Since I suggested a re-write as part of the solution to this trope's problems, here's a suggestion for Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. I tightened up the compare/contrast section, replaced the lost information about non-realistic problems, and removed some of the rhetoric emphasizing realism and surprising-ness.
Personally I prefer a holistic approach to fixing tropes as history seems to be teaching us that easy fixes don't work for serious problems.
[quoteblock]A Surprisingly Realistic Outcome is when a work subverts narrative expectations by injecting realistic consequences of the characters' actions. The creator sets something up to happen, but it doesn't work as anticipated. This may give viewers a sense of catharsis, but it also might tickle their funny bones. We can often anticipate the outcome of an action based on the work's genre or where the action is in the story. We know that the hero's crazy stunt will succeed because, after all, it's fiction and we've seen other heroes in other stories do equally crazy stunts and they've all succeeded, to varying degrees.
This trope may be done by setting up and subverting a specific trope, a genre convention, or — more broadly — any expectation that the work has engendered. This is where the "surprisingly" comes from in the trope name. If something just happens to work as it does in Real Life without a subversion on a trope or other convention, then that is simply Reality Is Unrealistic.
Equally important to this trope is that the outcome is realistic. This is become the consequences to the characters' actions must be realistic. Fantastic consequences, such as a little girl becoming a blueberry, are not this trope. To reiterate, the consequences must be realistic, but the problem itself doesn't need to be. This trope is, in short, "Fantastic or realistic problems with unexpected realistic consequences."
This trope is mutually exclusive with Deconstruction, which identifies and either discusses or plays with audiences' assumptions that underpin fiction. A deconstruction usually utilizes realistic outcomes, but those outcomes are littered throughout the work and so it is not surprising to viewers, whereas a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome typically happens only once in a given work. The first instance of a realistic outcome in a deconstruction may be surprising but the creator quickly trains the audience to ignore their previously held assumptions so that the work can explore those assumptions with the audience. However, a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome only exists if those assumptions are still held, generally speaking.
Supertrope to Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay for when this happens with video game conventions.
Compare and contrast Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems, which is when fantastic settings have realistic and mundane problems that may have fantastic or realistic consequences; Wrong Genre Savvy, which is when a character counts on certain tropes to play but something else unexpected happens; and Fantasy All Along, which is when this trope is itself subverted. Contrast Fridge Logic, when the realistic outcome is not presented in the work itself; and Reality Is Unrealistic, for when the trope or convention is played realistically but nothing's subverted. A No-Nonsense Nemesis often invokes this. Sometimes leads to Anti-Climax if played near the end of the dramatic tension.
As this trope requires a narrative in which a trope is subverted, and since Real Life is not such a work, this is No Real Life Examples, Please! For tropes that end in disaster when applied to real life, see Television Is Trying to Kill Us.
Warning: This trope frequently occurs at a work's climax, and as such spoilers are likely unmarked.[/quoteblock]
