A story from the comics series Animal Man (noted for its Postmodernism) deconstructs Looney Tunes and similar cartoons: in "The Coyote Gospel," a grotesquely anthropomorphic coyote is repeatedly and brutally killed by an Elmer Fudd-style hunter obsessed with his destruction, and continuously reforms/regenerates in a most disturbing manner. Finally, in a scene reminiscent of the classic "Duck Amuck" short, the malevolent animator paints his blood in as he dies for the last time.
Astro City: Busiek denies the assertion that the comic is "realistic" since superheroes are inherently fantastical and he believes that reconstruction should always follow deconstruction. While the comic generally doesn't veer into the Darker and Edgier territory associated with deconstructions, the superheroes and villains are given convincing, human characterization and deal with the sorts of day-to-day problems and personal demons that would logically be experienced by people in their place. Meanwhile, Astro Citizens react to happenings around them as one would expect considering that heroes have been around for over seventy years.
"On The Sidelines" takes a look at a superpower-heavy world from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't want to be a superhero or supervillain after trying her hand at both: her first vigilante action as a superhero left a carjacker severely injured and her seeing it first-hand. While he deserved it, it made her feel awful. Her bad guy attempt was to 'legally' rob a casino by using her telekinesis to get jackpots, but she felt too guilty to actually take the money, even if it wasn't a violent crime. Instead, she, and a thousand others like her, make a living by simply using it for mundane jobs, like special effects or deejaying. As she puts it, there's always someone (usually a supervillain) trying to tell what someone can do with their powers, but at the end of the day, they're just control freaks playing at trying to be bigger than they are. (She also points out typical supervillain tropes sound stupid. The villain of the day calls himself 'Majordomo', but that means a servant, not a leader.)
Dial H for Hero: Dial H #6 features Nelson and Roxie discussing Captain Ethnic, Stripperiffic, and other superhero costume/concept tropes that would, realistically, cause more bad press than good.
Doom Patrol: Despite the word being beloved of comics critics at the time, Grant Morrison (in Supergods) maintains their run was not a deconstruction of superhero comics. Rather, it was the most traditional superhero comic they'd done at the time, it simply proceeded from a different cultural background than most comics. Instead of coming from a background of Jack Kirby, Flash Gordon, The Shadow and Edgar Rice Burroughs, they started from Jorge Luis Borges, Post-Punk, Abbie Hoffman and William S. Burroughs, and wrote what they thought a superhero comic inspired by them would look like.
Sure, Legacy Characters are a thing and more often than not, especially if they stick around longer than them, they can turn out to be far superior to their predecessor for a variety of reasons. But what if the original hero was a psychopath bordering on Serial Killer and the successor was equally unhinged and refusing to acknowledge the dark flaws of the predecessor in a twisted form of Heroic Self-Deprecation?
Issue #4 takes the myth of The Mentor teaching the hero after they have been hit with tragedy, only frames it darkly through the story of Reggie and Bryon, a traumatised young man and a senile mental patient.
Firestorm is increasingly seen as a lunatic because nobody can hear his other personalities; to everyone else, he looks like a crazy guy talking to thin air whenever he responds to them.
Issue #9 offers a terrifying Deconstruction of superhero/supervillain origin stories; at least some of them weren’t accidents, but unethical experiments arranged by the government in order to better understand the nature of metahumans. And yes, this means the Superman Theory is at least partially true.
Identity Crisis (2004): Of the Silver AgeJLA. It fills in the blanks between adventures to explain the measures necessary to clean up after defeating supervillain schemes and restoring the status quo. They specifically reference an occasion when the Secret Society of Supervillains took control of the JLA's bodies and (likely) learned their secret identities. How do you think the heroes averted Death by Secret Identity for the villains? Green Arrow further suggests that Superman and Batman knowingly look the other way and don't ask questions about how the League's B-Squad does its clean-up.
More broadly, this deconstructs the hierarchy within the JLA, the role played by the "lower-ranked" heroes, and their feelings about that. It also discusses Elongated Man's feelings about being in the Flash's shadow, and how his love for Sue is in great part due to the fact that she looked past Barry and preferred him instead.
It also deconstructs the idea of the supposedly super-prepared Batman "vs. The Justice League." The fight is no fight at all with Batman quickly dogpiled and overpowered, even by heroes who don't have superpowers.
The Multiversity: The New 52 (and specifically, the event Forever Evil) deconstructs the nature of Earth-3 as a Mirror Universe. Turns out a universe where good and evil are flipped would logically result in a society that values villainy and that the whole "villains are now heroes" commonly seen in a Mirror Universe won't translate quite so neatly. The "heroic" counterparts to the main universe's villains range from going to lengths no hero would go to (like Joker), or remaining a villain anyway, just with a new coat of paint and the label "superhero" (Mazahs/Alexander Luthor).
Mister Miracle (2017): Most of which are emphasizing the fact that the heroic Mister Miracle was a child who was raised on Apokolips. Other renditions don't show it much, but Scott has reasonable resentment towards his biological father for giving him to the hellhole Apokolips to be raised by the abusive Granny Goodness. Not only that, but giving him up before Scott can even have a real name, leaving him to go by a cruel nickname Granny gave him and the stage name of someone else whose life he's adopted. And while he tries his best to stay normal, Scott is shown to be fully capable of becoming a psychotic killer thanks to his traumatic childhood in Granny's hands. There's also him retaining some of the Chaotic Evil mindset that Darkseid's minions have in the form of being a Nightmare Fetishist; he takes some pleasure in listening to people being tortured.
Power Girl: After the initial 12 volumes Kara learns the hard way that the life of a superhero and a business tycoon don't exactly mix well together, leading to her losing her company. Reconstructed later on, as she finally finds a balance in her life.
Strange Adventures (2020): Just like how Tom King and Mitch Gerads last DC series gave the New Gods a reality check, Strange Adventures doesn't hesitate to show the dark side of Adam Strange's spacefaring escapades, showing behind the image of the hero of an epic space-opera who defended his adopted world from terrible invaders is a desperate, tragic, PTSD-ridden soldier/war-criminal who fought a much murkier war.
Wonder Woman: As the original Marston tales told in Sensation Comics, Comic Cavalcade and Wonder Woman (1942) never really had any real stakes given that even minor characters were routinely and easily brought back to life and any potentially disfiguring injuries were magically healed within the issue where they occurred every writer since has deconstructed portions of Marston's original concept. The most common element to alter is Wondy's first trip to the outside world, where she was cool, collected and casual in her original appearance and easily saw through and got the better of a con man. Subsequent writers always have her in awe and vulnerably innocent to the ways of the world when she first leaves her sheltered home given she's lived her entire life on a small paradise filled with like minded women.
Wonder Woman: The True Amazon takes a hard look at what growing up on an island where everyone gave you anything you wanted could do to Diana. Instead of a stalwart, kind heroine, she's spoiled, entitled, and ungrateful, and takes up the mantle as atonement for getting her sisters killed.
Live-Action TV
Arrow: When the series first introduced the Suicide Squad it was depicted as highly effective, despite the individual members being shown to be wildly dysfunctional at best. Later episodes deconstruct the government controlled Boxed Crook supervillain team archetype and show what a bad idea outsourcing black ops to criminals really is.
Cupid and Bronze Tiger are the only two Squad members who survive to work off their sentence and get released. Both almost immediately end up back in prison for other crimes, since the Squad didn't rehabilitate them or even pretend to try. Cupid is seriously mentally ill and goes on a killing spree as soon as she is released. Meanwhile, although it seems like Tiger really did want to become a better person, his extensive criminal record made it basically impossible to reintegrate into normal society.
Lyla Michaels shuts down the program for moral reasons when Amanda Waller is murdered and she becomes director of ARGUS. When she and John Diggle consider reactivating it, they have to do so in secret because the original Squad was a massive PR embarrassment for ARGUS and they only avoided serious repercussions by claiming that Amanda Waller went rogue and set the whole thing up without the higher-ups' knowledge. It also causes Curtis Holt to quit ARGUS, because he recognises that it is a slippery slope.
The new squad consists of a ruthless assassin, an unstable lunatic, a murderous psychopath with Daddy Issues and previous season Big Bad Ricardo Diaz, all of whom have personal animosity to Lyla and John and also hate each other. Diaz in particular openly admits that if his Explosive Leash ever fails he will betray and kill them. Their first mission is an embarrassing failure as Diaz does indeed short out his implant with a defibrillator, warns the target what is happening and tries to murder them.
After the debacle, the program is shut down again, the Squad members are returned to prison and John has to claim he set up the whole thing behind Lyla's back and resign in disgrace to prevent her being fired.
One element of the episode "Epilogue" from Justice League Unlimited can be taken as a Do Not Do This Cool Thing look at the life of Bruce Wayne, who was so dedicated to being Batman that he ultimately ended up alone and bitter, having alienated all his friends and loved ones.
The Trickster in "Flash and Substance" deconstructs the idea of a supervillain being "insane". Rather than the usual cruel, amoral, giggling villain traditionally thrown into Arkham Asylum, the Trickster is a quiet, awkward villain who tends to Poke the Poodle and make jokes that nobody gets. It turns out that he is a diagnosed mental patient who reverts back to his "villainous" personality when he is off his medicine, and is unaware that he is even wearing his supervillain costume. The Flash talks him down gently and treats him respectfully, which is shown to be far more effective than the standard Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique favored by Batman when dealing with somebody who has genuine mental problems. The character is even portrayed by Mark Hamill, who usually plays "comic book insane" villains like the Joker.
Teen Titans (2003): "Haunted" is a deconstruction to the previous episode, "Crash". Both stories starts out mostly the same; a Titan (Cyborg, and then Robin) gets infected by a virus of some sorts and embarks on a self-destructive spree that endangers both themselves and their fellow Titans, with most of the episode being the Titans trying to locate their escaped, infected friend before things turns to the worse. But what "Crash" Played for Laughs, "Haunted" plays it dead serious.
Young Justice (2010) serves as a deconstruction of sidekicks as Child Soldiers, superheroes in the modern world, and is often very cynical about it. So much so that when it tries to do sincere emotion, it comes off as unintentional Narm.
Chaotic Evil mindset that Darkseid's minions have in the form of being a Nightmare Fetishist; he takes some pleasure in listening to people being tortured.