| abstract | - So the hero has defeated the Evil Overlord's army. They've disarmed The Dragon using The Power of Friendship. The superweapon is destroyed. The hero is facing the Evil Overlord in the final showdown... and takes out a gun, shoots the Evil Overlord in the head, and walks away. Maybe Your Vampires Aren't Quite So Different After All. Maybe the villain is Dangerously Genre Savvy, or the Mooks can actually shoot straight. Perhaps the Love Interest is not Immune to Bullets, or perhaps talking is not, despite what you may have been led to believe, a free action. Or maybe the protagonist should have been better about cleaning up his/her loose ends, because the Tethercat Principle is actually not in effect and those Butt Monkey Mooks are angry. Or the plucky La Résistance has beat the Empire despite being technologically inferior, only to realise too late that Admiral I.N. Sane hasn't forgotten his orbit-to-surface nukes. Or... Whichever, it's that moment when the audience goes "that makes logical sense but our tropes don't cover..." 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. Reality Ensues may also be defined as forgoing Genre Consistency in favor of External Consistency. No Real Life Examples, Please, as that would just be redundant. We all know that reality is not a work of fiction, Wild Mass Guessing notwithstanding. Reality already ensues all the time in Real Life. Examples of Reality Ensues include:
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