History Main / FalseCrucible

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "Where is Everybody?". A man suddenly finds himself walking down a road, with no idea of who he is or what he's doing there. The TwistEnding is that he's a U.S. Air Force officer taking part in an experiment to determine if he could handle being alone in space on a trip to the Moon. He finally started to GoMadFromTheIsolation.

* ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'': This is the twist of the episode "Failsafe". After the deaths of all the adult superheroes, it's up to the Team to stop an alien invasion. Unfortunately, they all die in the process [[AllForNothing without really accomplishing anything]]. When M'gann, the last of them, finally dies, she wakes up back in Mount Justice with everyone alive and well (physically speaking, at least). Turns out, it was a dreamworld simulation devised by the Martian Manhunter that everyone knew about going in, hence their lack of reaction to Justice League members dying, but what they weren't told was that it was a no-win scenario to see how they could handle it. However, experiencing Artemis becoming the first "causality" of the team makes M'gann's subconscious disrupt the simulation and cause the team to forget it wasn't real.

* In a ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'' story, Team Kimba is sent into a sim run where almost all of them end up getting killed. The point was to teach them the lesson "You can't always win, and you need to stop thinking that you're indestructible" but they ended up taking away the lesson "As long as you have the right intel, you can always win." Sure enough, they try the sim AGAIN... and ace it. Repeatedly. [[spoiler: But they end up learning ALessonInDefeat later on, anyway.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/ThePagemaster'', Richard learns that everything he went through was a test to get him to face his fears.
* Played for laughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Homer The Great", during Homer's initiation to the Stonecutters. Homer's trials include repeated paddlings and a blindfolded leap of faith that's 2 feet high (until his comedic obesity cracks the floor beneath him and he falls through of course).

* ''Manga/EdensZero'' has the heroes training in a virtual space where people can take on any appearance and produce any equipment they want. While the crew is practicing breaking out of cocoon-like bondage, the BigBad seemingly hijacks the simulation and takes over the instructor's body, causing the training moderators in the real world to panic. As he forces Shiki to watch as Rebecca gets crushed to death, Shiki breaks free and clashes with him...at which point the instructor switches right back to his old form, reminding everyone where they are. In this case, the crew was simply caught off guard by the sheer suddenness of the "attack" and urgency in training to beat the BigBad to begin with; as for the moderators, they figured out what was going on right away, and were just annoyed that the instructor never warned them in advance.

* ''Manga/EdensZero'' has the heroes training in a virtual space where people can take on any appearance and produce any equipment they want. While the crew is practicing breaking out of cocoon-like bondage, the BigBad seemingly hijacks the simulation and takes over the instructor's body, causing the training moderators in the real world to panic. As he forces Shiki to watch as Rebecca gets crushed to death, Shiki breaks free and clashes with him...at which point the instructor switches right back to his old form, reminding everyone where they are. The crew was simply caught off guard by the sheer suddenness of the "attack" and urgency in training to beat the BigBad to begin with; as for the moderators, they figured out what was going on right away, and were just annoyed that the instructor never told them in advance.