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Anime & Manga
"Wh-wh-what happened to you?! You suddenly look like some guy in a shojo manga! (In a sense, a controversial statement)"
— Takemoto to Mayama, Honey and Clover (Volume 7 bonus chapter)
Reality is not constructed in the same manner as movies or dramas, novels or manga. That's a disappointment to you, isn't it? The protagonists in the entertainment world, one day, suddenly, will find themselves faced with an unrealistic phenomenon, sense trouble, and will find themselves placed in a situation which could hardly be called pleasant. In the majority of cases, those stories' protagonists will, using intellect, bravery, a hidden power, or through developing an unspecified talent, overturn their broken-down circumstances. However, those are stories which undoubtedly can only occur in the fictional world. And it's because they are fiction that they are consequently realized in the entertainment world. If we were to posit that a world like in movies, dramas, novels, and manga was made to be ubiquitously visible in everyday life, then those forms of entertainment would not longer be entertainment, they would be documentaries.
— Sasaki, The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya
A drama has a progressive plot, an emotional climax and a resolution. But our lives aren't like that. All we get day after day are a bunch of vague anxieties that are never really resolved.
— Kaoru Yamazaki, Welcome to the NHK
Comic Books
Donovan: Robo, if nothing else today, then disabuse yourself of this mad notion that the real world is anything like your scientifiction magazines.
Robo: You'd be surprised.
— Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science
My own pretty words aside, life is no play. We meet people once, and never see them again. There is no shape to the events, no point at which we turn to the audience for praise. No time at which we step behind the stage, to see the actors changing their wigs, and painting their faces, and muttering their lines.
What? Captain America? Dressing some clown in a circus costume and calling him a super-soldier may be a hit with the recruitment people, but what age do you think we are, Barnes? This ain't just another picture opportunity you can fake to get eighteen-year-old boys exited about joining up. This bomb they're working on can flatten cities in seconds, and that star-spangled phoney they pay you to hawk around's just gonna die down there like the rest of us, fella.
— Kowalski, The Ultimates
Fan Works
“So who's resetting those traps then?” Louise asked, more to herself.
She almost expected some hideous and reptilian voice to call out “I am,” but that only happened in cliched stories.
[Siesta's] life was not like A Country Maid in the Hall of the Duke! This would end badly, no matter what those romance novels had said! She lived in reality, dammit!
Film — Animated
Roxanne: Please don't do this! I know there's still good in you, Hal.
Hal/Tighten: You're so naive, Roxie. You see the good in everybody, even when it's not there. You're living in a fantasy. There is no Easter Bunny, there is no Tooth Fairy, and there is no Queen of England. This is the real world, and you need to wake up!
— Megamind
Film — Live-Action
'Cause no one ever tells you when you're young
Love's not like the books, the films, or the songs
We’ve been livin' in a lie for far too long
And we're tired of pretending
There’s no such thing as a Hollywood ending
Love's not like the books, the films, or the songs
We’ve been livin' in a lie for far too long
And we're tired of pretending
There’s no such thing as a Hollywood ending
— "Hollywood Ending", Anna and the Apocalypse
"Television. Television is the explanation for this - you see this in bad television. Little assault guys creeping through the vents, coming in through the ceiling - that James Bond shit never happens in real life! Professionals don't do that!"
—Paul Smecker, The Boondock Saints
"I knew you. But you ain't you. You can't be you. We put you through the window. There ain't no coming back. This is the really real world, there ain't no coming back. We killed you dead, there ain't no coming back! There ain't no coming back! There ain't no coming back!"
—T-Bird, The Crow (1994)
Veronica Iscariot: I want you inside of me, Max.
Dr. Max Barris: You don't have to recite lines from the movie.
Veronica: I want to be as alluring to you as that actress was to her beloved Tony.
Max: I'm not Tony and this is not a movie.
Dr. Max Barris: You don't have to recite lines from the movie.
Veronica: I want to be as alluring to you as that actress was to her beloved Tony.
Max: I'm not Tony and this is not a movie.
Giselle: What sort of awful place is this?
Robert: It's reality!
Robert: It's reality!
Logan:You read these in your spare time? Oh yeah, Charles, we got ourselves an X-Men fan. You do know they're all bullshit right? Maybe a quarter of it happens — but not like this. In the real world, people die! And no self-promoting asshole in a fucking leotard can stop it! This is ice cream for bed-wetters!
Charles: Logan...
Logan: That nurse has been feeding her some grade-A bullshit.
Charles: I don’t think Laura needs reminders of life's impermanence.
Charles: Logan...
Logan: That nurse has been feeding her some grade-A bullshit.
Charles: I don’t think Laura needs reminders of life's impermanence.
— Logan
"Look, this isn't a comic book, Sam, these guys are brutal killers."
—Michael Emerson, The Lost Boys
"You're getting older, and you'll see that life isn't like your fairy tales. The world is a cruel place. And you'll learn that, even if it hurts."
— Carmen, Pan's Labyrinth
David: Is this a game or is this real?
WOPR: What's the difference?
— WarGames
Literature
Marco: You know, [Cassie] is just not getting the whole superhero thing. Does Wolverine look things up in the phone book? Does Spider-Man? I think not.
Rachel: Yeah, well, Wolverine has a big advantage over us. He's not real.
Rachel: Yeah, well, Wolverine has a big advantage over us. He's not real.
Marco: You guys are crazy! This isn't a comic book or...or whatever! It's for real!
— The Invasion (Animorphs #1), graphic novel version
"We're not in a novel."
— Foaly, Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex, "Chapter 5: Onward and Outward"
-Here the weary author, who can no longer deny the awfulness of what he has been writing, attempts to deflect criticism by pointing out that because it is real life, it is not subject to criticism... as it would be in a novel. Of course, it is a novel, and nobody is fooled.”
"Halflings!" laughed the rider that stood beside Éomer. "Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children's tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?"
“Wow. You guys! I’d pay to watch this if it was a movie. Being in it? A little tense.”
— Riptide, Whateley Universe, "Alya and the Birthday Brawl", part 13
This wasn't Tolkien - these weren't orcs and trolls and giant spiders and whatever else, evil creatures that you were free to commit genocide on without any complicated moral ramifications. Orcs didn't have wives and kids and backstories. But he was pretty sure the Lorians were human and killing them would basically be murder, and that wasn't going to happen. Some of them were even kind of hot. And anyway, those Tolkien books were fiction, and Eliot, as High King of Fillory, didn't deal in fiction. He was in the messy business of writing facts.
"Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that someday, to your sorrow."
— Littlefinger to Sansa, A Song of Ice and Fire
In the world of fiction, yes, one can imagine all sorts of fantastic accidents and heap contradiction on contradiction. But, in the world of reality, at the very heart of reality, there is always a fixed point, a solid nucleus, about which the facts group themselves in accordance with a logical order.
—Arsène Lupin, "The Case of Jean Louis" (ironically enough, the situation he's describing as unrealistic is the truth and his big reveal is actually an equally outlandish but face-saving lie)
Live-Action TV
"Because life is a gradual series of revelations
That occur over a period of time
It's not some carefully crafted story
It's a mess, and we're all gonna die
If you saw a movie that was like real life
You'd be like, "What the hell was that movie about?
It was really all over the place."
Life doesn't make narrative sense."
That occur over a period of time
It's not some carefully crafted story
It's a mess, and we're all gonna die
If you saw a movie that was like real life
You'd be like, "What the hell was that movie about?
It was really all over the place."
Life doesn't make narrative sense."
— Josh Groban, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: "The End of the Movie"
Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science-fiction.
Zoe: We live on a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?
Zoe: We live on a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?
— Firefly, "Objects in Space"
"Guys, I wish this were a TV show. Easy answers, endings wrapped up in a bow. But this is real. And it's gonna end bloody for all of us. That's just how it's gotta be."
— Gabriel, Supernatural, "Changing Channels"
Dr Cox: Look, I know you all curl up on your futons at night dreaming of cracking a real-life medical mystery so that some Doctor-slash-supermodel will want to touch your eruption button, but here's the bad news. This isn't a TV show, there aren't any cameras over here, real medical mysteries don't happen every week and doctors damn sure don't look like models. They look like Rex.
Rex: ...What?
Dr Cox: Chin up, you ugly bastard.
— Scrubs
Judge Munsinger: You know, I heard about a case. I think you might be the right person for it... interested?
Kim: Oh, of course!
Judge Munsinger: I can't share all the details just yet, but I can give you broad strokes. There's a young woman - into her early twenties, pregnant with her first child, nearing the end of term – healthy as a horse. She develops a complication. She goes to the hospital for delivery, and there's a mistake with the anesthesia. She aspirates vomitus into her oxygen mask, stops breathing. The baby's delivered fine, but the young mother suffers serious brain damage; she's left comatose on a respirator. The family is, naturally, devastated... and they're broke, so they have no way to pay for the young lady's care. And to make matters worse, the hospital refuses to take responsibility, and they've hired one of the most expensive firms in the state-
Kim: This is the plot of The Verdict.
Judge Munsinger: Yes, of course it is! Because movies are the only places where those once-in-a-lifetime cases exist! You know what I got coming up next? I got a janitor who threw his pee on his boss. The one after that, she stabbed her boyfriend over a grilled cheese sandwich. This is the real world, Ms. Wexler, and you won't find any save-the-broken-lawyer cases in it. Don't think that you are the first to try to rediscover their love of the law by trolling my court – you're not.
Kim: Oh, of course!
Judge Munsinger: I can't share all the details just yet, but I can give you broad strokes. There's a young woman - into her early twenties, pregnant with her first child, nearing the end of term – healthy as a horse. She develops a complication. She goes to the hospital for delivery, and there's a mistake with the anesthesia. She aspirates vomitus into her oxygen mask, stops breathing. The baby's delivered fine, but the young mother suffers serious brain damage; she's left comatose on a respirator. The family is, naturally, devastated... and they're broke, so they have no way to pay for the young lady's care. And to make matters worse, the hospital refuses to take responsibility, and they've hired one of the most expensive firms in the state-
Kim: This is the plot of The Verdict.
Judge Munsinger: Yes, of course it is! Because movies are the only places where those once-in-a-lifetime cases exist! You know what I got coming up next? I got a janitor who threw his pee on his boss. The one after that, she stabbed her boyfriend over a grilled cheese sandwich. This is the real world, Ms. Wexler, and you won't find any save-the-broken-lawyer cases in it. Don't think that you are the first to try to rediscover their love of the law by trolling my court – you're not.
— Better Call Saul, "Talk"
Video Games
Conrad Verner: What if you signed me on as another Spectre? I'd be right there with you, and we'd save the galaxy together.
Renegade Shepard: Conrad, I haven't been shot in the head enough times to make that seem like a good idea.
Conrad: I know you have difficulty trusting people after what happened to you at Akuze/Elysium/Torfan, but I want you to know that I'm willing to do whatever it takes!
Shepard: [pointing a pistol point-blank in Conrad's face] Conrad, you have no idea what it takes to get the job done!
Conrad: [whimpering] What? Please don't kill me!
Shepard: This is what a gun in your face feels like. I go through it every day! You can't handle it.
Conrad Verner: [crying] I thought you were a hero! Heroes don't do things like this!
Renegade Shepard: Conrad, I haven't been shot in the head enough times to make that seem like a good idea.
Conrad: I know you have difficulty trusting people after what happened to you at Akuze/Elysium/Torfan, but I want you to know that I'm willing to do whatever it takes!
Shepard: [pointing a pistol point-blank in Conrad's face] Conrad, you have no idea what it takes to get the job done!
Conrad: [whimpering] What? Please don't kill me!
Shepard: This is what a gun in your face feels like. I go through it every day! You can't handle it.
Conrad Verner: [crying] I thought you were a hero! Heroes don't do things like this!
this is like a horror game
— Anonymous commenter, NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD during the "INTERNET OVERDOSE" ending
Attention, Test Prisoners attempting to escape through the air ducts. I don't know what nonsense you learned on TV, but in real life, air ducts just go to the air-conditioning unit. It's also pretty dusty, so if you've got asthma, chances are you're gonna die up there. And we'll be smelling it for weeks, because again, the air ducts aren't a secret escape hatch, they're how we ventilate the facility.
— Space Prison Warden Cave Johnson, Portal 2: Endless Testing Initiative
Ryan: What are you doing?
Dylan: I don't know, it's what they do in movies when the phone goes dead. Tap on the little thingy.
Ryan: We're not in a movie.
Dylan: Okay, well, you know, how do you know that? Maybe that's just what they want you to think, man.
Dylan: I don't know, it's what they do in movies when the phone goes dead. Tap on the little thingy.
Ryan: We're not in a movie.
Dylan: Okay, well, you know, how do you know that? Maybe that's just what they want you to think, man.
— The Quarry (to be fair, they're in a video game, not a movie)
Irving Lambert: Looks like there's an active alarm system...
Sam Fisher: Let me guess — three alarms and the mission's over?
Irving Lambert: Of course not! This is no video game, Fisher.
Sam Fisher: Let me guess — three alarms and the mission's over?
Irving Lambert: Of course not! This is no video game, Fisher.
Saburouta Takasugi: But seriously, this scenery isn't natural. We could be in a different world entirely, for all we know.
Judau Ashta: Yeah, of COURSE that's the first thing the Jovian Federation guy reaches for. This isn't anime, you know.
Judau Ashta: Yeah, of COURSE that's the first thing the Jovian Federation guy reaches for. This isn't anime, you know.
"Robot 1 is defeated, and Robot 2 gallantly swoops in to replace it... When it comes to stirring developments, it's a classic among classics. But... this is no work of fiction. It's reality... And the sense of loss, the sadness — it's almost unbearable."
"Sorry, luv. This isn't a movie. And you're not the Plucky Girl who reforms the villain and saves the day. It's just not done like that."
— Harry Flynn, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
"Real life is not like the stories our father told us! You are a fool for believing it so!"
— Hanzo, Overwatch
"Holy shit... it's an oompa loompa! Just like that movie! We're... we're all in a movie, or like, a story or something...!"
— Caleb, Weeb's Wonka Game
Web Animation
"This isn't some lesson-teaching little kids' show, this is real! I'm really beating you in a virtual reality game where you appear on goldfish, and I'm better than a person who uses plant magic!"
— Julie, DSBT InsaniT
Webcomics
Bob: Sorbet! No, no, don't shoot them! Ow! Ow!
Sorbet: They shot you in the face!
Jean: That is very true!
Bob: Yeah! And if that was supposed to kill me, I'd be dead, right? I'm not a toon!
Narrator: Well...
Sorbet: They shot you in the face!
Jean: That is very true!
Bob: Yeah! And if that was supposed to kill me, I'd be dead, right? I'm not a toon!
Narrator: Well...
"What am I going to do? I didn't know real superheroes could get sued by fictional superheroes!"
— Spinnerette, Spinnerette
"In comics they have their "codes" and Black-and-White Morality and ridiculous outfits...But we live in the real world! And we have to do what's right! Even when what's right is difficult."
— Golden Samurai, V The Vampire Vigilante
Web Videos
There's an old saying that the phoenix will rise up from the flame,
But this ain't no drama off Broadway or courtroom video game!
But this ain't no drama off Broadway or courtroom video game!
— Miles Edgeworth, Phoenix Wright the Musical: The Turnabout Encounter
Western Animation
"This isn't the comics, Kid! This is real life and we're about to die!"
—Jo, Kid Cosmic
Apple Bloom: I just don’t get it. Big grand gestures always work in the fairy tales.
Big Macintosh: But Sugar Belle is not a fairy tale princess. She’s a real pony.
Big Macintosh: But Sugar Belle is not a fairy tale princess. She’s a real pony.
— My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "Hard to Say Anything"
