reality". A posse shows up at Kit's hideout. Their arrogant leader threatens and insults Kit while flipping his gun around 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.

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