Basic Trope: Normal people are thrust into an adventure, but in the end it's the professionals who actually do anything productive.
- Straight: When Bob's Christmas party is attacked by terrorists and his wife Alice is among the hostages...he spends the whole story just trying to hide from the terrorists. A SWAT team ends up rescuing his wife and the other hostages.
- Exaggerated: A baby gets caught up in a plan to destroy the world, but a Boring Invincible Hero is the one who triumphs over the bad guys.
- Downplayed: The police and military ultimately solve the hostage situation, but Bob's John McClane impression certainly slowed down the terrorists.
- Justified: Bob is just one ordinary civilian with no training and no equipment, and the police have numbers, high tech gadgets, years of training and experience, and competent leadership. Duh.
- Inverted: Check out Police Are Useless and Adults Are Useless. Perhaps the professionals, for all their skill, are so severely held back by regulations and protocol that paradoxically, ordinary people who have no skill but no rules about their conduct are more competent.
- Subverted: The police surround the building and look ready to storm the building and save the day, but just stand around for hours doing nothing. Bob realizes that since the police are doing nothing and he's the only person in the building who's not a hostage or a terrorist, he's the only person who can do something. He musters up his strength and rescues everyone.
- Double Subverted: Or he tries to rescue everyone, but fails. The police move in and save the day a few hours later. It turns out they just needed to take their time planning their assault.
- Parodied: Bob's life is a never ending procession of "Die Hard" on an X plots, each one ending in Surprisingly Realistic Outcome with Bob's efforts hilariously failing. The police only move in and end the crisis once they see enough comical suffering on Bob's part.
- Zig Zagged: Bob tries to unleash his inner Action Hero on the terrorists, but Surprisingly Realistic Outcome and he is badly hurt. Police try to move in, but the terrorist leader plays his trump card and beats off their attacks. However, the terrorists are weakened by the police enough to the point where badass bystanders, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, action survivors, and spanners in the works are able to successfully mop up the remaining bad guys.
- Averted: The story is about ordinary people with ordinary problems. No professional effort is needed or even called upon for anything.
- Enforced: "How can we have protagonists most people can relate to, while also staying realistic?"
- Lampshaded: "I thought today was going to be like Die Hard and I would unleash my inner Badass. But no, the SWAT team burst in just as I was going to put my plan into action."
- Invoked: Bob's mom dies because of his stupid actions during the hostage situation, after which Alice informs him that as a normal person he can't do anything, and should just stay quiet until he is rescued by The Real Heroes.
- Exploited: A Mook Lieutenant is worried that an Action Survivor lurks in the office building and will screw everything up, and sends out search teams to root them out. However, the terrorist leader realizes that the movie he is in displays a high degree of realism, meaning that ordinary people pose no significant threat. He calls back the search teams and tells the Mook Lieutenant to focus on the police and military, and not Just One Man.
- Defied:
- Bob realizes that he is useless to stop the terrorists, but through his logic and deduction skills realizes that the terrorists forgot to bring ammo for their guns. Rushing for the katana on the wall, the butt kicking begins...
- "If we're gonna spend two million dollars hiring Finn Wolfhard as the Kid Hero, the one thing we are not going to do is making his character useless!! I don't care if that's the main joke, or the big... whatever the heck is it supposed to represent in the plot!! And don't you dare try to explain to me how Super 8 is a "good" example of that mentality, because I saw that damn film and all I can think about even now is how much J. J. Abrams is full of shit! Have I made myself clear!?"
- Discussed: "After all those karate lessons and hours on the shooting range, maybe I could've stopped them if I only had the balls. But then again, the SWAT team is way more badass than me and they only defeated the terrorists by a thin margin."
- Conversed: "I like characters I can relate to, but if there's a problem, I'd like to actually see the story of the people who solved it."
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